sovay | The king of the land at his death-time

Current Music: Anne Briggs, "Willie o Winsbury"

The king of the land at his death-time

On the strength of

poliphilo's recommendations and my love for Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth (1972),

nineweaving and I watched the 99-minute cut of The Wicker Man (1973) tonight. And maybe I'm just a sucker for holy fools and mummers' dances, but I loved it.

For the life of a man has got a span
He's cut down like the grass
Here's a health unto the green leaf of the tree
For as long as life shall last
—Waterson : Carthy, "May Song"

I do not think The Wicker Man is a horror film. (I do think it reminded me of The Bacchae, The Prisoner, and The Perilous Gard all in one, which is something of an achievement. I would like to have seen it in its original, un-chopped-and-then-patched-up state, but even so, I might still want a copy of my own.* Oh, cinema. Why are you making me so broke?) Nor did the climax leave me stunned—from the title, I'd have been far more disappointed if a sacrificial year-king hadn't surfaced at some point. But in its intelligence, its underpinned myth, and the absolutely consistent world it creates, such that what might otherwise have been a flaky folk revival in the Hebrides instead came across as both otherworldly and very practically rooted, it did surprise me: I like it so much when movies assume their audiences aren't morons.

Or its characters: what gives The Wicker Man much of its tragic dimension is that, from the perspective of the world from which he comes, Edward Woodward's Neil Howie does everything right. He asks all the proper questions, he looks for all the relevant records, he interviews the people who should know the most about the vanished Rowan Morrison, for whose sake he has come to make his investigations on Summerisle. In the face of practices that strike him as bizarre at best, criminal at worst, he holds firm to his principles and props himself up on his faith. Out of his depth, he knows enough to call for help; isolated, he makes a valiant attempt to save the life he sees threatened. All very commendable for a Sergeant of the West Highland Constabulary. From a folkloric perspective, however, he is the equivalent of the promiscuous blonde in a slasher flick who steps into a darkened room to investigate a peculiar noise. An officer of the law who comes with the power of the Crown behind him, a devout Christian who does not believe in premarital sex, a man so convinced of his own rightness that he dashes off like a modern-day knight errant without considering that maybe the damsel is in no distress at all, he is very nearly doomed from the moment he sets foot on Summerisle, and he never knows it.

It is left to the audience to watch the myth tighten around him, as Howie fits himself for the role he has not yet realized is his—"Punch, one of the great fool-victims of history. For you have accepted the role of king for a day, and who but a fool would do that?" For charm, cool intellect, and epigrammatic humor, he hasn't a patch on Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee, even with unfortunate '70's hair), but his attempts to override the man's authority, threatening to charge locals with obstruction or arrest them for conspiracy to murder, locate him squarely in the office of a substitute king. He has chances enough to walk away from this peculiar mystery, and turns each one down until there are none left to take. And like Pentheus in the dress of a maenad, when he finally decides to infiltrate that which fascinates and appalls him, he disguises himself all too appropriately. The more he's tried to stand on his dignity, the more it's been tugged out from under him: his eleventh-hour effort to "search every house in this place" only needs a Benny Hill saxophone to turn it into complete farce as Howie plunges in and out of the houses of Summerisle with neither a warrant nor his wits about him: he barges in on the librarian naked in her bath and apologizes himself out of the room, a bloodstained girl tumbles out of a wardrobe only to laugh at him when he kneels anxiously beside her, half the ladies at the hairdresser's are masked and all stare frostily at him; he takes a pratfall down a flight of stairs and a pair of half-clothed girls run for cover as he picks himself up. He's in such a state when he returns to the Green Man that he promptly downs a glass of whiskey, the first we've seen for the abstemious Sergeant. Before he even picks up Punch's mask, he's a fool already. But the costume seals his consent, however unknowingly he gives it: he has taken up his part and he must play it out to the end.

"I have heard that tale," said the Lady, "and it is not as you say. I will not deny that your Lord paid the teind, nor that it would be good to have had some part in it, for He was a strong man, and born of a race of kings, and His teind must have been a very great one. But that was long ago, long ago in His own time and place. Its strength is spent now. The power has gone out of it."
—Elizabeth Marie Pope, The Perilous Gard (1974)

It's less Howie's Christianity that damns him, of course, than the inflexibility with which he applies his beliefs. In the very first scene of the movie, his assistant McTaggart spots the words JESUS SAVES spray-painted on a wall and cannot resist tweaking his legendarily humorless superior: "Ah, now, there's a message, Sergeant—a message for us all!" To which Howie repressively replies, "However, there is a time and place for everything. Get it removed." No single religion has the market cornered on that brand of literalism. But even if Howie has enough self-perception to refer sarcastically to his piety as "unfashionable," he does not seem able to conceive of any viable alternatives. His tenure on Summerisle is an endless parade of shocks to the system, incredulous and affronted that such customs can still be practiced in the twentieth century. "They never learn anything of Christianity?" he demands of the schoolteacher, who calmly answers, "Only as a comparative religion. The children find it far easier to picture reincarnation than resurrection."

And the religion of Summerisle does work beautifully. As the holdout from pre-Christian times that it first appears, it's a little overstuffed and mismatched, with corn dollies and blue-eyed boats alongside stone circles and topiary herms, but as a late Victorian syncretism it's more than believable—Frazer's Golden Bough by way of Thomas Huxley, now with additional guising. Nor is there the underlying wrongness that characterizes so many horror-film communities. No one on Summerisle is a dead-eyed zombie. The children are bright and healthy, the adults friendly and devout, the graves are planted with namesake trees and nine-year-olds still paint with watercolors, three generations in and no cultlike crack-up in sight. Girls leap over fires in hopes of conceiving and pregnant women touch blossoming trees for luck and a mother tells her daughter that a frog will take away her sore throat, but there is a doctor on the island and in all their commerce with the mainland, Summerisle never seems to have come to blows over its unconventional traditions. I will grant that Lord Summerisle is no Thomas Colpeper—in his dryly amused observation of Howie and his knowledge that the island's paganism dates back only as far as his inventive grandfather, he seems less a true believer than a man who knows which side of the apple his bread is buttered on. "A heathen, conceivably. But not, I hope, an unenlightened one." But he takes seriously his role as priest: he may not always believe in what he does, but I do not think he's entirely prepared to claim it isn't real, either. The sacrifice is as normal and joyous an affair as a wedding, with a village band and hymn-singing. All the darkness comes from the oldest, truest places: the earth, love, the turn of the seasons; the terrible possibility that the God to whom you cry out is not the one who's really out there after all.

Pentheus has had his run. Now the god will play with him. Yet it is not Dionysos who by himself has devised that game like a cruel child. It takes two to play. The god is that which is. If we will not know him, it is we who make the ironies the immortals laugh at.
—Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo (1966)

What I cannot help wondering is how differently the second half of the film might have turned out if Howie had yielded to Willow. She is the initiator of virgins: his first night on Summerisle, Howie witnesses an adolescent boy brought to her as "a sacrifice for Aphrodite" while downstairs in the pub a sweetly sensuous, ceremonious ballad leaves no doubt as to what the soft gasps and laughter from the next room mean.** I put my hand on her thigh and she says, do you want to try? I put my hand on her belly and she says, do you want to fill me? Gently, gently, Johnny, my jingalo. A virgin Howie most certainly is, to the contemptuous amusement of his coworkers back on the mainland and the somewhat more religious interest of the islanders, and the second night Willow is at his door. Heigh ho, who is there? No one but me, my dear. Please come, say how do—the things I'll give to you! Sirenlike, she sings the policeman blind and half demented with desire until he flattens himself desperately against the wall as though only the plaster between them keeps him from collapsing into her arms. But he does not open his door to her, and the music fades away, and he remains a virgin, and the next day is May Day.

I do not know whether her song is meant to torment him, or test him, or whether she is offering him a genuine invitation into the community of Summerisle. Certainly sleeping with Willow would have disqualified him as a sacrifice, because an important component of his suitability is his virginity—both physically and the arrogant innocence that allows him not to understand until it's far too late that not all the world bows down to his God and his laws. But I notice also that for all his disdain for these "circumstances of pagan barbarity" in which he finds himself, Sergeant Howie has a remarkably intuitive grasp of their mechanics. It is not the highly ritualized atmosphere of Summerisle that is alien to him, only the patterns into which their faith is channeled. The moment he sees the photograph of Rowan Morrison surrounded by the scanty, disastrous harvest over which she presided, he understands why she would make such an appropriate sacrifice for the next year's fertility: "Well, that's it: the crops failed. And it's Rowan—Rowan and the crops failed!" His researches in the town library have not told him what happens when the substitute king is not enough, but he shouts unerringly at the island's lord, "If the crops fail, Summerisle, next year your people will kill you on May Day!" I am not convinced that he could have made the transition from Scottish Puritanism to kitchen-sink neopaganism, for all the reasons mentioned earlier. (Nor do I have any idea where the islanders would have found an acceptable sacrifice if he had opted out.) But he is not a stupid man, and he comprehends this strange world into which he's stumbled far more readily than I think he would ever like to admit.

I could go on—about the music, the characterization, the folklore, the complexities on both sides of the religion, and the fact that no other film I've ever seen has made the mating of snails so unsettlingly seductive.*** But it is past five in the morning, and I really need to sleep. There may be more tomorrow.

At the very least, I need to buy the soundtrack. "Gently, Johnny" won't get out of my head.

*This impressively comprehensive site lists the differences between the various extant versions of The Wicker Man, including scenes that have been almost certainly lost. I'll still pray for them to turn up somewhere in a canister or a shoebox in the back room of a studio. I don't mind so much the shortening of Howie's first conversation with Lord Summerisle, because on reflection I actually prefer the apple handed over and eaten in ellipsis, so that the audience has to look to catch the symbolism—whether it's Eve or Persephone, it is never a good idea to take fruit from someone unless you know what you're accepting along with it—but I am sorry not to have the interchange with the schoolteacher, because it allows the audience to see a little more of Howie than his uprightness and uptightness (he's read Don Quixote; that's always a point in a person's favor) as well as the real disparity between the role in which he thinks he's come to Summerisle and the role the islanders know he's about to play. Likewise the exchange between the two fishermen at the beginning, because even as a one-liner it adds plausibility to Howie's disappearance: if he's not well-liked, who'll make the effort to search for him? Oh, well, such a shame; now who's for another round of drinks? The pub stays open tonight!

**While it is never mentioned in the film, both

nineweaving and I independently received the impression that just as Willow in her role as "the goddess of love in human form" sexually initiates the boys of the island, it must be the Lord Summerisle who initiates the girls.

***I am entirely serious. While the boy Ash makes love for the first time with Willow upstairs, the pub-goers do not sing raucously as they did for "The Landlord's Daughter," the bawdy praise of Willow's charms that should have warned Sergeant Howie he was in no ordinary pub, but quietly, half ritual, half reminiscence, gently as Johnny in the song. They lean against one another, they share voices. They are accompanying the boy's entry into the sexual world and it is hallowed. On his knees beside his bed, Howie finds his prayers disturbed by the meditative, slightly mocking voice of Lord Summerisle, as he watches two snails glide over one another on a leaf, glistening in the windowlight, abandoned and sinless as the couples Howie glimpsed earlier in the ruins of the churchyard. "I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick, discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another, or to one of his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable—or unhappy—all over the earth." And the singers' voices sway and fall like a chant that could go on forever, and the boy moans in the arms of his goddess, and Howie knots his hands together so tightly he'll have nail-marks on his knuckles in the morning. But aren't stigmata every martyr's dream? He's not the villain of this story, and perhaps therein lies his problem. He is only a very different sort of hero than he imagined.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm so glad you liked it.

Your analysis makes me want to watch it again.

There's research to be done on how much the movie fuelled and forwarded the neo-pagan revival of the late 20th century. Certainly Lee's Summerisle was a hero and role model to the groups I mixed with or ran - and most of them regarded it as mandatory to sing "summer is a-comen in"- with much wicked, knowing laughter- at their May Day gatherings (though no-one knew it beyond the first two lines).

I'm so glad you liked it.

I did. Thank you for the recommendation.

There's research to be done on how much the movie fuelled and forwarded the neo-pagan revival of the late 20th century. Certainly Lee's Summerisle was a hero and role model to the groups I mixed with or ran - and most of them regarded it as mandatory to sing "summer is a-comen in"- with much wicked, knowing laughter- at their May Day gatherings (though no-one knew it beyond the first two lines).

That's particularly awesome, seeing that the film's paganism is a conscious creation itself.

*lurks*

<.<

>.>

Wouldn't you like to know.

*resumes lurking*

Wouldn't you like to know.

Quite probably.

*lurk lurk lurk*

*pause*

We have a plan.

Aha. Ahahahahaha. Ha ha.

We have a plan.

Just let me know if I'm involved in it . . .

*returns to cackling most deviously in a corner*

It could come at any time. While you/re walking to the reservoir. While you're off to get your sinuses retrenched.

AHAHAHAHA.

ha.

What I cannot help wondering is how differently the second half of the film might have turned out if Howie had yielded to Willow.

The second half of the film would, of course, have not existed. It's not just that [insert obligatory spoiler notice] Howie would not have then been a workable sacrifice, but that his entire worldview would have shifted; he would have become a different character altogether. And, as a convert to the island's religion, I think he'd have fit in just fine.

At the very least, I need to buy the soundtrack. "Gently, Johnny" won't get out of my head.

Magnet's version is, of course, the finest I've heard of it, but no pristine copy exists; the soundtrack is lifted from the film, as the masters are still (yes, still!) tied up in some sort of copyright war-- which is why no official soundtrack was released until the late nineties, and the one we have now is the same as the bootleg copy I scored ten years previous to that. heh.

Tanakh's version (on Villa Claustrophobia, their best disc) is also bloody fantastic.

including scenes that have been almost certainly lost. I'll still pray for them to turn up somewhere in a canister or a shoebox in the back room of a studio.

According to

jackkaraquazian, who's usually more up on these things than I am, going wisdom is that they're buried under a portion of... the M1, I believe. In any case, under a number of feet of concrete comprising a piece of a major highway. My current way around this is to drop an anonymous tip to someone in charge that Jimmy Hoffa is buried in that spot, and see if anyone takes the bait. I would quite literally give my left arm to own the full 126-minute cut.

I am entirely serious. While the boy Ash makes love for the first time with Willow upstairs, the pub-goers do not sing raucously as they did for "The Landlord's Daughter," the bawdy praise of Willow's charms that should have warned Sergeant Howie he was in no ordinary pub, but quietly, half ritual, half reminiscence, gently as Johnny in the song.

I rather assumed Howie would have simply recognized both of those as old drinking-song standards (which they are IRL, not just on Summerisle-- as is "Corn Rigs and Barley Rigs").

But aren't stigmata every martyr's dream?

But of course. A nice subtle touch of foreshadowing, that.

It's not just that Howie would not have then been a workable sacrifice, but that his entire worldview would have shifted; he would have become a different character altogether.

That's what I wonder about: whether he would have been able to handle that shift in worldview, or whether he would only have succumbed and imploded; he's run on faith and guilt his entire life, and why should he stop now? But I suppose if he were adaptable enough to let Willow in, knowing who she is and what she represents, he would have begun to change already.

And, as a convert to the island's religion, I think he'd have fit in just fine.

That I can agree with. I've had years to think about seasons and sacrifices and kings who die; he has not quite three days, and he almost figures it all out.

but no pristine copy exists; the soundtrack is lifted from the film, as the masters are still (yes, still!) tied up in some sort of copyright war-- which is why no official soundtrack was released until the late nineties, and the one we have now is the same as the bootleg copy I scored ten years previous to that.

Even this version? It was released from studio tapes in 2002.

I would quite literally give my left arm to own the full 126-minute cut.

I am rather fond of my left arm, but I would like to see those scenes.

I rather assumed Howie would have simply recognized both of those as old drinking-song standards (which they are IRL, not just on Summerisle-- as is "Corn Rigs and Barley Rigs").

Although "Corn Rigs and Barley Rigs" does not appear with its traditional tune; I had been hoping.

A nice subtle touch of foreshadowing, that.

I really did like how the audience was not hit over the head with the finale: even in the scene where Howie reads about alternate sacrifices, the beloved virgin where the king will not do, the picture in his mind (and therefore before the audience's eyes) is the failed harvest of 1972 and thirteen-year-old Rowan.

whether he would have been able to handle that shift in worldview, or whether he would only have succumbed and imploded; he's run on faith and guilt his entire life, and why should he stop now?

Every religion has its, erm, orthodox adherents (and converts tend to be the most orthodox of all); it seems to me he'd have just been trading one set of strictures for another. After all, he already sees the religion they profess as ... not confining, but... can't think of the right word. Tunnel vision will do that to ya.

Even this version? It was released from studio tapes in 2002.

Interesting! Different track list than the version I scored a couple of years ago, so it's definitely a different disc... I'll be on the lookout for this to see if it really is the holy grail.

Although "Corn Rigs and Barley Rigs" does not appear with its traditional tune; I had been hoping.

Well, you have to appease the folky kids an' all that. At least it does appear in the 99-minute cut (if I recall correctly, it gets VERY short shrift in the theatrical release).

I really did like how the audience was not hit over the head with the finale:

That's it: we're not hit over the head with anything (except Britt Eklund, and really, how awful is that?). That's what the remake-- and so very, very many other movies-- completely fail to grasp. That we can figure it out on our own.

(and converts tend to be the most orthodox of all)

Oh, yes.

After all, he already sees the religion they profess as ... not confining, but... can't think of the right word.

It is a very closed system. Which makes sense: it's not an organic development, although I imagine much more so now than two generations ago.

Different track list than the version I scored a couple of years ago, so it's definitely a different disc... I'll be on the lookout for this to see if it really is the holy grail.

I am contemplating its purchase anyway. If I get to it before you do, shall I send you a copy?

That's what the remake-- and so very, very many other movies-- completely fail to grasp.

Well, the remake sounded like it failed on a whole number of levels . . .

I am contemplating its purchase anyway. If I get to it before you do, shall I send you a copy?

That would be wonderful of you, thanks!

Well, the remake sounded like it failed on a whole number of levels . . .

As it succeeded on none, that is an accurate assessment of the situation.

to see if it really is the holy grail.

Well, tell me—or if it's at least reasonably close. And if so, the entire soundtrack's yours.

"Gently, Johnny"
"Maypole Song"
"The Tinker of Rye"
"Willow's Song"

The only version of "Johnny" that I've heard was done by the Sneaker Pimps. It's absolutely gorgeous. Here it is if you're interested:

Sneaker Pimps - "Johnny" (http://www.sendspace.com/file/vqbdq9)

It's absolutely gorgeous. Here it is if you're interested

Thanks!

In the woods there grew a tree.
A fine, fine tree was he.

In the woods there grew a tree.
A fine, fine tree was he.

Children's rhymes are always the eeriest.

I really enjoy reading your thoughts on movies, they make me want to watch the ones I haven't seen and give me new perspectives on the ones I did see. Thanks.

they make me want to watch the ones I haven't seen and give me new perspectives on the ones I did see. Thanks.

You're welcome! Which one of these is The Wicker Man?

Terrifyingly, I seem to recall reading somewhere that there was an early, possibly original, idea to have it ending with a rain coming to put out the fire.

*sigh of relief* Wikipedia says that was the idea of studio executives. That's better; it's the place of studio executives to make stupid suggestions like that so that they can be mentioned on DVD bonus tracks when the movie becomes a classic.

That's better; it's the place of studio executives to make stupid suggestions like that so that they can be mentioned on DVD bonus tracks when the movie becomes a classic.

And the studios certainly did their share to wreck this film . . .

First off, thanks so much for writing one of your stellar reviews for this film. I've only seen some the Anchor Bay DVD release that came out a few years back & I have no idea how much integrity is lost in that cut. But it's remained in my mind as one of the best, smartest thrillers I've yet seen.

What I find so amazing about this film is the fact that I highly doubt it could have been made at any other time than it was. A decade or so previously, we would have seen something along the lines of a fantasy-tinged romance and a decade later this would have somehow morphed into a traditional slasher horror movie. In the 1950-60s, pagan themes and mythology would have been buried or crippled under a cloud of suspicion and socially conservative misdirection as to the veracity of "backward, heathen" religious practices. And extending into the eighties, the film would have been marred by a complete misunderstanding of pagan themes and mythology (bungled up as half "satanic-panic" and half pagan/druid/wiccan/psycho-hillbillies with enormous cleavage and bad teeth).

But in 1973, merely four years after the Summer of Love and in the wake of a renewed cultural consciousness of folk traditions and nature religions (and nature in general), the film's subject was foriegn enough to inspire curiousity (and thusly veiled fear), familiar enough not to distance mainstream viewers, and was not yet subject to the burden of authenticating itself with the religious communities it was (passingly) referencing. Unfortunately, the film would suffer today by the abundance of knowledge the 21st century has available in regard to these traditions - as some of the film's tension relies upon its audiences' basic lack or knowledge (or misunderstanding) of Summerisle's religion.

This is, of course, discounting the European and British common knowledge of many of the festivals and rituals performed and noted in the film (which is a bad idea, I recognize) - but appears allow the viewer in the 1970s remember that these activities and symbols are potent and rooted in a tradition which predates Christianity or their commonplace, pedestrian understanding of their importance.

Sorry, this isn't a great comment. But I did just want to point out that I felt that the success & potence of this film was greatly endebted to the zeitgiest of the era.

First off, thanks so much for writing one of your stellar reviews for this film.

I'm very glad you like them!

I've only seen some the Anchor Bay DVD release that came out a few years back & I have no idea how much integrity is lost in that cut.

What we watched was the "extended version" on the Anchor Bay two-disc set, which I believe is considered the most complete version available to date. Certainly it contains scenes where I can't understand why anyone would have cut them; most notably the whole introduction of Sergeant Howie on the mainland, which establishes him simultaneously as staunchly religious, serious about his work, and rather a laughingstock among his colleagues ("Ah, good old Mary, I don't know what she sees in him. When those two are married, she'll spend more time on her knees in church than on her back in bed!"), and the initiation of Ash Buchanan, which presents both Lord Summerisle and Willow in their ritual capacities and makes it clear that her later temptation of Howie is much more than random pagan immorality. All hail Roger Corman, who seems to have owned the only uncut print of the film on the planet, at least before it also disappeared.

But it's remained in my mind as one of the best, smartest thrillers I've yet seen.

Yes. I loved the way the misdirection keeps spinning out of control: at each turn, the plot seems to have become a completely different sort of mystery than the audience (and Howie) thought, and in the end it's really no mystery at all; unless in the ritual sense.

as some of the film's tension relies upon its audiences' basic lack or knowledge (or misunderstanding) of Summerisle's religion.

This came up in

nineweaving's post on the film, too.

Sorry, this isn't a great comment. But I did just want to point out that I felt that the success & potence of this film was greatly endebted to the zeitgeist of the era.

What are you talking about? This is a great comment. The closest I'd been able to come was the feeling that The Wicker Man couldn't have been made in any decade other than the '70's, and not just because of the music or the hair, either, but I couldn't have explained why. Which you have done, and eloquently. Thank you!

Thank you for your kind comments, I often feel like I'm ranting randomly sometimes.

The Wicker Man couldn't have been made in any decade other than the '70's

The director is apparently starting to stage his own remake (see the Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man_%281973_film%29#Remakes)), but I could see that the film could recapture some of this mystical quality in a film made today if the story setting itself was taken back several hundred years (into, say, the Commonwealth or Regency).

I often feel like I'm ranting randomly sometimes.

And what else is the internet for?

but I could see that the film could recapture some of this mystical quality in a film made today if the story setting itself was taken back several hundred years

Because I've been watching so many older (or at least not made in the last ten years) films recently, this is something I have been wondering about—who makes otherworldly films nowadays?

And maybe I'm just a sucker for holy fools and mummers' dances, but I loved it.

I'm a sucker for Christopher Lee and naked women, so I loved it too.

I do not think The Wicker Man is a horror film.

I regard it as horror, and my favourite kind, where a strange external terror resonates internally for the protagonist in a personal way, his own flaws intimate with his bizarre downfall. I'm not sure I found the movie scary, though I felt very bad for Sergeant Howie.

I might still want a copy of my own.* Oh, cinema. Why are you making me so broke?

Oy, tell me about it. I'll tell you about it--WARNING: the following is kind of stupid;

Yesterday, being Thursday, I had to be out of the house for a while. I went to the mall and thought I might maybe buy myself a ten dollar movie (I started yesterday with fifty dollars). First I picked up Aliens, which I for some reason neglected to buy for a very long time. Thinking of you, dear Sonya, and remembering you'd written a post about The Wicker Man(this one) I hadn't yet read, I decided to look for that film and also found it for only ten dollars. So, twenty dollars and two good DVD acquisitions, or so I thought.

I came back here to find I was going to be forced out of the house for another three hours, a depressing prospect as already the smothering hot day and lack of sleep had just about cremated me. But I sat down a moment to remove the cellophane from the DVDs and to have an uncharacteristic moment of uncertainty as to whether I should throw away the receipt. Scoffing at my own mysterious misgivings, I put things in the trash and started reading your post; "I watched the 99-minute cut of The Wicker Man (1973) tonight," and suddenly I had a sinking feeling--looking at my new DVD I found, yes, I only had the 88-minute cut. A quick scouring of the reviews told me that this was indeed A Bad Thing. I dug through the trash for the receipt, only to find one cannot return an opened DVD.

So off I went, across town to another place with a cheap, bigger DVD selection and I found the two disk version with the 99-minute cut for fifteen dollars. And for ten dollars, I also found Young Sherlock Holmes, which

greygirlbeast had recommended to me. Sad prudence took over and I bought only the latter film--which I had wanted to see, but I don't like being thwarted, you understand.

After gasoline for the car, breakfast and coffee for me, I was down to six dollars and two hours to kill. So I drove all over town looking for that Red Fire Bar you talked about (go right ahead and laugh) and spent five dollars ninety-nine cents on it.

Then I got home and my aunt suddenly gave me a hundred dollars for taking care of her cats. So I saw the 99-minute cut after all, and was very tired at the end of the day.

What started as a ten dollar lark turned out to be something of a holy crusade for you, dear internet friend, Lady Sonya, and if you choose to be creeped out now, by all means do so. It'll fit in with my story about how the candy bar allowed me to taste through your mouth. It was good.

Nor did the climax leave me stunned—from the title, I'd have been far more disappointed if a sacrificial year-king hadn't surfaced at some point.

I knew Howie was going to get it, but not until about fifteen minutes in. There aren't enough books in my experience to clue me into the year-king thing, there was just a sort of strange dread about how the townspeople were talking about Rowan and how coolly they kept changing their story. Also, your analogy about a standard horror movie's "promiscuous blonde" occurred to me also.

what might otherwise have been a flaky folk revival in the Hebrides instead came across as both otherworldly and very practically rooted,

I completely agree, though at times I was reminded of a Strangers with Candy episode I recently saw that poked fun at religious cults.

but as a late Victorian syncretism it's more than believable

I loved that idea. It really did give it an extra layer of credibility.

I know you dread hearing from me, but...

I regard it as horror, and my favourite kind, where a strange external terror resonates internally for the protagonist in a personal way, his own flaws intimate with his bizarre downfall.

While I called the movie more of a thriller, you've got a point here. It's this kind of horror that plays well in Lovecraft's better works (as well as Ms. Kiernan's), as well as unusual movies like Ravenous where the horror grows from the character's complete inability to fathom how absolutely, soul-chillingly horrible their situation truly is.

I know you dread hearing from me, but...

I don't dread hearing from you; I just usually seem to have no reply in me for your comments.

Sirenlike, she sings the policeman blind and half demented with desire until he flattens himself desperately against the wall as though only the plaster between them keeps him from collapsing into her arms.

I was kind of surprised he went that far. Although I knew already at that point that he was going to be killed, I didn't know anything of this mythological role he was playing, or of the game he was in. But I instinctively really didn't like the idea of Howie having sex with the girl--maybe simply because I didn't believe his character could lose so much restraint.

The moment he sees the photograph of Rowan Morrison surrounded by the scanty, disastrous harvest over which she presided, he understands why she would make such an appropriate sacrifice for the next year's fertility: "Well, that's it: the crops failed. And it's Rowan—Rowan and the crops failed!"

I loved the subtle clue when he was served canned vegetables and was told that there were no apples.

His researches in the town library have not told him what happens when the substitute king is not enough, but he shouts unerringly at the island's lord, "If the crops fail, Summerisle, next year your people will kill you on May Day!"

I was a little disappointed when the movie ended immediately after the burning of the Wicker Man--I really wanted to know if the next year's harvest was going to be good as Summerisle promised. I also wanted to know what would happen when Howie was missed.

On his knees beside his bed, Howie finds his prayers disturbed by the meditative, slightly mocking voice of Lord Summerisle, as he watches two snails glide over one another on a leaf, glistening in the windowlight, abandoned and sinless as the couples Howie glimpsed earlier in the ruins of the churchyard.

The juxtaposition of those images, I think, was the main reason I was really surprised when Howie didn't start masturbating.

Well, there's not much I can add to this really great post on the movie, but it makes me doubly glad I wrested it from yesterday.

where a strange external terror resonates internally for the protagonist in a personal way, his own flaws intimate with his bizarre downfall.

I think that's a very good description. For the same reason that he's the most acceptable sacrifice for Summerisle, the experience is most horrific to him; immediate and inescapable death is bad enough, but Howie has been brought to face it through a world in which none of his concepts of faith or God or law or justice or morality matter. "He had his chance. And in the modern parlance—blew it." For a Christian copper, there's a particular terror in that.

I'm not sure I found the movie scary, though I felt very bad for Sergeant Howie.

Yes. As straitlaced and righteous and repressed as he is, the film has no impact if he's not sympathetic. I was already impressed with Edward Woodward for Breaker Morant, but this really cinched it. Why was he not better known?

I dug through the trash for the receipt, only to find one cannot return an opened DVD.

Er. eBay? I'm so sorry.

and I found the two disk version with the 99-minute cut for fifteen dollars.

Damn. I never find two-disc anything for fifteen dollars. What gods do you sacrifice to?

And for ten dollars, I also found Young Sherlock Holmes, which greygirlbeast had recommended to me.

What did you think of it? I haven't seen it in years; I remember mostly that I didn't think much of it as Sherlock Holmes, but that any film with lines like, "Mr. French Pastry, I have nothing whatsoever to say to you, and I trust you have nothing to say to me," couldn't be all bad. And that I don't think there's a composer on the planet who hasn't ripped off "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" for a film score at one point or another.

Then I got home and my aunt suddenly gave me a hundred dollars for taking care of her cats.

I repeat! Why does this never happen to me?

It'll fit in with my story about how the candy bar allowed me to taste through your mouth.

Hey, why not? Last night apparently I stalked

scanner_darkly.

I knew Howie was going to get it, but not until about fifteen minutes in.

What happened fifteen minutes in?

There aren't enough books in my experience to clue me into the year-king thing

See, I vividly remember a children's book of folklore (or myths and rituals from around the world; this one was Aztec) I read in first grade that described how a young man would live for a year as the human incarnation of the god Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, playing his flute, with beautiful girls as his constant companions, until on the last day of his life he would come to the appropriate pyramid, climb the steps alone, break his flute, and be sacrificed: whereupon the next Tezcatlipoca would be chosen for the upcoming year. There's a similar interlude in Peter Dickinson's Merlin Dreams, that I encountered around the same time. Oh, and the scene with the Proud Walkers in Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three. Really, my brain was a peculiar place as a child.

Also, your analogy about a standard horror movie's "promiscuous blonde" occurred to me also.

It struck me after I made that comparison that The Wicker Man might be the first horror film I've seen where sexuality is not punished: instead, it's the hero's virginity that does for him.

I was kind of surprised he went that far.

I wasn't surprised he went that far: he's human, and she's sex incarnate, and he's been rapping his libido sternly over the knuckles with a Bible for years. And I think it's important for the story that his reaction to Summerisle is not only outrage, but temptation. But if he had had sex with her, yes, as

xterminal says, he would have become a different character altogether.

I loved the subtle clue when he was served canned vegetables and was told that there were no apples.

Yes. Because at that point you can't tell if they're just jerking him around (and it adds another layer of not-quite-rightness to an already peculiar reception, where everyone smiles but no one will tell him a thing), but in retrospect it's important. There was very little extraneous weirdness in this film. Lots of weirdness, absolutely, but plot-justified weirdness.

I was a little disappointed when the movie ended immediately after the burning of the Wicker Man--I really wanted to know if the next year's harvest was going to be good as Summerisle promised. I also wanted to know what would happen when Howie was missed.

I like the open-endedness, particularly since our viewpoint for the entire film has been Sergeant Howie: it would make less sense if we were to see a whole epilogue after him. But there's no way not to wonder what happened with the harvest.

Well, there's not much I can add to this really great post on the movie, but it makes me doubly glad I wrested it from yesterday.

I'm very glad!

"He had his chance. And in the modern parlance—blew it." For a Christian copper, there's a particular terror in that.

Yes--and that statement was backed up by everything he'd already seen so far, so he couldn't pass off Summerisle as some kind of misfit.

I was already impressed with Edward Woodward for Breaker Morant, but this really cinched it. Why was he not better known?

I don't know--I'd never heard of him before The Wicker Man, but just yesterday I encountered his name in this article about a new Sherlock Holmes movie (http://www.darkhorizons.com/news07/070316d.php). The article lists other people who've played Holmes, Woodward apparently among them.

Er. eBay? I'm so sorry.

It's okay--it all ended well, as far as I'm concerned. There are stores around here that buy DVDs, too.

Damn. I never find two-disc anything for fifteen dollars. What gods do you sacrifice to?

The gods of olfactory--there's a place in San Diego called Fry's that's basically a huge, smelly warehouse of electronics, DVDs, music, candy, video games . . . It's kind of an office nerd's paradise and, since Tower closed, it's got the best DVD selection in town. They even have an isolated section for Criterion DVDs, and it's the cheapest place to get them.

What did you think of it?

I haven't watched Young Sherlock Holmes yet, but I will as soon as I've finished here. I almost never like Chris Columbus, but I must see every Sherlock Holmes thing I can get my hands on. Plus, Berry Levinson's not so bad. Though I have no intention of seeing Man of the Year.

I repeat! Why does this never happen to me?

Because the gods see your life is already rich with the clean wholesomeness of nature, and the love of family and friends.

Last night apparently I stalked scanner_darkly.

Heh. It's too bad you were born too late to be Hitchcock's screenwriter.

What happened fifteen minutes in?

Oh, nothing in particular--it wasn't exactly the fifteen minute point. I think the feeling had been growing for some time already and I suddenly put it together to think, "Rowan was bait. Howie's doomed."

I read in first grade that described how a young man would live for a year as the human incarnation of the god Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, playing his flute, with beautiful girls as his constant companions, until on the last day of his life he would come to the appropriate pyramid, climb the steps alone, break his flute, and be sacrificed: whereupon the next Tezcatlipoca would be chosen for the upcoming year.

That actually doesn't sound so bad.

It struck me after I made that comparison that The Wicker Man might be the first horror film I've seen where sexuality is not punished: instead, it's the hero's virginity that does for him.

That's true. I can't think of another example off the top of my head but, then again, horror is the movie genre with which I have the least amount of experience.

I wasn't surprised he went that far: he's human, and she's sex incarnate, and he's been rapping his libido sternly over the knuckles with a Bible for years.

I guess. Maybe it's hard for me to understand because I've never met sex incarnate and I've never gone through a period of rapping my libido over the knuckles regularly. I was mainly drawing from my own experience of more easily resisting what seemed to me much stronger temptations.

And I think it's important for the story that his reaction to Summerisle is not only outrage, but temptation.

True. He needed to at least have intercourse with the themes.

I like the open-endedness, particularly since our viewpoint for the entire film has been Sergeant Howie: it would make less sense if we were to see a whole epilogue after him. But there's no way not to wonder what happened with the harvest.

Actually I'd say that pretty accurately describes how I felt--I do think it's where the story ought to have ended, since it was essentially all from Howie's point of view. But I wouldn't have been opposed to a sequel.

I don't know--I'd never heard of him before The Wicker Man

You should at least see Breaker Morant. It took a sweep of awards in its native Australia, but I was surprised it wasn't more recognized by the Academy here.

The article lists other people who've played Holmes, Woodward apparently among them.

Whoa. I wonder how that worked. I never had any real theatrical image of Holmes until I saw Jeremy Brett, only a couple of years ago, and then he imprinted.

Because the gods see your life is already rich with the clean wholesomeness of nature, and the love of family and friends.

Yes, but that doesn't help with the whole broke-for-cinema angle.

It's too bad you were born too late to be Hitchcock's screenwriter.

Like Anthony Shaffer?

I was mainly drawing from my own experience of more easily resisting what seemed to me much stronger temptations.

You're probably less highly-strung than Howie, too. He's wound very tight when he arrives, and Willow doesn't help.

You should at least see Breaker Morant.

I shall look into it.

Whoa. I wonder how that worked. I never had any real theatrical image of Holmes until I saw Jeremy Brett, only a couple of years ago, and then he imprinted.

Woodward seemed a little too beefy for Holmes, to me. He seems like more of a Watson. And it is hard to do better than Jeremy Brett.

I'm curious about this new movie. Part of me hopes someone came up with it after

greygirlbeast mentioned the idea of Christopher Eccleston playing Holmes in her blog.

I can't find a Sherlock Holmes credit in Woodward's imdb entry, but it looks like he played Auguste Dupin at one point (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0558812/).

Like Anthony Shaffer?

Ah ha. I haven't actually seen Frenzy.

You're probably less highly-strung than Howie, too.

You could just possibly be right.

Ah ha. I haven't actually seen Frenzy.

I haven't either. But now I'm curious to.

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The king of the land at his death-time

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