Review #198: The Wicker Man (1973)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #53: The Wicker Man (1973)

I'd only seen the 2006 remake before, so I went in with a little bit of apprehension when watching the original. I'll briefly touch on the comparison of the two later, but right now I'll start off by just saying: This is a really charming film, and a great example of the Folk Horror subgenre.

For anyone not familiar with The Wicker Man, it follows a police officer who travels to a remote island community when given a tip that a young girl has gone missing. After getting stonewalled and lied to by the xenophobic townsfolk, he finds clue after clue leading him to believe the girl has been hidden away, in preparation for her to be sacrificed to appease the community's pagan gods and to grant them a bountiful harvest. And so he takes it upon himself to find and rescue her, no matter the cost.

I really love this movie's portrayal of the townsfolk and their community. The 2006 remake is fairly accurate to this movie, but it turns everything- and I mean EVERYTHING- up to eleven, to the point where everything is this big-budget caricature that could never have existed in the real world. Meanwhile, this film is so much more believable, so much more grounded, and even the parts that seem larger-than-life (like the part where the entire bar breaks into a choreographed song and dance number about how everyone wants to have sex with the bar owner's daughter, who is in the room standing next to her father) eventually make a kind of sense given what's actually going on in the world of the film. The 2006 remake has gotten a lot of (justified) criticism because many of the ridiculous things Nicolas Cage does in it, but all of those ridiculous things have a direct analog here in the original, they just made a lot more sense the first time around.

So I really think this is a great film, but there's a big issue with the climax that (for me) served to completely arrest the momentum (no pun intended) and knocked it down a couple points from being a 10/10. Basically, at the point where the protagonist finally seems to have stopped the baddies from doing their thing, everyone just stands around for ten minutes spewing out expository dialogue in what should have been a tense, life-or-death situation. Even as our hero is (spoilers) taken to be killed in the eponymous man made of wicker, he seems to do NOTHING to save himself. He could have run, he could have fought, he could have done ANYTHING but he just doesn't. It's like, once he comes out on the bluff near the end of the film, he's completely lost any will to live and he just goes along with them to his eventual death. Like, dude, your life literally depends on it, maybe at least TRY running and pushing your way through the crowd of people? His hands weren't even tied up inside the Wicker Man, and those sticks probably could have been broken. Come on man, at least TRY, instead of just standing there watching the fire creep closer and crying out about how God is your shepherd. In the remake (to my recollection) the protagonist was physically subdued in a much more meaningful way by that point, so at least that one detail made more sense the second time.

Anyway, great film, watch this one over the remake anyday (unless you want to see Nicolas Cage act like a maniac, in which case, by all means).

Overall Rating: 8/10 Frog Treatments

Fun Folklore Fact: During a scene near the end of the film, the pub owner and his daughter are overheard plotting to drug the protagonist with something called the "Hand of Glory", which we later see to be a human hand that's been lit like a candle and placed by his bedside. This is an actual thing from various mythologies! It's typically the hand of a hanged man, pickled and/or prepared in a special way that gives it supernatural properties. It's referenced in the Harry Potter series, for example, as being a mummified hand that, when a lit candle is placed in its grip, grants light only to the holder and nobody else.