Unveiling this Struggle Among Director and Screenwriter of the Cult Classic Film

A screenplay crafted by the acclaimed writer and featuring a horror icon and Edward Woodward should have been an ideal venture for director Robin Hardy while the production of The Wicker Man over 50 years ago.

Even though today it is revered as an iconic horror film, the extent of turmoil it brought the production team is now uncovered in previously unpublished correspondence and script drafts.

The Storyline of This Classic Film

The 1973 film revolves around a puritan police officer, played by Edward Woodward, who arrives on an isolated Scottish isle in search of a lost child, but finds mysterious pagan residents who claim she ever existed. Britt Ekland appeared as the daughter of a local innkeeper, who seduces the religious policeman, with Lee as the pagan aristocrat.

Production Tensions Revealed

However, the working environment was frayed and fractious, the documents show. In a message to Shaffer, Hardy stated: “How dare you treat me like this?”

Shaffer had already made his name with acclaimed works like Sleuth, but his typed draft of The Wicker Man shows Hardy’s brutal cuts to the screenplay.

Extensive crossings-out include the aristocrat’s dialogue in the final scene, which would have begun: “The girl was only a small part – the visible element. Do not reproach yourself, it was impossible for you to know.”

Apart from Writer and Director

Tensions boiled over outside the main pair. A producer commented: “Shaffer’s talent was marred by a self-indulgence that drove him to prove himself overly smart.”

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 approach of the film … and thinks that he has had enough of it.”

In a correspondence, Christopher Lee referred to the film as “appealing and mysterious”, despite “having to cope with a talkative producer, an underpaid and harassed writer and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Lost Papers Found

A large collection of letters relating to the film was among multiple bags of papers forgotten in the loft of the former home of the director’s spouse, Caroline. Included were unpublished drafts, storyboards, on-set photographs and financial accounts, which show the challenges faced by the film-makers.

Hardy’s sons his two sons, now 60 and 63, used the material for an upcoming publication, titled Children of The Wicker Man. It reveals the extreme pressures faced by the director throughout the production of the movie – including a health crisis to financial ruin.

Family Consequences

Initially, the film was a box office flop and, following the disappointment, the director left his spouse and their children for a new life in America. Court documents show Caroline as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that he owed her as much as £1m in today’s money. She was forced to sell their house and passed away in 1984, in her fifties, battling alcoholism, never knowing that the project eventually became an international success.

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

When he was contacted by a resident living in his mother’s old house, asking whether he wanted to collect the documents, his first thought was to suggest destroying “the bloody things”.

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

Insights from the Documents

Dominic, an art historian, commented: “All the big players are in there. We discovered an original script by Shaffer, but with dad’s annotations as director, ‘controlling’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Due to his legal background, Shaffer did a lot of overexplaining and dad just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They sort of respected each other and clashed frequently.”

Compiling the publication provided some “closure”, Justin stated.

Financial Struggles

The family did not profit monetarily from the production, he added: “This movie earned a fortune for others. It’s unfair. Dad agreed to take five grand. Thus, he missed out on any of the upside. Christopher Lee never received any money from it either, despite the fact that he did his role for zero, to get out of his previous studio. So, in many ways, it’s been a very unkind film.”