The Wicker Man (1973)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1973
	Director: Robin Hardy (The Wicker Tree)
	Actors: Edward Woodward (Hot Fuzz), Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings 1-3), Diane Cilento
	Country: GB
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 16.01.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Ultra-catholic Seargent Howie (Woodward) flies to a remote island to investigate a dissapearing. He will be tested in his beliefs when facing the population and their pagan rituals.
Review: Some years ago when I started to read about The Wicker Man as reference in cinema articles here and there, I acquired the DVD of the newly re-discovered director's cut. On this DVD the scenes from the short version were in OK quality and the extended scenes in rather bad one. This 40th Anniversary British Blu-ray edition is an upgrade to the DVD one, and I pre-ordered it as soon as I learned about its release more than a year ago. Since I received it, I have been listening a lot to the movie soundtrack which is provided on CD in the box-set. I remembered that it was a good soundtrack from my original visioning and I still enjoy it a lot. It even motivated me to write an article about my collection of movie soundtracks. The two Blu-ray disk provide the "Final Cut" of the movie, supervised by its director, and tons of making-of material, interviews, commentaries... This "Final Cut" is I think the same as I saw on DVD but restored from a better copy (obtained from Roger Corman in the USA), so that the whole movie now looks much better than it did on DVD (but it is still quite fuzzy due to its old age), and the extended scenes are only marginally of lower quality. So what is this movie? I decide to classify it as Drama but it is often sold as Horror, Musical, Exploitation, Black comedy and it is indeed a bit of all. The whole interest of the movie is in the dramatic contrast between the catholic Police officer and the pagan population of the island, illustrated by some nude scenes (for the Exploitation label) or chanted ones (thus the Musical). Sometimes this contrast is so strong that it makes laugh (the Black comedy part) and finally only the ending is slightly Horrific. There are also parts of Thriller and Police investigation. It is definitely a Genre movie because the story is not told in a classic way. The atmosphere is unique  and I enjoyed in particular the chanted scenes which are actually fully part of the action (I didn't remember that) and for which I could now fully appreciate the lyrics thanks to sub-titles. This whole mix made it difficult to sell and distribute the movie in the 70's, and it also makes it difficult to describe it to you. But it quickly attained Cult status and I can confess I regard it like that. It had a strong influence on a generation of movie directors as shown in the Blu-ray extras: Eli Roth (Hostel, The Green Inferno), Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Sightseers), James Watkins (The Woman in Black), ... After visionning I can also notice the influence on Edgar Wright and his Hot Fuzz, police investigation taking place is a small isolated village whose inhabitants follow different rules to ensure the survival of the community, a movie that includes in its cast... Edward Woodward.
Rating: 9 /10