Weirdhouse Cinema: The Wicker Man (1973) - part 2
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And we're back with part two of our Weird House Cinema feature on the 1973 British folk horror classic, The Wicker Man, starring Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward, and Diane Cialento. Normally on Weird House, we keep it to one episode per movie, but we figured we would

have more than usual to say about The Wicker Man, especially since it's one of my personal favorite films. I don't know. Is it one of yours too, Rob? I don't want to speak for you. Yeah, I would say it's in there somewhere. You know, it's a film that I used to own on VHS that had a profound impact on me when I first watched it. And even though I hadn't seen it in many years before re-watching it for this episode, it certainly has resonated with me. Yeah. So if we were going to do it in one episode, I think there was

Yeah.

As always, there are going to be extensive spoilers in our discussion. We usually talk about the plot in pretty great detail. And The Wicker Man is a movie that I think really benefits from viewing with no foreknowledge or as little foreknowledge as possible. So if you have an appetite for this kind of thing, if you're comfortable with 70s folk horror themes and general R-rated content, R-rated in terms of

Sex and violence. Strangely, I don't recall much foul language in the movie, if any. Oh, they say phallus. That's true. Yeah. Uh, but as long as you're comfortable with that kind of material and it's the sort of thing you'd be into, I would recommend watching this movie without reading anything or listening any further.

All right. You've been warned. So last time, of course, we talked about the cast and crew, the connections, and we discussed some general thoughts about what makes The Wicker Man unique. For instance, the question, what genre is this? It's often called a horror movie, but I think that is based largely on the last movie.

five ten minutes of the film there you know for most of the movie's runtime it really doesn't feel like horror it feels more like a religiously themed mystery musical so it really is kind of its own genre there is no other movie quite like it we also talked about the way it creates this

tangled garden of religious themes with the strained interactions between Christianity and some strange variant of Celtic paganism seems to be partially made up for the movie. And it achieves a lot of thoughtful commentary without ever reaching an overly simplistic message. It's not like a thesis movie.

Uh, the, we, we talked about the, the weird and, uh, from my perspective, refreshingly unusual character dynamics. For example, it's a detective story, but the detective protagonist is largely unlikable. He's rude, puritanical, high-handed, and not even especially skilled at detective work. Uh, you know, kind of contrasting with the Sherlock Holmes, how he, Sergeant Howie misses a lot of things in his investigation. Yeah.

And yet he seems to be possibly the only person in the movie who's actually trying to help an endangered child. On the other hand, you've got the structural antagonists of the detective story, like the local pagans of Summer Isle, mostly rendered as friendly, fascinating, thoughtful, even joyful souls. And yet we're constantly suspicious that they're up to something terrible. So it really always kind of keeps you off balance. You know, I had a thought about

First of all, I was wondering if anyone has ever pulled a reverse Wicker Man in a film. But then this idea solidified a little bit, and I realized I would kind of like to see a show in which a detective from a secluded pagan island comes to the mainland to investigate a crime.

And we get this sort of fish-out-of-water tale. But in this case, the detective is really good at what they do, but they're also bringing a totally different mindset and they're handling frogs and whatnot. I think there's a lot of room for amusement there.

I mean, I would love that, but I think that would be a lot more similar to the kind of detective heroes we're used to. A kind of a smart, admirable, in some way likable outsider protagonist. Yes, for the most part. But the twist in this is he or she or they solves every case with human sacrifice. That's how we arrive. It's formulaic. You'll get the same thing every episode. But I think people could get behind it.

People want something they can count on. I mean, that's part of, you know, people like the murder mystery because it's like, it's got a surprise every time, but it's also a very, a very familiar format. So it's both surprising and familiar every time. I think that's part of the appeal.

So, yeah, I think you're onto something. We also talked last time extensively about the role of music in The Wicker Man and the fact that the movie features not only in-scene diegetic music where the characters stand around playing musical instruments and singing songs.

But it actually has several scenes that are essentially musical numbers, like in a musical movie where the characters break the fourth wall, sing directly into the camera, and they're singing along to music playing not in the world of the movie, but on the soundtrack. So I don't know. It's just like, again, not another horror movie like that I can think of. Yeah, it really does stand alone.

But that gets us caught up to today. So, Robert, are you ready to talk about the plot of The Wicker Man? Yeah, let's get into it. We are going to be. But by the way, this came up last time that there are multiple cuts of the movie out there. I think we're going to be talking about what's known as the final cut, which was released in 2013.

Any notes on the history of the different cuts you want to talk about? If not, that's okay. I mean, I'll be honest. Once there are more than two cuts of a film in consideration, I begin to lose interest in the whole situation. Like, if there are two cuts, I can get more into it. Like, which one's the good cut? Which one's the bad one? What does this one say versus this one? But when there are three or more, it gets a little annoying for me. But with The Wicker Man...

Yeah, there are also these added wrinkles. There are all these loose ends of hearsay and perhaps even movie myth about lost and destroyed footage. And I'm not sure where the truth ultimately lies on all of it. But yeah, essentially, we have three cuts to consider. The original theatrical cut, 88 minutes.

The director's cut, 99 minutes, said to be more of like a work print. And then the final cut, 94 minutes, and this has been, this is said to be the director's preferred cut of the picture. So I thought it was great. Works for me. And I think the only, if memory serves, the only thing we're really missing out on from that full 99-minute cut is some preliminary stuff with Howie before he leaves for the island.

Oh, I don't know if we need that. Yeah, there's plenty to go on to know about him and the world he came from. Do we need to see him getting called into the chief's office and being like, I got a case for you, Howie. Yeah. I need you back on the force. I don't know that. I don't know that's what's in there. Yeah. You know, check for details about the runtime before you watch it. But I think the final cut is widely available. This may be, in fact, the primary means of watching it these days.

So we begin on a black screen with an image of a godlike face carved in a wooden disc suggesting Celtic folk art. It's supposed to be, I think, a god of the sun with dreamy, placid, upturned eyes. And then we have a god of the sun with a dreamy, placid, upturned eyes.

And then the camera zooms through the darkness to the wooden face. And when he gets closer and eventually fills the screen, we can make out that the god's mouth is ever so slightly bent into this little smile. Not like he's beaming with happiness, but instead like he knows something, like he's got a little joke. At least that's how it looks to me. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. We will come to know this deity as Nuada. However, it is just a super weird opening for this picture. This just appears out of darkness without commentary. And, you know, we later get the idea that it's a solar deity, but at the time it's like, is he at least part arboreal? Is he fungal? Because he has this very woody look.

And I do agree with you about the face. You know, the face is sublime and all-knowing, calm, but also a little bit smug. Yeah. And

And once you've seen the whole movie and the ending, I think the image of him having a little private joke that's in this ever so slight smile, that makes more sense. This is also the god of the Teletubbies, right? Isn't there a sun face that they also worship? Is there really? I think so, yeah. There's like a child's face on the sun and they worship it, I think. Was that part of the fundamentalist

Does Christian complain against them? Probably. Yeah. They're paganism. It's the wicker man, the wicker tubbies. Yes.

All right. Well, anyway, we come into the prologue. Now, this cut does have some things with Sergeant Howie before he leaves for the island. It doesn't have him like at the station like we were joking about. Instead, we begin by hearing Christian churchgoers singing a hymn, which is based on the words of Psalm 23. That's the one that says, the Lord's my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down by green pastures. He leads me beside still waters and so forth.

And so text on the black screen tells us Sunday, the 29th of April, 1973. The camera comes up on a church congregation singing from their hymnal. The man in the middle of the frame is Sergeant Howie, our protagonist, played by Edward Woodward, a...

I would say modestly handsome Scottish police detective of about 40. I think he's in his early 40s, dressed in a suit for church. And there's a woman standing next to him sharing his hymnal. Rob, did you take this woman to be his fiancée?

Yeah, yeah, that's the impression I got based on this scene and then some stuff that the character says later on. Yeah, so they trade a little smile in between lines of the song. And then the camera pulls back and shows us the whole congregation. It's a lot of very old people with white and gray hair. You know, it's maybe stereotypically old church crowd, especially for people of the mainline Protestant denominations. Yeah.

Yeah, not to be confused with the afternoon service where they have the rock band. This is the other one where all the old people go.

And the song goes on after we see our characters here. It goes on where they're singing, He leadeth me, he leadeth me, the quiet waters by. And I can't help but notice a thing that is often pointed out about singing in a lot of mainline Protestant Christian denominations. The singing does not sound especially joyful. It's kind of, you know, it's kind of rote and robotic. The quiet waters by. Yeah, this must be a John Wesley hymn, huh?

Yeah, I think so. But again, based on the words of Psalm 23, which will come up again in the end of the movie. Anyway, after the hymn, Sergeant Howie gets up to deliver a reading from the scripture and he's not the priest. This is just a lay reading.

He gets up and he reads in front of everyone, I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me. I love that little inversion in that this do not do this.

I think this is a director's cameo as well. I believe this is Robin Hardy, if memory serves. Robin Hardy doing what? As the pastor, the preacher here. Oh, I see. The priest in the church. Okay. Oh, and here also we see Sergeant Howie taking communion himself in a cutaway. Howie says, "...and after the same manner he also took the cup when he had eaten, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood."

Then we cut to black. Next, sound of seagulls and airplane propellers spinning up and bagpipes just blasting on in with the bagpipes. And the credits begin to play. So as the credits play, we see Sergeant Howie climb into a single-engine prop seaplane and

and take off from a bay on the Scottish coast. He's flying out over the waters to a remote island. And we see him traveling while a beautiful folk song plays. And there's plenty of use of natural scenery here, which is truly gorgeous. You've got these silent gray waters, rocky islands with green pastures and very sharp cliffs and outcroppings. And Sergeant Howie flies over all this until eventually he reaches an island where we see large,

fertile fields and rows of trees and orchards. And here, the music changes. It goes from the first folk song that plays into corn rigs and barley rigs. Rob, how much have you been singing this one? Yeah, I play the soundtrack quite a bit while making notes for this episode. So I did catch myself humming it a few times. And I rather like this tune. It has a strong 70s folk vibe that puts me in the mind of artists like Tom Rush. Mm-hmm.

I'm not going to sing it, but just to read for some of the lyrics. It was upon a lammas night when corn rigs are bonny. Beneath the moon's unclouded light, I held a while to Annie. The time went by with careless heed till tween the late and early. With small persuasion, she agreed to see me through the barley. Corn rigs and barley rigs and corn rigs are bonny.

Yeah, this song, like many of the others, is primarily concerned with fertility. Here painted with a little bit of human sexuality and also some agricultural practices. This trend will continue.

So Sergeant Howie lands his seaplane in the waters of the Summer Isle Harbor. And all around the little village here, we see pink flowers blooming on black tree limbs, green hedges, but also a kind of gray-on-gray palette of the cold sea and the cobbled stone streets by the dock. There are several old men standing around watching the plane land, just sort of gawking without saying anything. And we can hear seagulls calling in the distance, saying,

and there is a very strong atmosphere right at the beginning here, I think created in part by the sort of hollow soundscape, like there's lapping water, the seagulls, kind of a faint echo everywhere. This place is at once both desolate and lush, both welcoming and a bit standoffish. That great sense of ambivalence that you get

through much of the movie begins right here. Yeah, this sense of like, well, this is beautiful, but is life possible here? Do people live here? Well, yes, they do. We do see them.

but they are a bit hostile respectfully to the newcomer. First line of the movie is Sergeant Howie yelling, will you send a dinghy please? He's out of the boat and he has to, he keeps yelling for a dinghy in the middle of his line. He gets out a megaphone and starts yelling at them for the dinghy. And the guys standing around at the edge of the Harbor call back as if they didn't hear what he said. And,

And they say, hello, sir, have you lost your bearings? Kind of like, are you supposed to be here? And Howie calls back into his megaphone that, yes, he's supposed to be here. He's trying to reach Summer Isle, and he triples down on his request for a dinghy. They first try to tell him that he cannot land without written permission from Lord Summer Isle. And this is a theme that we'll repeat quite often.

But Sergeant Howie, now getting annoyed, says that he's a police officer and they must allow him to come ashore. He must have that dinghy. So they send the dinghy out. And I like the dinghy, too. It's got little decorations on it. Yeah, it's got an eye on it as if to ward away evil. And I've read that this just happened to be the dinghy that was available. Like they didn't decorate this or anything. This is just an accurate taste of local decoration. Yeah.

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OK, so Sergeant Howie comes ashore. And as I said, there are a bunch of old men just kind of standing around. He explains his business to the harbor master. He says that he is a representative of the West Highland police and that he has been summoned to the island by an anonymous note that he received in the mail saying that a 12 year old girl named Rowan Morrison had gone missing. He is here to investigate the matter.

The note also came with a picture of the missing girl. So Howie takes out the photo and he shows it to the men gathered around the harbor. They all pass it around. They take a look and they all agree in the end they have never seen her before.

The note also says that Rowan is the daughter of someone named May Morrison. Confusingly, the old men standing here first act like they don't know who that is. But then suddenly one of them says, oh, May Morrison. Yes, she runs the post office. And then all of the guys remember May. They're all like, oh, yeah, May. Oh, yeah.

But as Howie is walking away, I guess, to go to the post office, the harbormaster calls out, that's not May's daughter, though. Not deterred yet, Howie follows up his first lead. He heads to the post office. And along the way, we see him passing some very beautiful gardens. There are these blushing flowers and even kind of tropical looking plants. And corn rigs and barley rigs plays some more, of course.

But along the way, we see local residents peeking out of windows curiously, almost suspiciously at Sergeant Howie as he passes. But when he gets to the post office, this we alluded to at the end of the last episode, this ain't just a post office. It is a combination post office and confectioner. That's right. Yeah. And like you were saying, I love the shop, love all the details here. It feels very...

lived in and legitimate. I imagine they took out like an actual storefront of some sort here and filled it up with all these custom sweets. And I don't know. I don't know the full story on these. Some of these feel they just look too good to not also be some sort of traditional pagan treat of one sort or another, some sort of traditional cake and cookie. Edible psychedelic toad cakes, little chocolate ram's heads with yellow eyes, and

I don't know what those, what are these like black and yellow discs? I'm not sure what that is. I don't know. They look kind of like Saturn. Also kind of like the eye of Sauron. I don't know. And then there are just like lollipops and stuff. There's some stuff that is not very representative. Yeah. Some of it's just sweets for sweet's sake. Other stuff we can already tell has some sort of ritual significance.

Anyway, Howie goes into the shop. He's sort of checking out the sweets and a woman's voice calls out from the back saying, good afternoon. So a woman comes out and having been looking at some cakes shaped like rabbits, Sergeant Howie tries to pay a compliment. He says, I like your rabbits. And the woman who runs the shop, Mae Morrison, says those are hairs, not silly old rabbits, lovely March hairs. Shouldn't you know?

The woman meets Sergeant Howie and they introduce themselves. This is indeed Mae Morrison, and she's curious to know what this is about.

Sergeant Howie says that he's here to see about her missing daughter, but May reacts with bafflement. She says she does have a daughter, but her daughter is not missing. She looks at the photo that Howie brought and says, this is not her daughter. And Howie tries to keep digging, but May just says, I tell you no, and laughs and then takes him into the back of the shop to her residence and

where she introduces him to her daughter, Myrtle, who indeed looks nothing like the girl in the photograph. The girl is in the middle of drawing this big rabbit, or I guess maybe it's a hare, not a rabbit, big hare on sketch paper.

And may gets called away to the front of the shop by the bell. And so Sergeant Howie is just left alone with Myrtle here. So he squats down to talk with her. Uh, first she hands him a paintbrush and this gets paint all over his hands. Uh, the first of there, there is a running theme in the movie that people who apparently mean no harm and are in fact being quite friendly, just constantly in little ways, kind of, uh,

blemish or annoy or humiliate Sergeant Howie by like handing him a paintbrush brush side first and he just gets brown paint all over his hands. Yeah, this is kind of the physical embodiment of what goes on with ideas that are conveyed to him, you know, because people will just in a very friendly tone, like give them give him a little bit of insight into what they believe here on Summer Isle and how they go about their lives.

And we're to infer that there is no malice meant by these statements, but they often poke him the wrong way and sometimes provoke him to some embarrassing sequences where we'll get into examples as we go. Yeah.

But so Howie, he's still trying to get some information, make sense of this confusing situation that he's coming to. So he asks Myrtle, do you know Rowan? And Myrtle says, in the fields, she runs and plays there all day. And he says, oh, do you think she'll be coming back for tea?

And Myrtle says, tea. Hairs don't have tea, silly. So according to Myrtle, Rowan is a hair. And Howie keeps trying to get confirmation on this. And she's like, of course she's a hair. She has a lovely tie. Yeah.

Uh, so this inquiry is off to a strange start. Uh, later that evening, we see Sergeant Howie wandering around. He has, he has to find lodgings on the Island while he is on the case. So he makes his way to the local in, I get the sense that this is the only local in there's probably just one. And this is the green man in and what's

Wow. The sign on this place, by the way, is amazing. So it is one of the kind of wild man, green man motifs that you will find in the British Isles. But the eyes on the green man are, first of all, it's just like a vegetation head, you know, kind of the green knight.

But then the eyes are these sunken, spiraling down concentric circles of brass or gold that look like they're like the structure of Dante's Inferno, but they're going down in these like gold metal pits. It looks insane. Yeah, absolutely overflowing with psychedelic pagan mischief. I also want to note, this is something that I made note of several times. We're...

more likely to say the wicker man.

Uh, but every time I feel like, especially Christopher Lee says the wicker man, he says the wicker man. And, uh, when they talk about the green man in, they say the green man in, uh, so, uh, I just noted that, uh, found it interesting. Yeah. Like, would they speak of Batman in that way? I don't know. Do you know where Batman is now? Oh, he flies through the caves. He has a lovely time. Yeah.

Uh, so when Sergeant Howie arrives, the pub is hopping. It looks like a good time. It is full of people drinking lively music. Um, but the music stops as soon as he walks in. It's like that scene in a Western, you know, where the wrong guy walks into the saloon and the piano player. Oh yeah. And this is a great scene too, because we have a lot of musicians and non-actors in the scene. So this is definitely one of those scenes where there was talking about in the last episode, uh,

that really has that authentic feel to it. You kind of feel like you're in a documentary here. And these are just the locals. Like, we are in a very authentic setting. Yeah. So Howie goes up to the counter and he meets the innkeeper. And this guy has such suspicious energy. We mentioned him last time. This is Alder McGregor, the landlord, the innkeeper. And he's just got this raised eyebrow. He's like, you know, a policeman I am. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, this is Lindsey Kemp. Fun, fun performance. Yeah, he's great. So Sergeant Howie requests a room for the night and a hot supper.

And the landlord calls his daughter to the counter to show Sergeant Howie to his room. Here we meet another one of the main characters in the movie, played by Britt Eklund in the role of Willow McGregor, the quote, landlord's daughter. And on cue as she comes into the room, first of all, when she comes into the room and meets Howie, she like gives him a real good like look up and down. Yeah.

And all the locals start singing a dirty pub song about her. And I want to be clear, Willow seems not to mind the dirty pub song. As soon as she sees Sergeant Howie, she looks at him with this mischievous smile like, yes, I am going to make this Christian do some sinning.

And I think it's the harbormaster who starts singing the song. And the lyrics begin saying, much has been said of the strumpets of yore, of winches and bawdy house queens by the score. But I sing of a baggage that we all adore, the landlord's daughter. And if it were not already clear, Sergeant Howie has landed on the horniest island in the British Isles. Yes.

Now, something I want to note about the tone of this scene, which I think is interesting. In another context, you could imagine that this exact song, this horny drinking song with the same lyrics, would have more of the quality of an insult. Like it would have more of a misogynist tone and a kind of insult to the woman that the song is about.

And somehow to me, this scene does not feel like it has any implication of that kind. There's obviously humor in the song, but it actually does not feel like the characters understand the song to be at Willow's expense. Instead, the song feels like it is genuinely meant as a kind of cheeky celebration of a woman who is beloved by the pub community.

And she seems to be reveling in this adoration. She's like smiling and laughing and dancing along. Yeah, I agree. I'm left, after this scene in particular, I'm left with an impression of a very sex-positive culture here on Summer Isle. And the way it hits, given that this, again, was filmed in 72, came out like 73 initially. I assume this is bringing in a lot of like 60s free love energy, along with these older pagan vibes, pre-Christian vibes. But yeah, this is an island...

We're already getting the idea that sex is no sin, but rather the chiefest of virtues to be celebrated as such.

And to someone like Howie, for whom sex is original sin, this just absolutely flips his universe on its head. Because it quickly becomes obvious that this is not just a young folks thing or a subgroup thing. Everyone here on Summer Isle has this worldview. Yeah, everybody's having a great time. It's a lot of old people in the pub. They all love this. Another thing that I think is kind of interesting about this...

about the tone of this song and the way the characters seem to feel and understand it.

especially given what we learned later about the history of the island, it almost feels like this song could be a relic from a different time from people with different values. And now the words and melody are still being sung, but by people who understand them differently. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, everybody starts singing and dancing. Uh, the pub is happening by the way, like half of the patrons have musical instruments.

Some of the dance moves, not so much in this scene, but we will see in later scenes, are basically wrestling moves. Like, they'll be playing music and people are, like, picking each other up in the air as if to do a suplex or something. Yeah, there are a lot of... Clearly, as this crowd really gets into their cups, there are some tests of strength involved. Yeah. Um...

Nobody has—this is where everyone is going tonight. There is no second location. Well, there's one possible second location. There is the field. There's also the cemetery. But we'll get into that later. Yeah.

So as the song about the landlord's daughter is really heating up, Sergeant Howie is just like, stop all this nonsense. He starts rapping on the counter to make everybody shut up and listen to him. Total scold. And once everybody is finally quiet, he tells them he's a policeman and that he is looking for a child named Rowan Morrison. And if anyone has knowledge of her whereabouts, they should come speak with him. And it's funny because like, if you force yourself to think about it, like,

his business is important. He is actually trying to solve what's going on with an, an apparently missing child who people are like giving him weird conflicting information about, um,

And yet it feels like this is completely inappropriate behavior on his part. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, part of it is that so far no one has acknowledged that anyone is actually missing. So maybe we're inclined to forgive them a bit more for just not answering any of his questions. Because, I mean, so far we're to assume that, oh, well, there's no kid missing. You're just going to shout at us some more about this, but we can't help you.

So while Sergeant Howie is showing the photo to everyone, we also see some photos up on the wall of the Green Man Inn.

from each of the 10 years past actually there's a photo of the harvest festival featuring a girl who is the queen of the harvest i'm not sure if this is supposed to be the same as the queen of the may festival she crowned the queen of the may and then she also is the queen of the harvest festival or if it's different girls i'm not sure but anyway it'll have like a girl with like a wreath of flowers on her hair and she'll be surrounded by crates of fruit and other produce the harvest of the island

Um, the photo from last year's harvest festival is missing. All of the other photos are lined up, but, uh, how he asks about it. And the landlord says that the frame was broken and it's being repaired. Anyway, time for supper. We cut away to how he eating and we see his food, which looks gross. So we just hear him mutter disgusting. He's got like a little cut of meat on his plate and then some beans that look blue and then some canned boiled potatoes. It does not look like a very good plate of food.

Willow comes in to clear his plate and she's like, what's the matter? Aren't you hungry? And Howie says, yes, he says he's hungry, but he says that most of the food I've had, the farmhouse soup, the potatoes, broad beans, all come out of a can. Broad beans in their natural state aren't usually turquoise, are they? Yeah.

And Willow says, oh, this is the part where Willow just looks at him and she goes, some things in their natural state have the most vivid colors. Yeah, she was laying it on a bit thick here, but I do love the continued botanical sexual themes here.

Also, Willow asks him, do you want any dessert? She says, do you want afters? He asks for an apple, but she says, no apples. They don't have any. And Sergeant Howie is shocked by this. He's like, well, I thought Summer Isle was famous for its fruit and vegetables. Your apples are what you do here. That's your whole thing. And she says, sorry, I expect they've all been exported. You can have peaches and cream if you like.

Sergeant Howie asks if it will come from a can and Willow nods. Oh, but she also gives him another sexy stinger. She's like, cheer up. Food isn't everything in life, you know. Yeah.

I love this little scene. It made me start thinking about religion as fruit here, with Christianity, Howie's Christianity being the canned fruit from a distant land introduced here, while the pagan beliefs are of the soil and of the people. They're like the crops that are grown locally. Or at least at this point in the film, that's how it may seem. Things may seem different later on. That is interesting. I didn't think of that.

I wonder how that interfaces with the fact that the local fruits have failed in the last harvest. Exactly, yeah. And I think, again, that's one of the great things about this film is you can kind of drop in at different points and it makes you think about things in one direction and the new information will kind of make you consider the alternate argument more.

So this is just, yeah, this is one of those moments right here where everything you think you might understand about the balance is going to shift later on. Though, actually, I got ahead of things because we actually don't know at this point in the movie that The Last Harvest failed yet. Yeah, as far as we know at this point, this is just an island where the apples are bountiful and for some reason they're serving this guy canned potatoes. Yeah. Maybe it's just superfluous disrespect for Howie, even though they're being very nice to him.

And again, most people are being very nice to him. I should just say that again. Like he's gotten a little bit of an icy reception here and there, but it's, you know, they're welcoming him. Their vibe is just very different than his too. Like he's still on the case, on the job, and no one else is working. Except for the people working in the pub. Everyone else here is out for a good time.

Yeah. The people working in the pub seem like they're partying in the pub at the same time. Yeah. We work hard. We play hard at the same time simultaneously. Yeah. Anyway, right after this, Howie decides to go out for a walk. This is by the way, right after Willow told him, you know, there's more to life than food. Uh, so he goes out for a walk on the lane outside the inn.

And he discovers in the fields outside, there just happens to be an orgy taking place. Dozens of people are out having passionate sex in the grass. And Howie is incredibly startled by this. Next, he comes to the edge of the old churchyard and peeks over the stone wall. And he sees people in the graveyard with watering cans, watering graves in the moonlight. And he sees a naked woman sitting on another grave and sobbing.

Yeah. Yeah. Stephen King's character from Sleepwalkers would not approve of that. I don't need this action. So Howie goes back to the inn, clearly disturbed. Something is not right with this place from his perspective. He quickly gets his key, goes up to his room.

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Hey, this is Joel and Matt from How to Money. And you know, Joel, I am looking forward to summer this year because I'm taking a road trip up to the Northeast. That's exciting. Where are you headed? Yeah, we're taking the kids on this like ultimate American history adventure. We're talking D.C. for the Smithsonian, then Boston for the Freedom Trail and Paul Revere story, as well as heading up to a

♪♪♪

Now, here we get a deleted scene of the first night at the inn. Later that night, while Howie is alone in his room writing in his notebook, we hear a deep voice outside the window calling out.

It's the voice of Christopher Lee. And we hear Christopher Lee saying, Willow McGregor, I have the honor to present you Ash Buchanan. And then outside the window, we look down and we see there stands Christopher Lee in the role of Lord Summerisle. I can't remember. Is he dressed in a kilt in this scene? Yes, I believe he is. Yeah. With kind of the Scottish dress with like a pouch of some kind. And then there's a young man standing beside him.

Willow comes to the window and she's overjoyed to see them. She's laughing and she says, come on up, Ash Buchanan. And Lord Summerisle says another sacrifice at the altar of Aphrodite. So Willow is the goddess of love in the local mythology. They also have a conversation of how she needs to be ready for tomorrow's tomorrow, the day of a more serious offering.

And the people in the pub downstairs, by the way, are singing a song about sex. This is not a rowdy drinking song this time. It's kind of a soft, sad, minor key song. Sounds like it could be by Nick Drake. Oh, also, this is the part we I think we talked about this in the last episode. The once deleted scene now restored where Christopher Lee looks at slugs. Yes. And he's like staring at slugs crawling on a leaf.

And he says, I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable or unhappy all over the earth.

Yeah, it's really nice. I love this sequence. I've noted that some folks online disagree and think that this scene kind of like messes with the pace of the picture. And I mean, I can maybe acknowledge some ways it might do that a little bit, but I feel like the benefits of it are there.

outweigh any negatives, you know, because we get kind of a, we get a little more about the sort of outlook that the locals have about their place in relationship to nature, about like the value that they place on willow and on sex in the community. So I think it's all an upside here.

Yeah, I can see both sides about the scene. Having seen the movie without it as well, I can see how it does sort of disrupt the slow build towards the first meeting with Christopher Lee. And it also sort of...

it reveals more about the island's culture earlier on. Because without the scene, you get a very, very nice, slow build of revelations about what's going on up to the payoff. So I see that point, but also I just really like the scene. And so I kind of hate to lose it. I think the first time I saw this film on television, I suspect the sequence was missing completely.

And on top of that, I'm not sure what else might have been cut for length on TP. So that's a possible fourth different cut. I always forget to include that. Yeah, anytime you have something for cable television back in the day or certainly broadcast television, there's a chance that something else has been cut or sometimes added depending on what runtime you're trying to hit. You know, another thing regarding the carefree, sex-positive culture of the island is

Uh, that I wanted to talk about, maybe this is a good place to bring it up. Cause I don't know where else to, uh, to bring it up. I think this story would play differently. If as soon as Sergeant Howie arrived on the Island, we were seeing lots of like hot young people in diaphanous gowns or people dancing around naked with flowers in their hair.

Uh, but we don't see that instead, uh, to the extent that we get any of that, it comes much later in the story. And that is not generally the local fashion, uh, at least not for the, for the day to day. The characters that we meet early on are mostly older, windburned, gray haired people with a kind of woolly aura.

authentically rural Scotland in the 70s fashion sense. It's not Woodstock out here, at least not early on. Early on, it's just it's lots of old people apparently living a kind of dowdy Scottish village life. Yeah, it's firmly established that this is not a generational thing here.

Then there are some nods later on to the fact that the older members of the community are more likely to have biblical names, biblical first names, as opposed to the younger people who all have names like Rowan and so forth. And, you know, it's more botanical in nature. But, yeah, I think this is a great point.

Anyway, the next day we check back in with Sergeant Howie as he continues his investigation. And the first thing we see is that as Sergeant Howie is setting out to the island schoolhouse, he passes a big celebration out in a meadow across the way from the school.

The boys of the elementary school are out with their teacher dancing around a maypole, which is hung with red and white streamers. And there is a band playing. We've got a guitar, clarinet, violin, and a very prominent mouth harp going boing boing. And here we get another musical number sung by the schoolmaster in a glorious pink shirt with a wide 70s collar.

And the boys are running around, they're weaving their streamers around the maypole, twisting them up. I think most people have probably seen that kind of dance where you go around the maypole and you weave the fibers in and out. The tune of the song is, it's both lighthearted and sing-songy, but also a little bit eerie. And I'm just going to read the lyrics here because they are kind of important for establishing the tone of the movie as it's developing. So the schoolmaster sings...

And of that feather was a bed.

And on that bed there was a girl, and on that girl there was a man, and from that man there was a seed, and from that seed there was a boy, and from that boy there was a man, and for that man there was a grave, and from that grave there grew a tree.

this is a great song this is this is one i definitely did catch myself singing a couple of times because it has just such a nice jaunty energy to it yeah yeah um howie is again obviously weirded out by this but he walks past to the schoolhouse where uh the girls of the school are sitting at their desks and as sergeant howie walks into the room the teacher miss rose played by diane cialento is in the middle of a lesson

And I love the way Chilento is dressed for this role because, or at least in the scene, because on one hand, she looks like a classic proper school teacher in the conservative fashion. It's like a long gray wool dress going down to the floor and like a ruffled white top with this like buttoned up

to the throat with long sleeves. But also at the same time, she's got a big chain necklace with what looks like some kind of giant talismanic tooth or horn hanging over her stomach. I don't know if that was, I don't know which that is, but it's good.

Anyway, Miss Rose is doing her lesson and she asks one of the students in the class, can you tell us what the maypole represents? The first girl she calls on doesn't know the answer, but then everybody else in the class calls out phallic symbol. And Miss Rose says, quote, the phallic symbol. That is correct. It is the image of the penis, which is venerated in religions such as ours as symbolizing the generative force in nature.

And here's the point where suddenly Howie interrupts the school. He's like, right in the school door.

And you might think how he's going to get right down to business trying to track down leads on the Rowan Morrison case. Except no, he doesn't. Instead, he pulls Miss Rose aside and he's like, he says, Miss, you can be quite sure that I shall report this to the proper authorities. Everywhere I go on this island, it seems to me I find degeneracy. There is brawling in bars. There's indecency in public places. And there is corruption of the young. And now I see it all stems from here. It stems from the filth taught here in this very school room. Yeah.

And Ms. Rose just very calmly is like, uh, I was unaware that the police got to set a school curricula and he's just, he's just constantly frustrated and annoyed. He's like, well, we'll see about that. Um, anyway,

This is a great sequence, though. And I would say this is the one that feels just a few degrees away from being a Monty Python sketch. You know, certainly some dry comedic energy here, even if it doesn't like go for big punchline laughs or anything. So Howie takes over the class and addresses all the girls. He introduces himself as a police officer.

And he explains that he's looking for a girl named Rowan Morrison. Without asking, he erases the lesson that Miss Rose was working on in the blackboard so he can write over it. I happened to pause it so I could copy down what the class was covering before how he barged in. This is great. This is what the blackboard said. The pith of the snail stone preserves the eye from darkness. The toadstone preserves the newly born from the weird woman.

The hagstone preserves the people from the nightmare. Oh, wow. I think they were about to get to their lesson about the shadow man, but class was interrupted first. I want to go to this school. Do they do adult education there?

I mean, one assumes they get around to mathematics eventually. Well, that is a good point. I don't get the sense from Miss Rose that this school only teaches witchcraft. It seems like they maybe have like a witchcraft class. But otherwise, I think these students are probably getting a good education. They're learning math and science and history and all that. But then they're also just this is like their religious instruction. Yeah, he just happened to walk in and eavesdrop right before lunch when they normally cover this stuff.

Anyway, Howie writes Rowan's name on the blackboard. He passes her photo around and he asks, do any of you know Rowan? Everyone in the class says no.

Miss Rose says, there's your answer, Sergeant. If she existed, we would know of her. But Sergeant Howie is not satisfied. He points to an empty desk in the middle of the classroom and asks who sits there. Miss Rose says no one does. Then, still suspicious, he goes and he flips up the lid of the desk. And in the cavity inside, he is shocked to see a nail partially hammered into the wood, protruding up several inches, and it's tied with a thread that

And the other end of the thread is tied around a beetle who is crawling in circles around the nail. Uh, I would note the visual similarity to the boys running around the maypole holding the end of the streamers from just a minute before. And then the girl at the desk beside says, uh, the little old beetle goes round and round always the same way you see until it ends up right up tight to the nail. Poor old thing.

And Howie is just, he's freaked out. He's like, poor old thing. Then why in God's name do you do it, girl? He's yelling at the children.

Uh, still suspicious. He wants to see the school registry. Ms. Rose tries to say she can't share that without permission from Lord Summerisle. Once again, needs Lord Summerisle sign off, but Howie just ignores her barges past, pulls it off the desk and looks through it. And sure enough, when looking at through the list of students, he finds the name Rowan Morrison residence, the post office. Hmm.

Now, upon finding this, his first reaction appears to be disgust, disgust at Miss Rose and at the children in the classroom. He looks up and he points at all of the children in their desks and he says, you are all despicable little liars. Rowan Morrison is a schoolmate of yours, isn't she? And that is her desk, isn't it?

And they all just look completely blank stone faced at him. A few kind of avert their eyes to the floor, but mostly it's just crickets. Nothing. He tries to threaten Miss Rose telling her that he's going to charge her with obstruction, but she persuades him to step outside with her so they can talk.

And so she gives the girls some reading to get back to and they go outside. And she insists that despite how it seems to him, from their perspective, no one was lying to him. Miss Rose says, I told you plainly, if Rowan Morrison existed, we would know of her. He's like, what do you mean by that? You mean she's dead? And Miss Rose says, you would say so.

And Sergeant Howie's just, he's like fuming. He's like, come on, she's either dead or she's not dead. And I love the way Miss Rose appears to be navigating this conversation carefully, but

She's doing her best to authentically represent her beliefs. So she's not like just caving and talking about things the way that Howie would like to. Like she's staying in her own mode of speaking about the world. But she's also trying to be kind of sensitive and accommodating to this irritated policeman who has no patience for her. So she says, here we do not use the word. And then she mouths the word dead. Yeah.

She says that we believe when human life is over, the soul returns to the trees, to the air, to fire, to water, to animals, so that Rowan Morrison has simply returned to the life forces in another form. Now, Howie begins to argue. He's like, he can't believe that they're teaching the children this stuff. He's like, this is nonsense. It's insane. What about teaching them Christianity? Mr.

Miss Rose is like, actually, you know, the children have a much easier time understanding the concept of reincarnation than of resurrection. Because resurrection involves like, you know, the raising of rotting bodies that makes no sense to the children. But the children's imagination can quite well understand coming back as other forces in nature. Yeah.

Uh, and again, how he's just like flummoxed by this and he has to move on. So finally he's like, okay, okay, okay. Where is Rowan Morrison's body, her physical body? I want to know where it is.

And she says, you know, it's in what you would call the churchyard, no longer consecrated to the Christian religion. That does sound, it does feel like she's baiting him a little bit with this. Yes, yes, yeah. Now, as we mentioned already, this is at heart a horror movie, so we should keep that in mind when we consider its representation of either, you know,

Christianity or any variation on pagan religion here. But I love this sequence and this idea that for the children, reincarnation just rings more true and requires less rigorous reprogramming of their natural inclinations. You know, it's definitely one of the notes in the film that makes the viewer see Howie and his world as being one of more tortured thought and morals.

Yeah. And it sort of fits with something that Lord Summerisle will say later that suggests at least the locals think of it as paganism is not just their religion, but they think of it as something that kind of fits onto human life naturally. It fits us like a glove and it's easy to put on and to assume, whereas they.

Yeah, yeah. And we see some more examples of this idea as we proceed.

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Hey, this is Joel and Matt from How to Money. And you know, Joel, I am looking forward to summer this year because I'm taking a road trip up to the Northeast. That's exciting. Where are you headed? Yeah, we're taking the kids on this like ultimate American history adventure. We're talking D.C. for the Smithsonian, then Boston for the Freedom Trail and Paul Revere story, as well as heading up to Acadia up in Maine for some serious hiking, maybe a little bit of craft beer as well. And actually planning this trip got me thinking it's so smart to have your place on a

Airbnb while you are away with a co-host feature. You can hire a high quality local co-host to do the work for you. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. But okay. So how he finally has his next clue. He's going to go look for the grave of Rowan Morrison in the church yard, or at least the yard formerly known as a church. Now, remember this was before the night before where, how we saw people watering trees growing out of the grave plots and naked people getting sad or getting sexy. And,

So Howie walks in and he looks around. The first gravestone he looks at says, here lieth Beach Buchanan, protected by the ejaculation of serpents. The graveyard is both ugly and beautiful. It's beautiful in the sense that it's dark.

damp and green. So it's got old stones that have a kind of stately magic, but it's also covered with this green vegetation. So quite beautiful, but also there are random piles of junk and debris scattered around. It's like it is both taken care of and not somebody is watering the grave trees and there's, it's kind of beautifully, uh,

chaotically gardened in a way but also nobody is cleaning up the mess or keeping it tidy yeah yeah it feels more like a return to nature and death which of course is very much what they seem to be all about here yeah

Uh, so as Howie keeps wandering, he sees one grave that has what looks like the Jolly Roger engraved on it. It's kind of skull and crossbones. He also comes across a woman sitting on a gravestone, uh, holding a baby in one arm and breastfeeding her while she's rocking back and forth. And then the other hand, she is holding out a chicken egg as if doing some kind of ritual or magic. Yeah.

And then finally, Howie comes to one large stone grave that's covered in wooden crates with the remains of rotting fruit and produce. He reacts to this with just bitter revulsion. He breaks apart one of the crates and uses two stakes from it to fashion a makeshift cross. And he just leaves that by itself on the tomb, almost as like a...

I know he wouldn't think of it this way because he's just like, well, I'm trying to reconsecrate this with the one true religion, but it feels like he's like just giving a middle finger. Yeah. Yeah. That's one way of looking at it.

Now, finally, we get to the meeting with the groundskeeper. We flagged the actor who plays the groundskeeper in the last episode because he's got a real good seething laughter. This is the same actor who's the guy in A Clockwork Orange who gets to tell Alex that he committed murder. You, Alex, you're a little murderer. Yeah.

Yeah, this is Aubrey Morris. Yes. And Howie asks him about the trees on the graves. The groundskeeper is like, oh, yes, we plant the trees on the graves, you know, as if this should be obvious. And Howie points to a tree on an unmarked grave, one with no headstone. He says, what kind of tree is that? It's a Rowan tree. Whose grave is it? Rowan Morrison's.

And here there is a moment of quiet exasperation, I think because of the contrast between how cagey everybody has been, all like denying that they knew who Rowan was or denying she existed. And then suddenly the ease with which this guy just offers up the information. It's like he's been trying to get somebody to just point him to this spot all day. Yeah. And he keeps getting the runaround.

Yes. But it's also like how he doesn't understand. He's frustrated, I think, because he doesn't understand what exactly he's dealing with here. He's like, are these people all mad? Are they participating in a cover up or a conspiracy? Is it somehow part of their religion to like deny knowing someone existed once they're dead? He truly he just doesn't understand what he's dealing with.

Yeah. Anyway, so they have a little chat about the dried umbilical cord hanging from the Rowan tree. And eventually this is the part where Howie is like, where is your minister? It's almost with the energy of I need to speak to your manager. Yeah. And this is when the groundskeeper just starts laughing hysterically about the idea of a minister and wanders away.

Now we get a few more investigation scenes. I'm not really going to dwell on these, but Howie briefly goes back to the post office slash sweet shop to see Mae Morrison again, but he just like tells her they're all raving mad and no new information is exchanged. He goes to visit the town librarian played by Ingrid Pitt.

Uh, he wants to see records of local deaths. And at first Ingrid Pitt says that he's going to need permission from Lord Summerisle, but he strong arms her into handing it over. And, uh, what just another moment worth flagging here is I think it's the name of Rowan Morrison's grandparents that he sees in the register. And he's like, oh, these are names from the Bible. Unlike everybody else here. And she's like, oh yes, they were very old. Yeah.

Little clue there. He also visits the chemist slash photographer, Mr. Lennox. This shop is full of weird things preserved in jars. You got whole toads, pig fetuses, stuff like that. How he finds out from him or how he finds out that he takes the harvest festival photo each year and how he wants to see the photo from last year. But Lennox does not have a copy. Does he remember who was in the photo? No. No.

Anyway, time to go meet Lord Summerisle. So here's like a big kind of centerpiece scene of the movie is the first meeting between Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward here. On the way, Howie rides in a horse-drawn buggy and we get to hear corn rigs and barley rigs again. Great song. Might as well play it some more. Once was not enough. We also see plenty of the local scenery. There are hedges cut into animal shapes and some just seem to be like phalluses, uh,

A lot of flowers, budding fruit trees. There is one scene where we see pregnant women wandering around in an orchard, touching the trees in what seems to be a kind of ritual. And speaking of rituals...

As we get closer to Lord Summerisle's manor, the music changes into an eerie minor key flute melody. And we see a giant stone circle, like Stonehenge, positioned atop a hill. And in the center of the stone circle, there is a hearth with a blazing fire.

And all around it are naked young women performing a religious dance. This ritual is seemingly being led, I think, by Miss Rose. Wasn't this Miss Rose from the school? I think you're right. Yeah. And she's now dressed in a white gown wearing a giant pendant of hammered gold in the shape of the sun. And the women are singing a song. The lyrics are, "'Take the flame inside you, burn and burn below, fire seed and fire seed to make the baby grow.'"

And then they take turns running and leaping over the fire as the song goes on. I like the song here. It has a night, like even as you recited the lyrics, I can hear the tune in my head. Yeah. Yeah. I also should note that modern Blu-ray viewers will note that these dancers are in fact not naked, but dressed in skin colored tights, which doesn't detract from the scene at all. But I always just find this kind of thing interesting, like things that I'm assuming that might have been lost, you know, originally when this was shown theatrically.

Because originally it would have been grainy enough that in their films at a distance. So you assume they are naked, but actually now that there's like high enough definition that you can. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think I saw this originally on A&E and I think I would probably just thought, wow, that A&E just allows nudity. I think maybe they did allow just a little bit of nudity on A&E versus other channels. Yeah.

Anyway, Howie arrives at Lord Summerisle's mansion. Is this technically a castle? I don't know what counts as a castle. Ooh, I mean, it's somewhere in there. There's a lot of stone here. It's big. Lord Summerisle's manor, I wonder what you make of this, Rob. The manor is not decorated like a pagan temple. No.

It feels like the house of a Scottish Lord. It there's a lot of polished wooden furnishings, hunting trophies, big framed elk antlers and things like that. Big paintings on the walls, suits of armor and heraldry, all that kind of thing.

Yeah, and it ties in with a lot of what we've seen regarding this community. They haven't rejected modernity. They haven't rejected their Scottishness. They just have this other entire aspect of their worldview. They have rejected Christianity to a large degree, but they haven't set everything aside. They're not living in just this time out of mind and out of place.

That's right. And so I remember being kind of surprised by this. I would have thought the way they're building up Lord Summerisle, it's going to be like he's going to be the most aesthetically pagan one. And he might be, I don't know, he might be the most pagan one, but his house doesn't look like, you know, it doesn't look like an apothecary herbalist shop or something. And I think this could easily make you think, well, maybe he's a hypocrite. Maybe he doesn't actually live like this.

But once you get into Lee's performance in these scenes, I think all of that is dismissed because his performance, the energy of it, as we talked about in the last episode, he just has this youthful vigor and enthusiasm. This unlike, I think, any other Christopher Lee performance I've ever seen, any other character I've seen him take on. And therefore, you just totally buy into it. Of course, this is Summer Isle. And of course, he believes all these things.

Oh, okay. I was going to ask a question about that, but you may have answered it in advance, but we can still discuss later.

So Howie's waiting to meet Lord Summerisle, and he thinks he is alone, like waiting for, I guess, for Lord Summerisle to come down and meet him. So he's standing at the window watching the fire dance across the lawn. But Howie's not alone. Instead, suddenly Christopher Lee pops his head out from around the corner of a chair the size of a panel van. What is going on with this chair? Yeah.

They made high back chairs that are just like, I don't know, needs to be 10 feet wide. It's just this place is full of old castle stuff. Yeah. It's enormous and unnecessary. So, I don't know, Rob, do you want to describe Christopher Lee's appearance and aura in this scene? He's wearing like a tweed jacket and a green shirt and he's just so happy. He's just beaming. Yeah.

Yeah, goodness. Yeah, he's he just has this useful energy. Like I've said, he was, I think, around 50 at the time and feels 10 years younger than anywhere I've ever seen him before. You know, this is not Christopher Lee, the vampire of the Hammer films before and after this.

This is just a guy that's just full of energy. Like, it's delightful to be in his presence. Or, you know, it would be for anyone else other than Howie here, who is a bit rough around the edges regarding all of this paganism and optimism. But yeah, I think optimism is the vibe that he is exuding the most. It's like, you know, everything is possible. And I'm going to say yes and.

to whatever you've come here to ask. And Howie is also unprepared for that. Yeah, yeah. Also, he's got big hair. Did we mention? Oh, yes. Christopher Lee, not usually with big hair, but here, big hair. Yeah, and this will be key compared to the way his hair looks in a later scene. Here, the hair is...

You know, he's got a little bit of gray going on, but it's also not black. It's not vampire black. But the overall appearance is very almost blonde. He almost appears blonde in the way that the gray and the brown mixes together. So, yeah, just he's beaming. He's like the sun. Yeah. His hair is like the radiance around the edge of the sun. Yeah. Yeah.

Kind of like the face of Nuada we saw at the beginning. But anyway, so he pops his head around the corner and he's talking about the young women dancing naked outside. And Lord Summerisle says, good afternoon, Sergeant Howie. He says, I trust the sight of the young people refreshes you. And Sergeant Howie says, no, sir, it does not refresh me. Yeah.

But Summerisle is unfazed. He recommends that we all be open to the regenerative influences. And how he describes the situation, he explains to Lord Summerisle that he suspects a girl on the island has been the victim of murder and conspiracy to murder. And he needs Lord Summerisle's permission to exhume the body for an autopsy. And Lord Summerisle is like, yes, permission granted. Go for it.

Yeah. And so he was totally unprepared to get a yes here that he kind of just keeps going. Yeah, exactly. And so here I want to quote a good bit of the dialogue because I think you kind of need to hear what is said in this scene to appreciate it. How he's like, your lordship seems strangely unconcerned. And Summer Isle explains, he's like, well, I'm just confident your suspicions are wrong. We don't commit murder here on Summer Isle. He says we're a deeply religious people.

And Howie is so annoyed. He's like, religious with ruined churches, no ministers, no priests, and children dancing naked? And somewhere else, like, oh, they do love their divinity lessons. And Howie says, but they're naked! And to be clear, those looked like, those were grown women dancing around those stones. Yeah, I think they're supposed to be young women. Yeah.

Howie's like newborn babies dancing naked around the stuff. Also Summer Isle, he's always like they're naked. And Summer Isle's like, well, naturally it's too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on. And Howie's like, what religion are they learning jumping over fires? And Summer Isle explains, he's like a parthenogenesis. He's like, what? Summer Isle says, you know, this is a sexual reproduction without sexual union. Yeah.

And Howie goes, oh, what is all this? He's like, you've got fake biology, fake religion. Sir, have these children never heard of Jesus? And then Summer Owl says, himself, the son of a virgin, impregnated, I believe, by a ghost. Solid pagan burn right there. Solid burn. Yep, yep. But I love that, have these children never heard of Jesus? Lord Summer Owl, do they know it's Christmas at all? Yeah.

Now, there's kind of a break in the tension here because Christopher Lee, he goes on to explain what's happening. He says, you know, these girls are jumping naked over the fire in the hope that the god of the fire will make them fruitful. And he says, after all, who would not prefer to bear the child of a god over that of an acne scarred artisan? Yeah.

And Howie again tries to argue, but Lord Summerisle says, you know, it's most important for the young people of the island to learn that here the old gods are not dead.

Now, Howie is very offended. He's like, and what of the true God? You know, what of him? And Lord Summerisle says, he's dead. Can't complain. Had his chance, and in modern parlance, blew it. This is the first, I think, major, overtly stressed note of religion failing modern humans. And we'll come back to this in an important way later.

Now here, Lord Summerall begins to explain the backstory of the island to Sergeant Howie. Now, of course, we could wonder if he is being honest with Sergeant Howie about everything, but I take it that everything he says here is true. I don't think he's trying to trick Howie at all. This seems to me is just like this is the actual backstory of the island.

Yeah, I don't think Lord Summerisle really lies at all. There's, well, there's one kind of big lie, but everything else he seems like he's being very truthful about.

So I'm just going to read from a transcription of the dialogue here because this part's important. This is Lord Summerisle's story. He says,

And Sergeant Howie says,

Summerisle says,

The best way of accomplishing this, so it seemed to him, was to rouse the people from their apathy by giving them back their joyous old gods. And it is as a result of this worship the barren island would burgeon and bring forth fruit in great abundance. What he did, of course, was to develop new cultivars of hardy fruits suited to local conditions. But of course, to begin with, they worked for him because he fed them and clothed them.

But then later, when the trees started fruiting, it became a very different matter, and the ministers fled the island, never to return. What my grandfather had started out of expediency, my father continued out of love. He brought me up the same way, to reverence the music and the drama and the rituals of the old gods, to love nature and to fear it, and to rely on it and to appease it where necessary."

He brought me up. And Howie interrupts him and says, he brought you up to be a pagan. And somewhere else says with a soft smile, he says, a heathen conceivably, but not, I hope, an unenlightened one. Now here, Rob, I think you already answered your take on this question, but I was going to ask, after this monologue,

One might wonder if the present Lord Summerisle, if Christopher Lee is in reality more like what he accuses his grandfather of. Like if the paganism of Summerisle is something that he cynically impresses upon the ignorant locals but does not believe himself. That seems to be Howie's interpretation, right?

And you can certainly see that when you hear kind of the material motivation of the original Lord Summerisle and how the same motivations would be present for the current Lord Summerisle. But also, is that really the case? I mean, when he says that it was continued out of love, he seems to be claiming that he now believes the pagan myths, or at least he...

I don't know. He says he at least reverences them, whether that means he believes the Celtic pagan gods literally exist and have power over his fate or not. I guess it's hard to see how to translate that, but it feels like maybe he does. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that is the vibe I've always gotten. And I think a lot of it comes from the nature of Lee's performance here. And even what we see from him much later on in the picture. I feel like it's ultimately, even though there's a shift that takes place, I think it's consistent. I think that he truly believes in this faith. But as he's already alluded to, like there is, of course,

this dark side, you know, there is the fear of nature, there's the terror of nature, and there's already like this realization that to be a worshiper of a god like this is to also engage in a certain amount of uncertainty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Another thing from this monologue that really strikes me is the way it just assumes that

that the people, the locals, the, you know, the wiry labor of the island in the words of his grandfather, that the locals are,

Yeah.

at any point, it was like it was in their blood. You could just give them the pagan gods back and they would immediately take them up without any coercion. Isn't it strange? But it,

That does appear to be sort of the belief that's present in the movie here. Yeah, and you know, I don't know that it's ultimately that disconnected from the reality of places where Christianity was introduced and ended up replacing traditional beliefs to at least some extent. Because as we've seen from various examples, the old ways never changed.

or rarely completely go away. Some aspects of them are folded into this new alien faith. They get subsumed, yeah. Yeah, so the old gods take on new, you know, slightly new roles or, you know, the

or something continues to exist at like the folk belief and folklore level of things. And therefore, yeah, nothing completely goes away. And therefore, it would be possible perhaps for someone to come free you from these newer ideas and allow those older ideas to grow fresh again. Even if the, quote, newer ideas have been around for hundreds of years at this point and you've never known anything else. Right, right.

And I think, you know, some would argue that it's in their DNA. Like, and it is, it is, and it's a way of, it's a worldview that is more in keeping with the natural order of the human organism. And therefore, like, we take to it, like we take to breath and to water. Yeah. And that they believe that they are, in fact, the reincarnations of pagans from years past. Yeah. Yeah.

As laundered through many stages of nature, you know, they have been the bird and the, and its feather and the tree and everything else. But at some point also they were their pagan ancestor. Yeah.

Well, anyway, Howie tries to burn Lord Summerisle. He's like, "Well, whatever you believe personally, you are the subject of a Christian country." And he demands to be given permission to exhume Rowan Morrison's body. And then Lord Summerisle reminds him that he already gave him permission at the beginning of their conversation. And I love this moment. It's so good. It's like Howie

He is somehow mentally manufacturing more friction in his investigation than actually exists. Yeah. Yeah, because he told him yes right away. But yeah, I just kept arguing with him. Summerisle says as he's leaving, he's like, it's been a great pleasure meeting a Christian copper.

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Hey, this is Joel and Matt from How to Money. And you know, Joel, I am looking forward to summer this year because I'm taking a road trip up to the Northeast. That's exciting. Where are you headed? Yeah, we're taking the kids on this like ultimate American history adventure. We're talking D.C. for the Smithsonian, then Boston for the Freedom Trail and Paul Revere story, as well as heading up to Acadia up in Maine for some serious hiking, maybe a little bit of craft beer as well. And actually planning this trip got me thinking it's so smart to have your place on Acadia

Airbnb while you are away with a co-host feature. You can hire a high quality local co-host to do the work for you. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Okay. I'm looking at the time now. So I'm realizing, I think we need to be a little more summary as we, as we go on with the rest of the plot. We've got to speed on to the main event. Yeah. Okay. So Sergeant Howie goes and exhumes the, what he believes to be the body of Rowan Morrison, but Oh, no body in there. Well, there is a body. It's not a human body. It's a dead hair inside the coffin. Yeah.

Uh, so Howie is very, once again, very annoyed. He goes back to the mansion of Lord Summerisle and when he goes there inside Lord Summerisle is hanging out with Miss Rose, by the way, they're like drinking wine from a golden goblet. She's laying on a big fur pelt on the floor and they're singing and playing the piano. He's singing in his big booming bass voice.

And how he interrupts them by throwing the dead hair from Rowan's grave on the floor. He demands to know once again, where is Rowan Morrison? And they're still giving him more runaround. Miss Rose is like, oh, you know, Rowan always did loves the March hairs. I think it's very fitting transmutation. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, what did you expect to find in her grave? But a hair. We already told you children have been telling you that she's a hair now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why didn't you just listen to us the first time? But so Sergeant Howie starts giving them all these threats. He's like, I suspect that Rowan Morrison has been murdered under circumstances of pagan barbarity, which I can scarcely bring myself to believe are taking place in the 20th century.

So he says, look, I'm going to go to the mainland. I'm going to get a bunch more cops and we're going to come back here and do a full inquiry. And Lord Summerisle's like, great. Okay. Oh, and he also says at the end, he's like, it's just as well that you won't be here tomorrow to be offended by the sight of our May Day celebrations. Yeah.

You probably wouldn't like what you're going to see tomorrow with like a big smile and a twinkle in his eye. Now, later that night, Howie breaks into the chemist's shop to like kind of search through his photos, the one that the chemist said he didn't have. And he does, in fact, find the picture of the Harvest Festival from the year previous. And he confirms his suspicions. It is what he believed. The Harvest Queen from the year before was Rowan Morrison. Yeah.

And where there is normally a huge pile of fruit next to the harvest queen, instead in this photo, there are only a few meager boxes of produce. And he puts it all together. He says it's Rowan and the crops failed. So this is his theory. It was Rowan. Rowan was the harvest queen. The crops last year were bad. And so they killed Rowan as a sacrifice.

All right. So we're almost to May Day, but first we got to have a scene of a wretchedly horny May Day Eve where Sergeant Howie goes back to the inn and there is a musical number where Willow, again, that's Britt Eklund, she gets naked and then sings a song to him through the wall of the inn being like, hey, how about it? And he's just in there being like, okay.

That's true. That's essentially what happens. But the music is great. The song is Willow's song. And I would argue it's among the best in the picture. It's great, yeah. And the physical performances on both sides of the wall are amazing. It's just a great musical sequence of juxtaposed temptation and denial on one side with Howie. And then on Willow's side, just...

unabashed sexual freedom. And there's this whole sequence charged with eroticism, but without either of the chief characters ever occupying the same room.

And the next morning they have a meetup. Willow comes to see him at breakfast and she's like, hey, I thought you were going to come see me last night. I invited you. And he's like, sorry, I'm engaged to be married. And she's like, oh, well, you know, you're a very gallant fellow, Sergeant. And he says, it's nothing personal. I just don't believe in it before marriage. She's like, okay, cool. Suit yourself. You really should head back, though, before we get May Day festivities started. You wouldn't like them, not with how you feel. Yeah.

So there's some important plot stuff going on in this dialogue exchange. But I also really love Howie's vulnerability and honesty here, which I think is a nice touch. It's very much one-sided because she's still kind of like taunting and temptress-y. But you might expect Howie to have been really gruff here and like call her out as a temptress and preach to her on the values of saving yourself for marriage and so forth. But instead, we get this nice scene that, yeah, delivers some important plot points, but also deepens our understanding of Howie's character.

I think Howie at this point is actually exhausted by like being self-righteous at everyone. He's literally tired of it. He's been self-righteous at everyone for like many scenes in a row and he's just worn out. And this is very much in keeping with the idea that's presented in the film that how at least Howie's version of Christianity and enforced morality is exhausting.

And if he were just to like, let go and let this fall away from him, he could find another way to live. All right. Well, after this, how he tries to leave the island, he goes to a seaplane, but Oh, engine won't start classic horror movie problem. I did say that this movie, it,

It doesn't rely too much on cliches, but there are some. I mean, you can't have a folk horror movie without the vehicle that won't start. And this is where the creepy masks start showing up, right? Yes. It goes up to the plane and they're like, the villagers are peeking over the wall with the bunny masks and so forth. And we could start getting some more overtly creepy notes from the local folk beliefs.

It's a mix of whimsical and humorous and creepy. Yeah. And I love that mix. Yeah, it never truly goes full creep mode at this point, like a lesser film would. I mean, a lesser film, much lesser film would have been creep mode the whole time.

Yes. It continues to play this nice balance. But I love the masks. So the villagers start showing up in animal masks for the May Day celebration. They're dressed as hares, as foxes, as squirrels. One is the salmon of knowledge. Ooh, we've talked about that fish on the show before. Yeah.

Yeah. And I, oh, I'd love all the masks, but I love that a lot of the masks look so dingy. They look like really kind of weathered and like they've been used in many May Day festivals and like they smell bad now. Yeah.

even crumpled up in a drawer. We do get a library research scene where he goes to the town library, which it's funny, has books like of anthropology. I think he may read from the Golden Bough, perhaps. Oh, wow. I'm not sure. But he, you know, he reads from something that's like James Fraser that tells about the May Day festivals.

In fact, I'll just read briefly from what he comes across. So he's reading in the library, primitive man lived and died by his harvest. The purpose of his spring ceremonies was to ensure a plentiful autumn. Relics of these fertility dramas are to be found all over Europe. In Great Britain, for example, one can still see harmless versions of them danced in obscure villages on May Day.

Their cast includes many alarming characters: a man-animal or hobby horse who canters at the head of the procession, charging at the girls; a man-woman, the sinister teaser, played by the community leader or priest; and the man-fool, punch, most complex of all the symbolic figures, the privileged simpleton and king for a day. Six swordsmen follow these figures and at the climax of the ceremony lock their swords together in a clear symbol of the sun.

Uh-oh.

Sometimes the victim would be drowned in the sea or burnt to death in a huge sacrificial bonfire. Sometimes the six swordsmen ritually beheaded the virgin.

And he says, dear God in heaven, even these people can't be that mad. But he puts it all together. It's the picture of Rowan from last year's harvest. And he knows, he knows it's Rowan. She's the sacrifice. But now he realizes something's different. He doesn't think they killed her last year. He thinks she's still alive and they're going to kill her today. And so it's up to him to save her.

So this turns into the frantic hunt. We get sort of a montage of Howie popping around all the different locations on the island, trying to find Rowan Morrison. He thinks she's alive and being held somewhere for the sacrifice. For example, he tries to go to May Morrison, her mother, and he's like, don't you realize what they're doing? And May is not any help. She's just like, oh, Sergeant, you'll simply never understand the true nature of sacrifice.

Eventually, after he's checked a bunch of places and come up empty handed, by the way, it's also very funny while he's checking things because the locals are all kind of peeping around, taunting him and like running around in masks, playing little pranks on him. Oh, yeah. And we see the hobby horse guy. Yes. Yes. And the children who are like pretending to be dead. And then he's like, what? And then they pop up and laugh at him.

Uh, so like the whole town has started just treating Howie as if he is a joke. Uh, now the, uh, here we get the hand of glory scene coming up because Howie comes back to the inn, uh, and he's like, I'm so tired. I've got to take a nap. He lays down in his bed. I think he has a dram of whiskey and then lays in his bed for an hour.

Yeah. And then, you know, he's laying there and he hears Willow and Willow's dad plotting and they're like, oh, you don't want to make him sleep too long, do you? And they're like, oh, we don't want him getting in the way and so forth. And then when those voices subside, he comes to and they've lit a hand of glory in his room.

This is the scene that always stuck with me because this is like a really, this may be, is this the first like more overt horror note in the picture really? I think it could be, yeah. It's the first bit of anything that's like gore because he does in the

in the Undertaker's house, he comes across a body that has the hand removed. And then later, this happens. Yeah, the Hand of Glory, where this version of it is this disembodied hand that's set up on this candlestick, and each finger is a lit candle. And there are different versions of what the Hand of Glory means, but basically it's tied to different stories where a thief would use it as a magical item to subdue a household and force them to sleep.

We actually just reran the artifact episode about the Hand of Glory. But yeah, in short, we have an occult European item here tied to these different stories. And it may ultimately be linked to ideas concerning the Mandrake root, which was attributed with similar powers and was sometimes described as being hand-like in form, like a clawed hand. Yeah.

Whatever the case, it doesn't work. And he's just like, ah, and he like knocks it over, puts it out. Uh, and he's back on the case. And oh yeah, then he goes and finds the landlord. Uh, the landlord's putting on his fool's costume for the big parade. And so he brings him with a candlestick.

Beats him over the head and takes his costume. Yeah. And then goes down to join the parade. And oh boy, the parade is one of my favorite parts of the movie. We have Christopher Lee wearing a long wig and a dress. It's like a purple and blue kind of outfit, but with sneakers. He's wearing what looks like Converse sneakers. Oh, I didn't notice the sneakers.

Oh, yeah, they're great. And then there is one of the guys that we frequently see at the bar as the man horse, the hobby horse bumping up and down. And then this is supposed to be McGregor, the innkeeper, as the fool. But instead, behind the costume, it is, in fact, Sergeant Howie. He's following he's going along with the parade to try to get there and save Rowan.

Uh, but this is the part where when they're, they're walking down the way, oh, and by the way, all the other towns, people, we've got some guys in kilts with their swords to be the swordsmen that he read about in the library. And then everybody else is wearing animal masks. Christopher Lee is just dancing heroically. I love his, his capering about, and then also this is the scene where he yells at, uh, Edward Woodward. He's thinking he's McGregor. He's like, cut some capers, man. I told you. Yeah.

And then eventually they do the deal that the reading prepared us for with the swords aligned in a pentagram in the shape of the sun. And there's even a mock beheading. He thinks, oh, my goodness, they've done it. They've cut a kid's head off. But it was a mock beheading. And then you realize, oh, it's just part of this ride. And it's also this kind of like moment of relief situation.

for us as the viewer, like, okay, maybe this isn't a big human sacrifice thing he's attending. Maybe it is all just some, you know, muted folkloric version of some ancient rite.

Right. But then from there, they proceed down to the shore where first Christopher Lee gets out an axe and he chops open some barrels of ale, which they roll into the sea as a gift to the god of the sea. And then from there, he says, it's time to move on to our more dreadful sacrifice. And there we see Rowan Morrison standing flanked by some people with torches at the mouth of a cave. Yeah.

And what happens? Well, it's just Howie in his fool costume just breaks out in a run and

In front of everybody. Everybody's gathered there and he runs up to her and he's like, Roland, come on. And so they run off together. Through the cave. Through the cave. Describe this music here, Joe. Oh, I don't know. I forget what the music is. Oh, it gets very like jammy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like some bass going on. It's a little more electric rock and roll than anything else in the movie. Yeah. Yeah.

chase music. And so they run around through the cave while they're being pursued by people from the island. And eventually Rowan shows him here, here's where we can go. And they crawl out through an opening where they come out through the top of the cave onto a big meadow that's on these cliffs overlooking the rocky shoreline below. And when they come out above, everyone's waiting for them.

Lord Summerisle's up there, and Mae Morrison, Rowan's mother, is standing there. And Rowan runs directly to Lord Summerisle. And she says, did I do it right? And he says, you did beautifully, my dear. And so now we're left wondering, what? Rowan does not seem to be afraid at all. It's like she knows that she is not, in fact, in any danger. And instead, everyone's attention turns to Howie in his fool costume. Yeah.

Lord Summerisle tells him, Welcome, fool. You have come of your own free will to the appointed place. The game is over, the game of the hunted leading the hunter. You came here to find Rowan Morrison, but it is we who have found you, and brought you here, and controlled your every thought and action since you arrived. Principally, we persuaded you to think that Rowan Morrison was being held as a sacrifice because our crops failed last year.

And Howie says, but I know your crops failed. I saw the harvest photograph. And Summerisle says, oh yes, they failed all right. Disastrously so. For the first time since my grandfather came here, the blossom came, but the fruit withered and died on the bough.

That must not happen again this year. It is our most earnest belief that the best way of presenting this is to offer to our God of the sun and to the goddess of our orchards the most acceptable sacrifice that lies in our power. Animals are fine, but their acceptability is limited. A little child is even better, but not nearly as effective as the right kind of adult.

Now, it's worth noting that at this point, Lord Summerisle has now subtly changed in demeanor and appearance. For starters, here we get more of the signature Christopher Lee grimness, you know. And also, they're on the coast. They're windswept. And so his hair is wilder.

And the gray in his hair is more apparent. And I don't know, the way it's set against the sun, the setting sun, it feels even more like a halo, but also he looks more gray. He doesn't look maybe as full of life.

as he was not that he looks like a vampire or anything, but he looks like a little older and You know, he feels like the embodiment of approaching winter now at this point in the it's worth noting that this film is supposed to take place at the beginning of summer They're supposed to take place. Yeah, May 1st But it was filmed in November and December So all these scenes where you see like fruiting trees they had to bring those in or dress up other trees You know, they had to fake it

And it feels fitting at this point in the picture that we have been living in a fake summer, you know, because here especially is manifested the idea that the world is growing colder. The sun is leaving our world and our and what are we going to have to do to ensure Nuada's blessings and the blessings of all the other gods and goddesses in their pantheon?

I think that's beautifully said. Exactly right. What are you going to have to do to get Nuada's blessings? You'll have to give him a man, they say. And here the women from the town come in, Willow and the librarian and Miss Rose, they come in to explain what kind of man they were looking for. A man who would come here of his own free will. A man who would come here with the power of a king by representing the law. A man who would come here as a virgin. And a man who would come here as a fool.

Howie is all these things now. That's right. And I'd say we'll ignore the overly complex nature of this trap, just given how splendidly the trap has been sprung here and the drama and ideas surrounding it.

Like, what if they'd sent a different cop, though? What if they sent the cop played by, like, Oliver Reed? And he shows up, he's like, he's been married, this cop's been married three times. And they're like, oh, good Lord, this guy's not going to do, Nuada is not going to accept this guy. This cop is not a virgin. I think it's interesting also that Howie is, like, also not, like, super young. That he's like, you know, he's like a 40-something man, but he's now engaged to be married, but is still a virgin. Yeah.

And that's, that seems like that is exactly what they wanted. They must've somehow engineered. They found out like how he is the one we need. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. They pulled it off. They pulled it off. So he tries to argue with them about the principle behind their sacrifice. There will be a lot of exchange here. He tries to argue that he has hope for the resurrection. And he says, even if you kill me now, it is I who will live again in the resurrection of Christ, not your damned apples. Right.

And he also, there's a wonderful moment where he says to Lord Summerisle, he says, I believe in the life eternal as promised to us by our Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord Summerisle says, that is good. For believing what you do, we confer upon you a rare gift these days, a martyr's death. Yeah, that's a line that always stood out to me because it's not completely mocking. Like there's grim comfort in what Summerisle is saying to him, you know? Yeah.

Also in this exchange, there's an interesting moment where Lord Summerall seems to almost through the entire movie have complete mastery of every situation he's in. He never really seems bothered. There's only one moment where maybe he does. I wonder what you think. There's a part where Sergeant Howie is saying, uh, you know, kill, he says, killing me will not bring back your apples. These pagan gods, they're not real. You're all making this up. This is insanity. And then he says, um,

He says, Lord Summerisle, your crops may fail again. And he says, if the crops fail next year, Summerisle, next year the people will kill you on May Day.

And Christopher Lee, it's kind of hard to read his expression in response, but all he says is they will not fail. He doesn't really argue with how it and everybody's standing around there so everybody can hear. It's like how he's giving them the idea if they didn't have it themselves that they're going to have to do that next year. Yeah.

Uh, but, but Summer Isle doesn't argue with him that the people will do that. He just argues that this will work. Killing you will, will not fail. I think, I think Summer Isle is shaken here, uh, by this. I think the master, I mean, not that it's a matter. I do believe that Summer Isle believes in all of this, but I think doubt enters in here because, uh, you know, the crops have failed once and it's, and they're trying to appease these gods and it might not work.

And this is also the moment where I think the conflict in the movie reaches its peak because it's clear that, well, maybe we're just in a position as humans to

that neither faith can protect us anymore? What if we are truly on our own against the approaching darkness? You know, the darkness of a winter beyond which spring may not save us, the darkness of our continual fall from the optimism of the 1960s into the grim realities of the 1970s. Like, what if we don't have these answers and we don't have these powers we can reach out to at all?

What are we going to do? Well, I think this movie does have a sort of answer to that. And the answer is what we will do is every year more desperately increase the violent intensity of our rituals. Yeah. Anyway, Lord Summerisle says, come, it is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man.

And here we get the final revelation, which is just blood chilling. They bring Sergeant Howie up above the top of the hill and he sees out in the, in the field above the cliffs. And you can hear the waves crashing on the rocks down below at the sea. There's this big field and he sees the wicker man itself of the title, a giant man.

man made out of wood a man-shaped figure with sacrificial animals loaded inside in the arms and legs and an open chamber a cell in its chest with the door hanging open on a ladder leading up to it and bonfires lit and ready all around and sergeant howie begins to scream it's it's amazing the way he

He completely loses his composure and he just begins to shriek, oh God, oh Jesus Christ. Yeah. I mean, it becomes obvious that, you know, there wasn't any fruit to harvest. This is all everyone's been working on. Yes. On this island. This is it. This is the product of their labor now. They've been planning this and building the Wicker Man and yeah, and this is it.

Uh, so they load Sergeant Howie inside the wicker man and they light the fires to make him a burnt offering and to their gods. And meanwhile, so like Howie inside, he begins to scream and scream and protest. He also tries to sing the hymn from the church, uh, service at the beginning. He sings the Lord's my shepherd. I'll not want. He leadeth me. He leadeth me. The quiet waters by.

But eventually it leads to him just shrieking out into the sky as the fires climb up higher and higher into the cage. And meanwhile, Lord Summerisle and the people of the island are singing a jolly song. They're out there like holding hands and swinging their hands back and forth and singing, Summer is a coming in, loudly sing cuckoo.

There are so many things I could say about the scene, but it is something you just kind of need to see for itself. We alluded in the last episode to how it is one of the bleakest and most terrifying endings of any movie I can think of. But also it is shot with a real beauty. Like we see the sun setting and there's a kind of

bleariness in the sky as it's all. And we see the, as the, uh, the wicker man burns up and we see it kind of beginning to collapse and come down. Um, and as the, the people are singing and they're singing with, with real joy and hope, um,

And I don't even know how to put it. It's just such a powerful effect. I mean, we're on the shore. We're on the coast of this island. It's like we're on the edge of the world. We're on the edge of time. And yeah, this final closing shot, I think, is probably... It's one of, if not the finest, closing shots I've ever seen in a film, where they're singing, and we're viewing it from behind, and we see the head of the burning wicker man collapse in on itself with kind of a roar and a crackle, and...

as we reveal the setting sun behind it and then you know we we close out we close out the credits and we get one last look at that uh that image that kind of wooden icon of the sublime face of nuada the sun god of these people and we're just left to ponder what it all means do you think it works or do you think that they're going to put christopher lee in the wicker man next year

Oh, I don't know. I mean, I've honestly never really thought about what actually comes after this. Like, I feel like the movie does such a great job of...

Nicely tying up the narrative and then like handing it to us to think about our own self in our own world You know, I mean not to say you can't think about that I was actually reading just the other day that Robin Hardy wrote a novelization of the film that came out years later and there's like a little bit at the end where they find how he's Airplane and it's like implied. Maybe he got away and lived and

I was like, oh my God, what a horrible way to actually, to tack up, ending to tack on to all of this. Like that's, I mean, maybe it works within the context of the written form. I haven't read it, so I can't actually speak to it. But,

In summary, it sounds like a terrible idea. Was it you who was telling me that the producers had the idea because they hated the ending, obviously. The producers had the idea that like, what if a rainstorm breaks out and it puts out the fire in the Wicker Man and saves him? You know, it's a miracle. Oh my gosh, that would have been terrible. Yeah. Like, it's just such a, it's a very bleak ending, but such a perfect ending. Like this, I think that the,

the film would still have its following, obviously, and it would still be great in its own way. But yeah, if you'd gone with a different ending here, it just wouldn't have been punctuated quite the same way. It wouldn't, it would have robbed it of part of its power.

Okay, we've been going a long time. I think we've got to call it on The Wicker Man. All right. Yep, we've loaded it all up in the effigy, and we're going to set it alight now. So we would obviously love to hear from everyone out there. If you have even more thoughts, as we did, about The Wicker Man from 73, or any other version of The Wicker Man, sequels, remakes, and so forth, novelizations, if you have read the novelization, write in and give me more information about what we were talking about here.

All of that is fair game. Other folk horror films you'd like us to cover, just write in. We'd love to hear from you.

you. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. If you want to follow Weird House Cinema online, you can go to STBYM podcast on Instagram, but also on Letterboxd, we are Weird House. That's our username there, and you can follow our list of all the films we've covered so far and sometimes a peek ahead at what comes next.

Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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