🔗 Share this article

A script crafted by the acclaimed writer and starring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward was expected to be a dream project for director Robin Hardy during the production of The Wicker Man more than half a century ago.

Even though today it is celebrated as an iconic horror film, the degree of misery it brought the film-makers has now been revealed in newly discovered letters and script drafts.

The Plot of The Wicker Man

This 1973 movie revolves around a devout policeman, portrayed by the actor, who travels on an isolated Scottish isle looking for a lost child, but finds sinister local pagans who claim she ever existed. Britt Ekland appeared as the daughter of a local innkeeper, who tempts the God-fearing officer, with Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle.

Production Tensions Uncovered

However, the working environment was tense and fractious, the documents show. In a message to the writer, the director wrote: “How could you treat me like this?”

Shaffer had already made his name with acclaimed works such as Sleuth, but his typed draft of The Wicker Man reveals the director’s harsh edits to his work.

Extensive crossings-out include Summerisle’s lines in the ending, which would have begun: “The child was only a small part – the part that showed. Don’t blame yourself, it was impossible for you to know.”

Apart from the Creative Duo

Conflict escalated outside the writer and director. One of the producers commented: “The writer’s skill was marred by excessive indulgence that drove him to show he was too clever by half.”

In a note to the producers, Hardy expressed frustration about the editor, the editing specialist: “I believe he likes the theme or style of the picture … and feels that he has had enough of it.”

In one letter, Christopher Lee referred to the film as “alluring and mysterious”, even with “having to cope with a talkative producer, an underpaid and harassed writer and a well-paid but difficult director”.

Forgotten Papers Uncovered

An extensive correspondence relating to the film was among multiple bags of documents forgotten in the loft of the old house of Hardy’s third wife, his wife. There were also previously unseen scripts, storyboards, on-set photographs and budget records, many of which reflect the struggles faced by the film-makers.

The director’s children Justin and Dominic, now 60 and 63, have drawn on the material for an upcoming publication, titled Children of The Wicker Man. It reveals the intense stress on the director during the production of the film – including a health crisis to financial ruin.

Personal Fallout

Initially, the film was a box office flop and, in the aftermath the disappointment, the director left his wife and their children for a new life in America. Legal letters show his wife as an unacknowledged producer and that Hardy owed her as much as £1m in today’s money. She was forced to sell their house and died in the 1980s, in her fifties, battling alcoholism, unaware that her film eventually became an international success.

His son, an acclaimed documentary maker, described The Wicker Man as “the movie that ruined our family”.

When someone reached out by a woman who had moved into the former family home, inquiring if he wanted to retrieve the documents, his first thought was to suggest burning “the bloody things”.

But then he and his brother examined the sacks and understood the importance of what they held.

Revelations from the Documents

Dominic, an art historian, commented: “Every key figure is represented. We found the first draft by the writer, but with his father’s notes as filmmaker, ‘controlling’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Due to his legal background, he tended to overwrite and his father just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They sort of respected each other and hated each other.”

Compiling the publication provided some “closure”, the son said.

Financial Struggles

The family did not profit financially from the film, he added: “This movie earned so much money for other people. It’s unfair. Dad agreed to take five grand. So he never received the profits. The actor never received payment from it either, although he performed the film for no pay, to get out of his previous studio. Therefore, it’s been a harsh experience.”