Arcadia Discussion Zone

Burning of the Wicker Man on Beltane at Girvan, Scotland (May 1st) 2009

Burning of the Wicker Man on Beltane at Portsmouth, England (May 1st)

Burning of the Wicker Man on Beltane at Kirkcudbright, Scotland (May 1st) 2005

Ending of the film the Wicker Man from 1973

When interviewed about this film Christopher Lee said that it was NOT a horror film. He also said that he was disappointed that the editors had taken a lot out of the final cut.

Sorry Christopher but I personally think that burning someone alive is horrific.

Whoever wrote the screenplay for this film knew about their subject because apparantly the swinging of the arms is part of the ceremony.

It's so good of the Powers-That-Be to give us all a day off on May 1st

One of the best British films ever made, I reckon. If not a "horror movie" in the strictest generic sense of that term, it is certainly horrific, frightening and disturbing. A 30th anniversary DVD release a few years ago added back in some of the material that was taken out. Here's a link to the re-release.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wicker-Man-Spec ... 951&sr=8-3

Note, this is not the same thing as the 2006 re-make with Nicholas Cage, which I've not seen, but is supposed to be absolutely dreadful.



The late Anthony Shaffer. Who also wrote the stage and screen versions of Sleuth (the good one with Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier, not the re-make), among other things. Which kind of underlines the point that "The Wicker Man" is definitely a cut above your average Brit Hammer Horror flick.

All Classic films

The problem I have is that the burning of the Wicker Man is very popular in this day and age.

I once went down the M4 and there was a Wicker Man right next to it.

Never have seen the original movie, but to me in this day and age, it amazes me people still practice this stuff, except maybe throwing live victims in it and setting them afire.

It puzzles me what the attraction for so many people to pagan stuff. I know there have always been followers of the pagan gods in Europe,and these beliefs were brought to the United States by their descendents,
though in the past such beliefs were never discussed or practiced in the open before the general public.

I have no idea what pagan beliefs my mother's relatives in Hungary preformed centuries ago. My dad was german, and I think the old germanic tribes worshiped the sacred oak. I know St.Boniface gave them the Christmas tree.But none of my dad's aunts in Hot Springs did any
ancestral tree hugging. They were devout Catholics and certainly would have been horrifed by anyone suggesting they do so. I guess in our families case, Christianity stuck pretty good with our bunch.
It seems like people are not progressing, but regressing with all this stuff and the way society seems to be going.

Christopher Lee talks about the film the Wicker Man

A must see movie. Not as far fetched as some think

“In the Aude, the peasants rather believe in the malignant spirit, the fairies and the underground geniuses than with the Virgin and the Angels”

Gaston Jourdanne: Contribution to the Folklore of the Aude, 1900

Does that have to be a problem, provided, of course, no people are getting burned in those wooden cages (which they're not, to the best of my knowledge), and the act is merely symbolic?

As for the "powers-that-be" giving us a day off, as you say, May Day has long been celebrated in this country, but has only relatively recently been a national holiday, brought in, I think, in either the late '60s, or mid-'70s, when Michael Foot was Employment Minister in one of the Wilson or Callaghan governments, and inspired by the May Day celebrations in the then Soviet Union. Nothing more secular than a Marxist holiday.

So I'd be inclined to put a more positive spin on the recent examples of wicker man burning that you cite. I see in it a certain defiance of the prevailing culture - both our formal and historic Christian culture, and the de facto secularised one that has gradually supplanted it. I see such ceremonies more as an assertion of ancient traditions and customs, a conscious echo of our pagan past, than anything more sinister, and something entirely divorced from the "powers that be"; more a bottom-up expression of ancient religious impulses.

Not my cup of tea, but where's the harm?