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A script written by Anthony Shaffer and featuring Christopher Lee and the lead actor could have been an ideal venture for filmmaker Robin Hardy while the filming of The Wicker Man more than half a century ago.

Even though today it is revered as an iconic horror film, the degree of turmoil it caused the production team is now revealed in newly discovered letters and script drafts.

The Plot of The Wicker Man

The 1973 film centers on a puritan police officer, played by Edward Woodward, who arrives on an isolated Scottish isle in search of a lost child, but finds mysterious pagan residents who claim the girl was real. Britt Ekland was cast as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who tempts the God-fearing officer, with Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle.

Production Tensions Revealed

However, the working environment was frayed and contentious, the documents show. In a message to Shaffer, Hardy wrote: “How could you handle me like this?”

Shaffer 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 Summerisle’s lines in the ending, which would have begun: “The girl was only a small part – the part that showed. Don’t blame yourself, it was impossible for you to know.”

Apart from the Creative Duo

Conflict escalated outside the writer and director. A producer wrote: “The writer’s skill was marred by a self-indulgence that drove him to prove himself too clever by half.”

In a note to the production team, Hardy complained about the film’s editor, the editing specialist: “I don’t think he likes the subject or approach of the picture … and feels that he is tired of it.”

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

Forgotten Documents Uncovered

An extensive correspondence relating to the film was among multiple bags of documents left in the loft of the former home of Hardy’s third wife, Caroline. There were also previously unseen scripts, storyboards, production photos and budget records, many of which show the challenges experienced by the team.

Hardy’s sons his two sons, now 60 and 63, have drawn on the material for an upcoming publication, titled Children of The Wicker Man. The book uncovers the extreme pressures on the director throughout the making of the movie – including a health crisis to bankruptcy.

Personal Fallout

Initially, the movie failed commercially and, following the disappointment, Hardy left his wife and his family for a new life in America. Legal letters reveal Caroline as an unacknowledged producer and that he was indebted to her up to £1m in today’s money. She had to give up the family home and died in 1984, aged 51, battling alcoholism, never knowing that her film eventually became an international success.

His son, a Bafta-nominated historian film-maker, described The Wicker Man as “the film that ruined our family”.

When he was contacted by a resident living in the former family home, inquiring if he wished to retrieve the documents, his initial reaction was to suggest burning “all of it”.

But afterward he and his brother examined the bags and realised the importance of their contents.

Insights from the Documents

Dominic, a scholar, commented: “All the big players are in there. We discovered the first draft by the writer, but with his father’s notes as director, ‘containing’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Due to his legal background, Shaffer tended to overwrite and dad just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They sort of loved each other and clashed frequently.”

Writing the book has brought some “closure”, the son stated.

Financial Hardships

The family never benefited monetarily from the production, he added: “The bloody film has gone on to make a fortune for others. It’s unfair. Dad agreed to take five grand. Thus, he missed out on any of the upside. The actor never received payment from it either, despite the fact he performed his role for zero, to leave Hammer [Horror films]. Therefore, it’s been a very unkind film.”