with Dmetri Kakmi

The Wicker Man

UK 1973

Director: Robin Hardy

Cast: Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt, Assorted Naked Pagans

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Warning: Deleterious Kukurbit, as I call him, did not write this month’s column. I did. My name is Mr Sozzled Scribbler. You may call me SS. Mr Kukurbit is off-colour and he asked me to assist in this dubious literary effort. He dictated, I typed.

Mr Kukurbit said The Wicket Man is not a cricket film, as I thought, but a great fuck horror. 

I beg your pardon. He said folk horror. F-O-L-K. Not F-U-C-K. You must forgive me. His Greek accent is so thick I can barely understand his garbled pronouncements. Why don’t these new Australians learn to speak English?

Oh, dear, his wee feelings are hurt. The ingrate says he is offended and I must apologise or he will have me skewered on a souvlaki. We’ll see about that, you freeloader. While he hisses and spits like Melina Mercouri from his barren love couch, I slip eight Valiums into his sour cherry juice and watch him glide blissfully down the River Styx in Mr Charon’s arms. See you later, malaka. 

Now that he’s out of the way, we can talk seriously about The Wicked Man. I know of no better way to achieve these ends than to go directly to the source. Closing my eyes and chanting great and terrible Hebraic incantations, I summoned Mr Christopher Lee, star of the filum, from beyond the gravy.

To my surprise he appeared dressed as a woman in a terrible off-the-rack Kmart dress and a bad wig of long brown hair. He looked like Cher on a bad day.

‘Christopher, you transitioned,’ I cried. ‘Should I address you as Christine or Leanne?’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ he snapped. ‘I appear before you as Lord Summerisle, my character in The Wicker Man, participating in the pagan May Day parade as a crossdressing mummer.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I didn’t realise this was one of your mummy films.’

‘Not mummy, fool. Mummer. It’s an archaic term for a stage actor or mime. I, as Lord Summerisle wear a dress and wig to lead the islanders to the pagan panegyric.’

‘As I understand it, the residents of Summerisle worship Nuada, the sun god.’

‘Wrong. Now that I have passed to the other side, I have access to arcane knowledge hitherto hidden from mankind. The filmmakers got it wrong. Nuada was not the sun god. He was a Celtic mythology king. As sun worshippers, the residents of Summerisle should, by rights, worship a goddess such as Grainee, who is associated with the sun and fertility. Hence the crossdressing.’

‘Did God reveal this great mystery to you in a private session?’

‘No, I got it from Google AI.’ Christopher Lee arrogantly tossed back an entanglement of tresses worthy of Sadako. ‘Furthermore,’ added he, ‘this paean to paganism is the bastard child of Brood on Satan’s Craw (I think that’s what he said). Released a mere two years apart these two motion pictures usher in a new era in English filmmaking and constitute the fledgling beginnings of the amorphous sub-genre known as British folk horror.’

‘Aside from wandering around in one’s birthday suit and having sexual congress au plein air what constitutes folk horror?’

Christopher Lee drew a deep breath and made the following long-winded declaration: 

‘An evocation of chthonic forces from the nether regions. A tale that arises from the depths of Mother Earth, from forest, rock, deepest dell, and raging river, from the very loins of the stars themselves, I tell you, to challenge the heinous hegemony of profligate sky gods and miserable monotheists.’

A ham in life is a ham for ever, I thought. 

Christopher Lee fixed me with a fearsome gaze. ‘I can hear your thoughts.’

‘Sincerest apologies, Your Royal Prickliness,’ I quoth. ‘I was actually thinking of…. um…Vincent Price.’

‘Now there’s a ham if ever there was one.’

You can talk, I thought.

‘Heard that,’ he snapped.

Christopher Lee started juddering along the edges, which told me he was either pissed off with me or he would fade away as surely as Britt Ekland’s beauty. Quickly, before he returned to the Elstree studios in the sky, I asked him why The Wicked Man is famous. 

‘Because,’ said he, ‘it is an unusual amalgam of parts that break the mould of the traditional British horror movie and raise it to the level of art.’

‘In other words, it’s not as shithouse as the Hammer horror films you made.’

Christopher Lee shot to his ethereal feet. ‘Sir, you go too far!’

‘I apologise, Your Royal Darkness. Corridors of Blood is a venture worthy of Shakespeare.’

‘Of course it is.’ A gentleman to the end, Christopher Lee resumed to his seat. 

For no other reason than to win back his trust I told him that Mr Kukurbit visited Kirkcudbright, one of the film’s locations, in southwest Scotland, in 2023. ‘He was so excited he peed his designer Comme des Garcons pants.’

Christopher Lee gazed fondly at the reclining Greek on the bed. ‘I like the boy. Do you think he’d like to run naked through the woods with me?’

‘Been there, done that, I assure you. Let’s get back to the Basket Case Man.’

‘The Wicker Man,’ Christopher Lee snapped, ‘is renown for reasons too numerous to enumerate. I will say, however, that at its best it melds different styles of filmmaking to create a cogent, compelling compendium of horrors that challenge convention and take place in broad daylight. It is part documentary, part anthropological essay, part narrative fiction, part folklore and part pagan preamble, with a musical score that is distinctive in the genre. Then, of course, there’s the famous ending.’

‘What was it like acting with Britt Ekland?’

‘Ah, dear Britt! She hadn’t a brain cell in her head, you know. She actually required a voice double and a body double for the film. It’s a miracle she knew how to put one foot in front of the other. The best that can be said about her is she performed a dazzling nude dance that melted my reading glasses and broiled my eyeballs. I don’t know how Edward Woodward resisted her charms. No wonder he goes up in flames during the climax.’

This was a good place to end our black sabbath. After all my hard-hitting questions, I thought it best to end with levity. 

’What did Noel Coward say about Edward Woodward’s name?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. What did Noel Coward say about Edward Woodward’s name?’’ asked Christopher Lee.

‘He said Edward Woodward’s name sounds like “a fart in the bath”.’

Christopher Lee’s demoniac laughter faded down the long black ear horn that leads to the final resting home for overrated actors. There to join luminaries such as Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Cushing.

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Dmetri Kakmi is the author of The Woman in the Well, The Door and Other Uncanny Tales, Mother Land, and When We Were Young (as editor). His essays and short stories appear in anthologies. The Sozzled Scribbler  is a deranged psychopath. The less said about him the better.