🔗 Share this article

A screenplay penned by the acclaimed writer and featuring a horror icon and Edward Woodward should have been a dream project for director Robin Hardy while the production of The Wicker Man over half a century ago.

Even though today it is revered as a cult horror masterpiece, the degree of turmoil it brought the film-makers is now uncovered in newly discovered correspondence and early versions of the script.

The Storyline of The Wicker Man

The 1973 film centers on a devout policeman, portrayed by the actor, who arrives on a remote Scottish island looking for a missing girl, but finds sinister local pagans who claim the girl was real. Britt Ekland appeared as the daughter of a local innkeeper, who tempts the religious policeman, with Lee as Lord Summerisle.

Creative Tensions Revealed

However, the working environment was frayed and contentious, according to the letters. In a letter to Shaffer, Hardy wrote: “How could you handle me this way?”

The screenwriter was already famous with acclaimed works like Sleuth, but his typed draft of The Wicker Man shows Hardy’s brutal cuts to the screenplay.

Heavy edits include the aristocrat’s dialogue in the ending, originally starting: “The girl was but the tip of the iceberg – the visible element. Do not reproach yourself, it was impossible you could have known.”

Beyond Writer and Director

Conflict escalated beyond the writer and director. One of the producers wrote: “Shaffer’s talent was marred by a self-indulgence that drove him to show he was overly smart.”

In a note to the producers, the director expressed frustration about the film’s editor, Eric Boyd-Perkins: “I believe he appreciates the theme or style of the picture … and thinks that he is tired of it.”

In a correspondence, Christopher Lee described the film as “appealing and enigmatic”, even with “dealing with a talkative producer, a stressed screenwriter and a well-paid but difficult director”.

Lost Documents Uncovered

An extensive correspondence relating to the production was among multiple bags of papers forgotten in the loft of the old house of the director’s spouse, Caroline. There were also unpublished drafts, visual plans, production photos and budget records, which show the challenges experienced by the film-makers.

The director’s children Justin and Dominic, currently in their sixties, have drawn on these documents for an upcoming publication, titled Children of The Wicker Man. The book uncovers the intense stress faced by the director during the making of the film – including a health crisis to financial ruin.

Personal Consequences

At first, the movie was a box office flop and, in the aftermath the disappointment, the director abandoned his wife and their children for a fresh start in America. Court documents reveal Caroline as an unacknowledged producer and that Hardy was indebted to her as much as a large sum. She was forced to give up their house and passed away in 1984, in her fifties, suffering from alcoholism, never knowing that her film eventually became a global hit.

Justin, a Bafta-nominated historian film-maker, called The Wicker Man as “the movie that messed up my family”.

When someone reached out by a woman who had moved into the former family home, inquiring if he wanted to collect the sacks of papers, his first thought was to suggest destroying “all of it”.

But afterward he and his brother examined the sacks and understood the significance of their contents.

Insights from the Documents

His brother, a scholar, commented: “Every key figure is represented. We found the first draft by the writer, but with dad’s annotations as filmmaker, ‘controlling’ the writer’s excess. Because he was formerly a barrister, he tended to overwrite and his father just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They sort of loved each other and clashed frequently.”

Writing the book provided some “resolution”, the son stated.

Financial Struggles

The family did not profit monetarily from the production, he explained: “This movie has gone on to make so much money for others. It’s beyond a joke. Dad accepted a small fee. So he never received the profits. Christopher Lee also did not get payment from it as well, despite the fact that he did his role for no pay, to get out of his previous studio. So, in many ways, it’s been a very unkind film.”