🔗 Share this article

A screenplay crafted by the acclaimed writer and featuring a horror icon and the lead actor could have been an ideal venture for director Robin Hardy while the filming of The Wicker Man more than half a century ago.

Even though today it is revered as a cult horror masterpiece, the extent of misery it brought the film-makers has now been uncovered in previously unpublished letters and early versions of the script.

The Plot of This Classic Film

The 1973 film centers on a puritan police officer, played by the actor, who arrives on a remote Scottish island looking for a missing girl, only to encounter mysterious pagan residents who deny the girl was real. the actress appeared as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who tempts the God-fearing officer, with Christopher Lee as the pagan aristocrat.

Creative Tensions Uncovered

However, the working environment was tense and contentious, the documents show. In a message to Shaffer, Hardy wrote: “How could you handle me this way?”

The screenwriter was already famous with acclaimed works like Sleuth, but his script of The Wicker Man shows the director’s harsh edits to the screenplay.

Heavy edits include Summerisle’s lines in the final scene, originally starting: “The child was only a small part – the part that showed. Do not reproach yourself, there was no way you could have known.”

Apart from the Creative Duo

Tensions boiled over outside the writer and director. One of the producers commented: “Shaffer’s talent has been offset by a self-indulgence that impels him to prove himself too clever by half.”

In a letter to the production team, Hardy expressed frustration about the film’s editor, Eric Boyd-Perkins: “I don’t think he appreciates the theme or style of the picture … and feels that he is tired of it.”

In one letter, Lee described the movie as “alluring and enigmatic”, despite “having to cope with a garrulous producer, an underpaid and harassed writer and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Lost Papers Uncovered

An extensive correspondence relating to the film was part of multiple bags of papers forgotten in the loft of the old house of the director’s spouse, Caroline. Included were unpublished drafts, storyboards, on-set photographs and financial accounts, which reflect the struggles faced by the film-makers.

The director’s children his two sons, now 60 and 63, used the material for a forthcoming book, called Children of The Wicker Man. It reveals the extreme pressures on the director throughout the making of the film – from his heart attack to bankruptcy.

Personal Consequences

Initially, the film failed commercially and, following of its failure, the director abandoned his spouse and his family for a new life in America. Legal letters reveal his wife as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that Hardy was indebted to her as much as £1m in today’s money. She was forced to give up their house and passed away in 1984, aged 51, battling alcoholism, unaware that the project later turned into a global hit.

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

When someone reached out by a resident living in his mother’s old house, asking whether he wished to retrieve the documents, his initial reaction was to suggest destroying “the bloody things”.

But then he and his brother examined the bags and understood the significance of their contents.

Insights from the Papers

His brother, a scholar, commented: “Every key figure is represented. We discovered the first draft by Shaffer, but with his father’s notes as director, ‘containing’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Due to his legal background, he tended to overwrite and dad just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They sort of respected each other and clashed frequently.”

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

Monetary Struggles

His family never benefited financially from the film, he explained: “This movie earned so much money for others. It’s unfair. Dad accepted five grand. So he never received the profits. The actor never received any money from it as well, although he performed the film for no pay, to get out of his previous studio. Therefore, it’s been a harsh experience.”