🔗 Share this article

A script penned by the acclaimed writer and featuring Christopher Lee and the lead actor should have been a dream project for filmmaker Robin Hardy while the production of The Wicker Man more than 50 years ago.

Although it is now celebrated as a cult horror masterpiece, the degree of turmoil it brought the film-makers has now been uncovered in newly discovered letters and early versions of the script.

The Plot of The Wicker Man

This 1973 movie revolves around a puritan police officer, portrayed by the actor, who travels on an isolated Scottish isle looking for a missing girl, only to encounter sinister local pagans who claim the girl was real. Britt Ekland was cast as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who tempts the religious policeman, with Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle.

Creative Conflict Revealed

However, the working environment was frayed and fractious, the documents show. In a message to Shaffer, the director stated: “How could you handle me this way?”

The screenwriter was already famous with acclaimed works like Sleuth, but his script of The Wicker Man shows the director’s harsh edits to his work.

Heavy edits feature Summerisle’s lines in the ending, which would have begun: “The child was but the tip of the iceberg – the visible element. Do not reproach yourself, it was impossible for you to know.”

Apart from Writer and Director

Tensions boiled over outside the writer and director. One of the producers wrote: “The writer’s skill has been offset by a self-indulgence that impels him to show he was overly smart.”

In a letter to the production team, Hardy complained about the editor, the editing specialist: “I believe he likes the theme or approach of the film … and thinks that he has had enough of it.”

In a correspondence, Christopher Lee described the movie as “appealing and mysterious”, despite “dealing with a garrulous producer, an underpaid and harassed writer and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Forgotten Papers Uncovered

An extensive correspondence relating to the film was among six sack-loads of papers left in the loft of the former home of the director’s spouse, his wife. There were also unpublished drafts, visual plans, on-set photographs and financial accounts, many of which show the struggles experienced by the team.

Hardy’s sons his two sons, now 60 and 63, have drawn on the material for a forthcoming book, called Children of The Wicker Man. It reveals the extreme pressures faced by Hardy throughout the making of the movie – from his heart attack to financial ruin.

Personal Consequences

At first, the movie failed commercially and, following of its failure, the director left his spouse and his family for a new life in America. Court documents show his wife as an unacknowledged producer and that Hardy was indebted to her as much as a large sum. She was forced to give up the family home and passed away in 1984, in her fifties, battling alcoholism, never knowing that the project eventually became a global hit.

Justin, an acclaimed documentary maker, called The Wicker Man as “the film that ruined my family”.

When he was contacted by a woman who had moved into his mother’s old house, inquiring if he wished to collect the sacks of papers, his first thought was to propose destroying “the bloody things”.

But then he and his brother examined the bags and realised the importance of what they held.

Insights from the Papers

His brother, a scholar, said: “Every key figure are in there. We discovered the first draft by the writer, but with dad’s annotations as filmmaker, ‘containing’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Because he was formerly a barrister, he tended to overwrite and his father just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They respected each other and hated each other.”

Compiling the publication provided some “resolution”, the son stated.

Monetary Hardships

The family did not profit financially from the production, he explained: “This movie earned a fortune for others. It’s beyond a joke. His father accepted a small fee. So he never received any of the upside. The actor also did not get payment from it either, although that he did his role for no pay, to leave Hammer [Horror films]. So, in many ways, it was a harsh experience.”