I bought The Wicker Man on DVD about 20 years ago. I can’t have watched it more than twice, but the ending of the film has stuck with me since. I was looking for a book to read recently when I came across David Pinner’s The Ritual, the novel that inspired The Wicker Man.
Ritual – David Pinner
From what I have read, it seems as though the movie people bought the rights to Pinner’s novel, but had to change so much of it that he didn’t get mentioned in the credits of the movie. The plot is very similar.
A policeman ends up in remote village investigating the death of a child. The locals are uncooperative weirdoes and at least some of them practice witchcraft. The memorable scene in the movie where the sergeant humps the wall is taken directly from the book. There’s definitely a similar mood and cast of characters in both Ritual and The Wicker Man, but the ending to the book is quite different and falls far short of the horror of the film. Overall, it’s really more of a mystery featuring elements of the occult than a true horror novel. There’s a little more humour in it too. I quite enjoyed reading it.
The Wicker Man – Robin Hardy and Anthony Shaffer
I was going to post about Ritual last week, but then I read that the novelisation of The Wicker Man was held in high regard, so I decided to read that too. It was published a few years after the movie came out, and it offers a slightly different version of the story. As I mentioned, I’d seen the film before, but aside from the wall humping and the climax, I couldn’t remember too much. I’ve reviewed quite a few novelisations on here before, but I’ve never felt the desire to go back and watch the films after reading the books before. That was not the case here. I finished the book after dinner yesterday and sat down to watch the movie version maybe 20 minutes later.
I wasn’t aware, but there are multiple cuts of the Wickerman out there. I found a version streaming on Kanopy (an awesome library streaming service) that was significantly longer than the version in Amazon. I watched the director’s cut, and to be honest, it wasn’t great. Some of the scenes are transferred from an old reel that looks like garbage in comparison to most of the film, and none of these scenes add anything of much worth to the story. Apparently there is a longer cut in existence now, but I have no interest in watching it. I reckon the short version is totally fine.
It was interesting watching the director’s cut right after finishing the novelisation though. Some very short scenes included in that cut of the movie are explained more clearly in the book, and there are a few little scenes in the book that weren’t included in the movie at all. Sergeant Howie is given more background, and there are a few extra characters. Overall, I quite enjoyed reading this novelisation. If you like the movie, the book is worth a read. The movie is great too. The director’s cut is bloated, and even the original might be a little slow to get going, but the scene when Howie realises what’s in store for him makes it all worth while. I love it.
The Loathsome Lambton Worm – Anthony Shaffer
While I was researching this post, I discovered that the screenwriter of the film had actually written an outline for a sequel to The Wicker Man with the same cast of characters. Anyone who has seen the movie or read the book will understand why that would be difficult, and the resultant screenplay is actually less coherent than you’d expect. It was called The Loathsome Lambton Worm. The brilliance of The Wicker Man is that it’s a horror movie that doesn’t rely on supernatural scares or gore to horrify. The efficacy of the islanders’ rituals is inconsequential to the plot. The proposed sequel includes decaptitions, magic spells, witches riding around broomsticks and a fire breathing dragon. It also features Sergeant Howie doing things that go against everything the audience has been told about him. The proposed sequel is pure crap, and I am more surprised that anyone ever took the time to write it out than the fact that it wasn’t made. Nobody could read it and think it was a good idea even at a time when the bar for sequels was pretty low. The treatment for this awful sequel was published in the revised edition of Alan Brown’s Inside the Wicker Man. I didn’t bother reading the rest of this book because I a bit sick of The Wicker Man at this point. I might go back and watch the Nicolas Cage version in a few years.
Nocturnal Revelries 