The Wicker Man

The Wicker Man
****

Sorry I’m late to the party—no paternity leave this year, and it’s been a particularly hectic two weeks so far. Onward, though!

The Wicker Man is a murder mystery about a pagan community on a tiny island off the coast of Scotland. A cop from the mainland shows up to investigate the disappearance of young girl, and he gets drawn into an increasingly bizarre series of fertility rites set around the upcoming May Day celebration. Of course, sissy British policemen don’t carry guns even when solo investigating homicide on strange islands, so the dude is clearly in a shitstorm of trouble from early on. When he finally attempts to leave on his seaplane and a herd of townsfolk pop up from behind the hedges in various animal masks, the gig is up.

So what makes this low budget Celtic musical/sex farce/horror flick such a “classic?” Oh, did I forget to mention the sex and the Celtic music? Yeah, there’s a scene early on when a pubfull of elderly townsfolk break into a bawdy folk song about nailing the landlord’s daughter. The cop flees out of embarrassment and runs smack into a circle of couples having sex in the field next to the pub. Not long later, he’s being serenaded by the fully naked landlord’s daughter—at this point the wife turned to me and said, “About 7 minutes ago this movie took a really weird turn.”

But what’s fun here is that while it flirts with crossing the line of bizarreness into pure farce, the movie ultimately reigns in those impulses and really does evolve into a pretty smart and suspenseful thriller. The virgin Christian everyman is pitted against the oversexed pagan mob, and thus religion becomes the centerpiece of the film. Or more to the point—how far people will go in service of ignorance and superstition.

[Octo edit: SPOILER ALERT after the next picture]

This famous scene at the end where they burn the guy inside the eponymous effigy is made all the more chilling because of the innocent joy spread across the townspeople’s faces.