Drugstore.com Coupons
Howie soon realizes that the island is filled with insolent folks who mock his authority and wordlessly conspire to sabotage his investigation. The populace also participates in lurid pagan rituals that effectively traumatize Howie. At night, Howie is tempted by the landlord's hottie daughter Willow (Britt Ekland), who sings like a siren, naked as a jaybird, in the next room.
Howie's investigation leads to the island's governor for life, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), whose ancestors purchased the agrarian island and introduced a religion that worships a harvest god. The people are fully committed to the pagan religion, and soon despise Howie's uptight Christianity, and his meddling, and his threats of pending police interference from the 'mainland.'
Events culminate in an elaborate May Day celebration where Howie believes that Rowan will become a human sacrifice. To his shock, however, the townspeople have found a much better candidate for their offering to the harvest god.
Initially rated 'X' by the United Kingdom film board, times have since sufficiently changed that by the time of a 2002 reissue, the movie was rated only UK:15.
Per imdb.com, there are at least three different running times for this film, the 87 minute theatrical version, a 95 minute version in chronological order, and a 102 minute "director's cut." I have only seen the version as released to theaters.
How others will see it. At one time regarded as a cult film, The Wicker Man has grown in influence and attention to the point that it has received considerably more imdb.com votes than the two preceding films of writer Anthony Shaffer, Sleuth and Frenzy. The former is the highly regarded battle of wits between Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, the latter is easily the best of the post-Psycho Hitchcock films.
The imdb user ratings are consistently very high, even for the over-45 crowd that might be expected to react to the island's hedonistic activities in a manner similar to that of Sergeant Howie. Women like it even more than men, which implies that they (especially) share the island's cunning and sadistic attitude toward naive interloper Howie.
How I felt about it. Which is mildly disturbing. Do we, the audience, actually enjoy watching Howie become a human sacrifice to the harvest god? Seeing it for the first time, is our only concern that the film will 'chicken out' and impose an ending that suits the old Hollywood Production Code? If we delight in Howie's fall, what does that say about us?
Well, first of all, The Wicker Man is only a movie. And it doesn't make much sense at first. Gradually, we partially understand the strange behavior of the people observed by Howie. Interviews of Lord Summerisle somewhat explain their purpose, and Howie's May Day reading assignment also help.
Another way to explain the film is that the populace is sexually uninhibited, while Sergeant Howie seeks to remove all sexuality outside the sanctity of marriage. Maybe our pleasure in Howie's comeuppance isn't based on sadism after all. We merely prefer the island's philosophy to his.