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A script crafted by Anthony Shaffer and featuring Christopher Lee and the lead actor was expected to be a dream project for director Robin Hardy while the filming of The Wicker Man over 50 years ago.

Even though it is now celebrated as an iconic horror film, the extent of turmoil it brought the production team is now revealed in previously unpublished correspondence and early versions of the script.

The Storyline of This Classic Film

The 1973 film revolves around a puritan police officer, portrayed by Edward Woodward, who travels on an isolated Scottish isle looking for a lost child, only to encounter mysterious pagan residents who claim she ever existed. the actress was cast as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who seduces the God-fearing officer, with Lee as the pagan aristocrat.

Creative Conflict Revealed

But the creative atmosphere was tense and contentious, the documents show. In a letter to Shaffer, Hardy stated: “How dare you handle me this way?”

The screenwriter had already made his name with masterpieces such as Sleuth, but his typed draft of The Wicker Man reveals Hardy’s brutal cuts to the screenplay.

Extensive crossings-out feature the aristocrat’s dialogue in the final scene, originally starting: “The child was but the tip of the iceberg – the part that showed. Don’t blame yourself, there was no way you could have known.”

Beyond Writer and Director

Conflict escalated outside the writer and director. One of the producers commented: “The writer’s skill was marred by excessive indulgence that impels him to prove himself too clever by half.”

In a letter to the producers, the director expressed frustration about the film’s editor, the editing specialist: “I believe he appreciates the subject or style of the film … and feels that he is tired of it.”

In one letter, Lee referred to the movie as “appealing and mysterious”, even with “having to cope with a garrulous producer, a stressed screenwriter and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Forgotten Papers Uncovered

An extensive correspondence about the film was part of multiple bags of papers left in the attic of the old house of the director’s spouse, his wife. There were also previously unseen scripts, visual plans, on-set photographs and budget records, which reflect the challenges faced by the team.

The director’s children his two sons, now 60 and 63, used the material for a forthcoming book, titled Children of The Wicker Man. It reveals the intense stress on the director during the making of the film – from his heart attack to financial ruin.

Personal Consequences

Initially, the film failed commercially and, following the disappointment, the director abandoned his wife and his family for a new life in the US. Court documents reveal Caroline as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that he owed her as much as £1m in today’s money. She had to give up the family home and died in the 1980s, in her fifties, battling alcoholism, unaware that her film eventually became a global hit.

His son, an acclaimed documentary maker, described The Wicker Man as “the film that ruined my family”.

When someone reached out by a resident living in the former family home, asking whether he wanted to collect the documents, his first thought was to suggest burning “all of it”.

But then he and his stepbrother Dominic opened up the sacks and understood the importance of their contents.

Insights from the Papers

Dominic, an art historian, commented: “Every key figure are in there. We found an original script by Shaffer, but with dad’s annotations as filmmaker, ‘containing’ the writer’s excess. Because he was formerly a barrister, Shaffer did a lot of overexplaining and dad just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They respected each other and clashed frequently.”

Compiling the publication has brought some “closure”, Justin said.

Financial Struggles

The family never benefited financially from the production, he explained: “This movie has gone on to make a fortune for others. It’s unfair. Dad agreed to take five grand. So he never received any of the upside. The actor never received payment from it either, despite the fact he performed the film for zero, to leave Hammer [Horror films]. So, in many ways, it was a very unkind film.”