Exposing the Rift Between Filmmaker and Writer of the Cult Classic Film

A script written by the acclaimed writer and featuring a horror icon and Edward Woodward could have been a dream project for director Robin Hardy while the filming of The Wicker Man over 50 years ago.

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

The Storyline of This Classic Film

This 1973 movie revolves around a puritan police officer, played 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 seduces the religious policeman, with Christopher Lee as the pagan aristocrat.

Creative Tensions Revealed

However, the working environment was frayed and fractious, the documents show. In a letter to the writer, the director wrote: “How dare you treat me this way?”

The screenwriter was already famous with acclaimed works such as Sleuth, but his script of The Wicker Man reveals Hardy’s brutal cuts to the screenplay.

Heavy edits feature the aristocrat’s dialogue in the final scene, which would have begun: “The child was only a small part – the part that showed. Do not reproach yourself, it was impossible you could have known.”

Apart from the Creative Duo

Conflict escalated outside the writer and director. A producer wrote: “The writer’s skill was marred by excessive indulgence that drove him to prove himself too clever by half.”

In a letter to the production team, Hardy complained about the film’s editor, the editing specialist: “I don’t think he likes the theme or style of the film … and thinks that he has had enough of it.”

In a correspondence, Lee referred to the film as “alluring and enigmatic”, even with “dealing with a talkative producer, a stressed screenwriter and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Lost Papers Found

A large collection of letters relating to the film was part of six sack-loads of documents left in the loft of the old house of the director’s spouse, Caroline. Included were previously unseen scripts, visual plans, on-set photographs and budget records, many of which reflect the challenges faced by the film-makers.

Hardy’s sons 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 extreme pressures on Hardy during the making of the movie – including a health crisis to financial ruin.

Family Consequences

At first, the film failed commercially and, in the aftermath of its failure, the director abandoned his wife and their children for a new life in America. Legal letters show his wife as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that Hardy owed her up to a large sum. She was forced to sell their house and passed away in 1984, in her fifties, suffering from addiction, never knowing that her film eventually became a global hit.

Justin, a Bafta-nominated historian film-maker, described The Wicker Man as “the film that ruined our family”.

When he was contacted by a resident living in his mother’s old house, asking whether he wished to collect the documents, his first thought was to propose burning “all of it”.

But then he and his stepbrother Dominic opened up the sacks and understood the importance of what they held.

Revelations from the Papers

Dominic, a scholar, commented: “Every key figure is represented. We found an original script by Shaffer, but with his father’s notes as filmmaker, ‘containing’ the writer’s excess. Due to his legal background, he tended to overwrite and his father just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They respected each other and hated each other.”

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

Monetary Hardships

His family never benefited financially from the production, he added: “This movie has gone on to make so much money for other people. It’s unfair. Dad accepted a small fee. Thus, he missed out on any of the upside. Christopher Lee also did not get payment from it either, despite the fact he performed his role for no pay, to leave his previous studio. Therefore, it was a very unkind film.”