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A screenplay penned by Anthony Shaffer and featuring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward could have been an ideal venture for filmmaker Robin Hardy during the filming of The Wicker Man over 50 years ago.

Although today it is celebrated as an iconic horror film, the degree of turmoil it caused the production team is now revealed in previously unpublished correspondence and script drafts.

The Storyline of This Classic Film

The 1973 film revolves around a puritan police officer, played by the actor, who arrives on a remote Scottish island in search of a lost child, but finds sinister local pagans who deny 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 Tensions Uncovered

However, the working environment was frayed and fractious, the documents show. In a letter to Shaffer, Hardy wrote: “How dare you treat me this way?”

The screenwriter was already famous with acclaimed works like Sleuth, but his script of The Wicker Man shows the director’s harsh edits to the screenplay.

Extensive crossings-out feature Summerisle’s lines in the final scene, originally starting: “The girl was only a small part – the visible element. Don’t blame yourself, it was impossible for you to know.”

Apart from Writer and Director

Conflict escalated beyond the writer and director. A producer commented: “Shaffer’s talent was marred by a self-indulgence that drove him to show he was too clever by half.”

In a note to the production team, the director expressed frustration about the editor, the editing specialist: “I believe he likes the theme or approach of the picture … and feels that he is tired of it.”

In one letter, Lee referred to the film as “alluring and enigmatic”, even with “having to cope with a talkative producer, a stressed screenwriter and a well-paid but difficult director”.

Forgotten Papers Uncovered

An extensive correspondence relating to the production was part of six sack-loads of papers left in the attic of the old house of Hardy’s third wife, Caroline. Included were previously unseen scripts, visual plans, production photos and budget records, which show the challenges faced by the film-makers.

Hardy’s sons Justin and Dominic, now 60 and 63, used these documents for a forthcoming book, called Children of The Wicker Man. The book uncovers the extreme pressures faced by Hardy during the making of the film – from his heart attack to financial ruin.

Family Consequences

Initially, the film was a box office flop and, following the disappointment, the director left his spouse and his family for a fresh start in the US. Legal letters show his wife as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that Hardy owed her up to a large sum. She was forced to give up their house and passed away in 1984, in her fifties, suffering from alcoholism, never knowing that the project eventually became a global hit.

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

When someone reached out by a woman who had moved into the former family home, asking whether he wished to collect the documents, his initial reaction was to suggest destroying “all of it”.

But afterward he and his brother opened up the sacks and realised the significance of their contents.

Insights from the Papers

Dominic, a scholar, said: “Every key figure are in there. We discovered the first draft by Shaffer, but with dad’s annotations as filmmaker, ‘containing’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Because he was formerly a barrister, he tended to overwrite and his father just went ‘edit, edit, edit’. They sort of loved each other and clashed frequently.”

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

Monetary Hardships

The family never benefited financially from the film, he added: “The bloody film has gone on to make so much money for other people. It’s beyond a joke. Dad agreed to take five grand. Thus, he missed out on the profits. Christopher Lee never received any money from it either, despite the fact that he did his role for zero, to get out of his previous studio. So, in many ways, it’s been a harsh experience.”