🔗 Share this article Revealing this Struggle Among Director and Writer of The Wicker Man A script crafted by the acclaimed writer and starring a horror icon and Edward Woodward was expected to be an ideal venture for filmmaker Robin Hardy during the production of The Wicker Man more than 50 years ago. Although it is now revered as a cult horror masterpiece, the degree of misery it caused the production team has now been uncovered in newly discovered letters and early versions of the script. The Storyline of The Wicker Man The 1973 film revolves around a puritan police officer, portrayed by the actor, who travels on an isolated Scottish isle looking for a missing girl, only to encounter mysterious pagan residents who claim the girl was real. Britt Ekland was cast as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who seduces the God-fearing officer, with Lee as Lord Summerisle. Production Conflict Uncovered But the creative atmosphere was tense and contentious, the documents show. In a message to the writer, the director stated: “How could you treat me like this?” The screenwriter was already famous with acclaimed works like Sleuth, but his script of The Wicker Man reveals Hardy’s brutal cuts to the screenplay. Extensive crossings-out feature Summerisle’s lines in the ending, which would have begun: “The child was only a small part – the visible element. Do not reproach yourself, there was no way for you to know.” Apart from the Creative Duo Conflict escalated outside the main pair. A producer wrote: “Shaffer’s talent was marred by a self-indulgence that impels him to show he was overly smart.” In a note to the producers, Hardy expressed frustration about the editor, Eric Boyd-Perkins: “I believe he appreciates the subject or style of the picture … and feels that he has had enough of it.” In a correspondence, Lee described the film as “appealing and mysterious”, despite “having to cope with a talkative producer, a stressed screenwriter and an overpaid and hostile director”. Forgotten Documents Found An extensive correspondence about the production was among multiple bags of papers left in the loft of the former home of the director’s spouse, Caroline. Included were previously unseen scripts, storyboards, production photos and financial accounts, many of which show the challenges faced by the team. Hardy’s sons his two sons, currently in their sixties, have drawn on these documents for a forthcoming book, titled Children of The Wicker Man. The book uncovers the extreme pressures on the director during the making of the movie – including a health crisis to bankruptcy. Family Consequences At first, the movie was a box office flop and, following of its failure, Hardy abandoned his wife and their children for a fresh start in the US. Legal letters reveal his wife as an unacknowledged producer and that he owed her up to £1m in today’s money. She had to sell their house and died in the 1980s, aged 51, suffering from alcoholism, never knowing that the project eventually became an international success. Justin, a Bafta-nominated historian film-maker, described The Wicker Man as “the film that ruined my family”. When someone reached out by a woman living in his mother’s old house, asking whether he wanted to retrieve the sacks of papers, his initial reaction was to suggest burning “the bloody things”. But then he and his stepbrother Dominic examined the bags and realised the importance of their contents. Insights from the Documents His brother, a scholar, commented: “All the big players are in there. We found an original script by the writer, but with his father’s notes as director, ‘containing’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Because he was formerly a barrister, he tended to overwrite and his father just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They respected each other and hated each other.” Writing the book provided some “resolution”, Justin said. Financial Hardships The family never benefited monetarily from the production, he explained: “The bloody film has gone on to make a fortune for others. It’s beyond a joke. Dad agreed to take five grand. Thus, he missed out on the profits. The actor also did not get any money from it either, although he performed the film for zero, to get out of Hammer [Horror films]. Therefore, it was a very unkind film.”