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A script penned by Anthony Shaffer and featuring a horror icon and the lead actor could have been an ideal venture for filmmaker 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as an iconic horror film, the extent of misery it brought the production team has now been revealed in previously unpublished letters and script drafts.

The Plot of This Classic Film

This 1973 movie centers on a devout policeman, played by Edward Woodward, who arrives on a remote Scottish island in search of a missing girl, only to encounter sinister local pagans who claim the girl was real. Britt Ekland was cast as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who seduces the God-fearing officer, with Lee as the pagan aristocrat.

Production Conflict Revealed

But the creative atmosphere was tense and contentious, according to the letters. In a message to the writer, the director stated: “How could you treat me like this?”

Shaffer was already famous with acclaimed works like Sleuth, but his script 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 only a small part – the part that showed. Don’t blame yourself, it was impossible for you to know.”

Apart from the Creative Duo

Tensions boiled over outside the main pair. One of the producers commented: “Shaffer’s talent has been offset by excessive indulgence that drove him to prove himself overly smart.”

In a letter to the producers, the director expressed frustration about the editor, Eric Boyd-Perkins: “I believe he likes the subject or style of the film … and thinks that he has had enough of it.”

In one letter, Christopher Lee referred to the movie as “appealing and mysterious”, even with “having to cope with a talkative producer, an underpaid and harassed writer and a well-paid but difficult director”.

Lost Documents Found

An extensive correspondence about the film was part of six sack-loads of papers forgotten in the attic of the old house of Hardy’s third wife, Caroline. There were also previously unseen scripts, visual plans, production photos and budget records, which show the struggles experienced by the film-makers.

Hardy’s sons Justin and Dominic, currently in their sixties, have drawn on the material for a forthcoming book, 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 financial ruin.

Family Consequences

At first, the movie was a box office flop and, following of its failure, the director left his wife and their children for a fresh start in the US. Legal letters reveal Caroline as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that Hardy was indebted to her up to a large sum. She was forced to sell their house and died in the 1980s, in her fifties, suffering from alcoholism, unaware that her film eventually became an international success.

His son, an acclaimed documentary maker, called The Wicker Man as “the film that messed up my family”.

When someone reached out by a woman living in the former family home, inquiring if he wanted to collect the sacks of papers, his first thought was to suggest destroying “the bloody things”.

But then he and his brother examined the bags and understood the significance of what they held.

Insights from the Documents

His brother, a scholar, commented: “Every key figure is represented. We discovered the first draft by Shaffer, but with dad’s annotations as director, ‘controlling’ the writer’s excess. Due to his legal background, Shaffer tended to overwrite and his father just went ‘edit, edit, edit’. They loved each other and clashed frequently.”

Compiling the publication provided some “resolution”, the son said.

Financial Struggles

The family never benefited financially from the film, he added: “This movie has gone on to make a fortune for others. It’s beyond a joke. Dad agreed to take five grand. Thus, he missed out on the profits. Christopher Lee never received payment from it as well, despite the fact that he did the film for zero, to get out of Hammer [Horror films]. Therefore, it was a very unkind film.”