Folk Horror Season: The Wicker Man (Dir Robin Hardy 1h33m, 1973)
The Wicker Man has, itself, become a thing of folklore. Nothing-not the enjoyably naff Nicolas Cage Americanisation in the mid 2000s- nor the less laughable, more generally bad 2011 sequel, The Wicker Tree , nor its co-opting by heavy metal bands, neo-pagan festivities, sing-a-long screenings, and various director's cuts, restorations, Roger Corman-recommended edits, and fifty one years of reappraisals and cinematic homage-can take its towering presence from overshadowing horror cinema. Its tale of a virgin police officer sent to investigate murder intertwined with the festivities of pagan worshippers on a remote Scottish island, has not only maintained its power, but remains the high-tide mark of the British folk horror genre. By the 1970s, Christopher Lee, long the recurring star of the horror films of Hammer Studios, is becoming aware that he has been typecast-Hammer are also falling on hard times. Lee wants, understandably, more interesting roles, and to break away from his
