THE WICKER MAN 1973
Songs of Summer Isle: Where Old Gods Dance and New Faith Burns
There are films that rattle the senses, and then there are films like The Wicker Man, proto-folk horror gold, both a stunning treasure and a vessel, preserving and displaying the sacred, even haunting heart of folk horror, forever pulsing with a strange, ritualistic life that refuses to be confined by genre or tradition.
Robin Hardy’s 1973 masterpiece burns with pagan radiance, its pastoral serenity and lilting folk songs like honeysuckle on the fence of a field where something dreadful waits, ancient groves and orchard boughs. Harry Waxman’s idyllic visual atmosphere is a key part of the film’s eerie charm, creating a deceptive sense of pastoral beauty that masks the ominous undercurrents of the story. To call this a mere horror film is to miss the urgent energy thrumming beneath every single carefully thought-out frame, as if the island of Summerisle itself sings with the old gods, eerily self-assured, bawdy, reborn in every firelit dance and Summerisle’s fading apple groves.
Into this sun-drenched embrace steps Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward), a mainland policeman as rigid and upright as the iron cross he clings to. Dispatched to this remote Scottish isle in search of the missing girl Rowan Morrison, Howie finds himself an exile, his Christian certainty jarred at every turn by the utopian anarchy of Summerisle, where children laugh as they twine the Maypole and the villagers’ sensual rituals resonate with the pulse of pagan spring. Free love sprawls in the fields, and rites of fertility are celebrated not behind closed doors but beneath the open sky, naked and jubilant as the flames leaping to incite the land to birth.
Howie, part Puritan hero, part unwelcome blasphemer, roams this world as both judge and uncomprehending witness. He moves through sun-dappled groves and firelit ceremonies, his stern abstinence standing in starker contrast with every uninhibited celebration. At the center and in opposition to Howie, reigns Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), regal and wry, whose hair bears the fierce grandeur of a lion’s mane, who guides the island’s pageant of faith with the amused tolerance of a priest and the crafty calculation of a sorcerer. For Howie, every answer sparks only further confusion, his faith tested against a community whose beliefs, rooted in the cycle of earth and sun, harvest and rebirth, seem both radically alien and unnervingly ancient.
Music weaves the villagers together: rowdy pub songs, haunting hymns to nature, the eerily sweet “Maypole Song” sung by children learning about death as merely another turning of the wheel. And most evocatively set to the film’s pulse is the muse, Britt Ekland’s character Willow, who enchants with a hypnotic sensuality, her body swaying against the wall tempting Howie, to the haunting strains of “Sumer Is Icumen In,” a timeless medieval melody arranged by Paul Giovanni. This dance, a silent spell woven through shadow and light, beckons Howie not just with flesh but with the ancient rites of desire. Later, as a young boy loses his virginity to Willow, the music deepens, an intimate, trembling passage ‘Gently Johnny’ marking the painful initiation into manhood, underscored by Giovanni’s ethereal, unsettling score that calls us back to the seductive, dangerous pulse of nature’s oldest rhythms. The land feels alive, the boundary between flesh and field dissolving in scenes of maypole dances and orgiastic celebration. Here, faith is written into evocative mask and burning pyre, and for Howie, the revelation comes too late, the logic of sacrifice inexorable. He is to be the lamb led not by cruelty but by the primal conviction of those who truly believe.
At last, crowned the fool, Howie is led to his fated appointment: the towering wicker man that gives the film its name. Here is horror wrought not from monsters or fiends, but from ideals and rituals, as Howie’s prayers echo against the Summerislers’ songs and the harvest’s promise hangs in the air like the scent of rotting apples and spring blossoms. In this final moment, Howie stands not as martyr or savior, but as the unwitting offering, his voice rising in psalm as the flames claim both flesh and faith, consumed by the gods old and new.
The Wicker Man endures because it refuses easy answers. Pagan rites and Christian conviction collide on Summerisle’s shore in a primal contest that is as much about fear and desire as it is about faith. The land and its traditions are neither villain nor victim; they are the soil from which horror and beauty both grow. And as the smoke rises, folk song mingling with the screams of sacrifice, we are left on that threshold, haunted, shocked, exhilarated, questioning whether any faith, when absolute, can survive the wild, ungovernable earth.
Within the next days or so here at The Last Drive In, I’ll be slipping beneath the willow boughs and stepping deep into Summerisle’s fiery green heart, following the echo of Maypole songs and the flickering firelight that stokes ancient rites still pulsing with untamed spirit. I’ll wander alongside the island’s strange celebrations, from the innocent, sweet songs of children weaving their dances, to the fierce and carnal energy of nighttime fertility rites, where bodies move free and flames climb toward the night sky. I’ll trace the old ways through sacred fields and waters, where every flowering branch shelters secrets of transformation and duty, and every festival hums with the breath of ancient gods. Get ready for a journey where primal masks are worn and sacrifices kindled, where the air holds a yearning, because in The Wicker Man, the old paths never disappear. They lie smoldering beneath the ash, waiting to burst back into flame, calling us again and again to a world where nature, desire, and faith collide in haunting, beautiful mystery.
Stay tuned. Very soon, in the next week or so, I’ll be setting fire beneath my words for a film that carries an eternal flame of visual fascination. The Wicker Man’s haunting melody has sung to me across the years, not for the moments of shock but for its evocative power: the eerie beauty of its music, the striking boldness of its imagery, and the quietly persistent voice that calls to something deep within me.
THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW 1971
For me, Piers Haggard’s 1971 film The Blood on Satan’s Claw really stands out as a key film in British folk horror, a genre that fused rural setting with occult dread to profound and unsettling effect. Haggard, who worked primarily in television, crafted a deliberately atmospheric period piece set in early 18th-century England, a time when superstition and emerging Enlightenment rationalism clashed amid the countryside’s isolation. The screenplay, originally penned by Robert Wynne-Simmons as an anthology called Satan’s Skin, was reshaped by Haggard into a cohesive narrative that explores the eruption of a demonic curse following the discovery of a distorted, fur-covered demonic hand by local farmer Ralph Gower (Barry Andrews), which becomes the source of the evil influence spreading through the village.
This eerie find unleashes a creeping possession among the village’s young people, particularly a sinister coven led by the enigmatic Angel Blake (Linda Hayden), whose witchcraft and cult rituals swell into violent acts of sacrifice, murder, and sexual corruption.
Visually, the film owes much to the expressive cinematography of Dick Bush, whose painterly compositions and low angles emphasize the wild, pastoral landscapes of the Chiltern Hills, integrating natural beauty with visceral dread. The look is sunlit yet unnerving, infusing the English countryside with a palpable sense of looming evil, where ancient trees and ruined churches become crucibles for diabolical rites. The haunting score by Marc Wilkinson further saturates the atmosphere, underscoring everything with unsettling melodies that enhance the mixing of pagan mystique and brutal hysteria.
Bush is known for his inventive and visually arresting work. Beyond The Blood on Satan’s Claw, some of his notable credits include Ken Russell’s Savage Messiah (1972), Mahler (1974), and Tommy (1975). He also worked on Sorcerer (1977), directed by William Friedkin, which is widely considered a remake or a close adaptation of The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la peur), the 1953 French film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Bush also shot The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) and Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm (1988), a film I recently discussed here.
The story unfolds gradually: after Ralph’s gruesome discovery and the judge’s (Patrick Wymark) initial dismissal, unsettling incidents escalate, Rosalind Barton (Tamara Ustinov) descends into madness, and after a disturbing experience in the attic room, she is attacked by a creature, with a scene where she later reveals a demonic claw instead of a normal hand.
Children grow patches of fur symbolizing their possession and corruption; Angel’s seductions and control lead to ritualistic games and gruesome murders, including the death of young Mark Vespers. Most notably, the group captures and brutally assaults Cathy Vespers, Mark’s sister, during a harrowing ritual at the church ruins, where she is murdered while being flayed of the fur patches symbolizing the demon’s skin.
The village’s futile attempts to reason with or contain the spreading darkness further illustrate the theme of failed authority and escalating chaos, which culminates with the return of the London judge (Wymark), who, after studying witchcraft texts, adopts a pragmatic yet open stance combining Enlightenment skepticism with occult horror.
The judge’s approach combines disbelief with ritual knowledge as he confronts the demonic Behemoth with a giant cross-sword hybrid weapon, when it finally bursts forth in its full monstrous embodiment, a primal, furred terror reclaimed from ancient darkness, towering and unstoppable, the very embodiment of nature’s wrath and demonic fury turned into flesh—impaling and incinerating the creature to lift the infernal curse.
The film’s tone is disturbing and unsettling, blending horror with a critique of social order, gender dynamics, and the tension between old pagan beliefs and modern rationalism. Its treatment of satanic cult worship echoed the early 1970s’ fascination and panic around occult practices, marking it as an influential piece in the folk horror tradition alongside Witchfinder General 1968 and The Wicker Man 1973. The raw depiction of youth corrupted by evil is often expressed through chilling sexual violence and the eerie sense of communal paranoia, offering a potent, if sometimes uncomfortable, reflection on control, fear, and repression in rural England.
Linda Hayden’s Angel embodies a chilling blend of innocent allure and merciless darkness. Patrick Wymark is perfect as the Judge, conveying the conflicted figure of the Enlightenment man battling forces he neither fully believes nor can dismiss.
The Blood on Satan’s Claw has stayed with me for its visually striking, thematically complex narrative, a classic of British folk horror, notable for its distinctive blend of superstition, resignation, the historical setting, atmospheric dread, and exploration of the era’s cultural tensions. I’m drawn to the way it portrays witchcraft not just as a supernatural threat but as a symbol of societal anxieties about youth, sexuality, and the uneasy transition from old-world beliefs to modernity.
