The Wicker Man

I’d heard this movie was nuttier than a pecan ranch. I was not disappointed in that regard. This is definitely a crazy movie, constantly finding a way to one-up itself with sheer lunacy. But I think what makes the movie work best is that, despite the protagonist suffering in the end, The Wicker Man isn’t presented as “good Christian cop vs. evil weirdo cult”. The sides are nuanced quite well; Detective Howie (played with studious severity by Edward Woodward) is devout in his Christianity to point of judgmental hostility. He not only cannot accept another belief system as valid, he can barely tolerate another belief system as EXISTING. The Summerisle people, meanwhile, have a belief system that has not only served them well for a century, but has built a beatific, peaceful community where human sexuality is embraced, everyone is tolerant of one another, and they are one with nature … except, you know, this one year where they hatch a Machiavellian plan to lure a man to his death for the purpose of human sacrifice. Yes, that’s ultimately worse than Howie’s intolerance, but it’s to the movie’s credit that the movie never portrays the beliefs of Summerisle people as outright wrong, just unusual and foreign. And while Howie comes off as priggish and harsh, he is just as devoted to his beliefs as the Summerisle people are theirs, and he’s performing his duties as a police officer. It’s shockingly well balanced. All that nuance makes the weirdness of the town stand out more. Christopher Lee’s Lord Summerisle is so calm and cheerful (and with the most majestically bizarre hairdo you will ever see, like a feathered, bouffant lion’s mane), he simply cannot fathom a way of life that doesn’t include nude teenage girls leaping over a bonfire to promote better reproduction. Or an entire bar singing about how sexy and sexually willing the owner’s daughter is, with said woman in the room, and she laughs and dances and joins in. The Wicker Man is all about atmosphere, an atmosphere that perplexes and yet captivates. It would be wrong to call it wholesome, because, you know, human sacrifice, but it’s earnest, and it’s that earnestness that makes the movie work. If there were outright sinister overtones, it would feel like any other “stranger discovers a cult” movie. Making it a hippie, agrarian commune built on love and community is both disarming and MORE alarming. I think the biggest fault of the movie is that it sets up such a bucolic if bizarre atmosphere, it never achieves actual scares. I was too busy thinking “why is Britt Ecklund doing a nude dance of seduction in a separate room from the person she’s trying to seduce?”, and “why was that young woman breast feeding a baby in a graveyard and holding an egg?” to get a sense of menace. Even in the final sequence, where the stakes finally become life and death and it becomes obvious hope is nowhere to be found, the people of Summerisle are so damned cheerful and serene, it kind of undercuts the moment. It doesn’t make the movie bad, far from it, it’s still a fun ride. It just hits a different target than what it intends. I was looking for a little more horror in my horror movie. But what I got was still worth watching.