Weirdhouse Cinema: The Wicker Man (1973) - part 2 - Stuff To Blow Your Mind

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
And this is Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
two of our Weird House Cinema feature on the nineteen
seventy three British folk horror classic The wicker Man, starring
Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward, and Diane Chillento. Normally on Weird
House we keep it to one episode per movie, but
we figured we would have more than usual to say

(00:35):
about The wicker Man, especially since it's one of my
personal favorite films. I don't know, is it one of
yours too, Rob, I don't want to speak for you.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, I would say it's in there somewhere. You know.
It's a film that I used to own on VHS
that had a profound impact on me when I first
watched it, and even though I hadn't seen it in
many years before rewatching it for this episode, it certainly
has resonated with me. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
So if we were going to do it in one episode,
I think there was extreme danger of that becoming like
a three hour episode. So it's a good thing we
split it up so we aired part one last week.
If you haven't heard part one, please go back and
listen to that first. And also if you haven't seen
the film, let me reiterate what I said last time.
As always, there are going to be extensive spoilers. In

(01:20):
our discussion, we usually talk about the plot in pretty
great detail, and The wicker Man is a movie that
I think really benefits from viewing with no foreknowledge or
as little fore knowledge as possible. So if you have
an appetite for this kind of thing, if you're comfortable
with seventies full corror themes. In general, R rated content
are rated in terms of sex and violence. Strangely, I

(01:43):
don't recall much foul language in the movie. If any,
they say fallus that's true. Yeah, But as long as
you're comfortable with that kind of material and it's the
sort of thing you'd be into, I would recommend watching
this movie without reading anything or listening any further.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
All right, you've been so.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Last time, of course, we talked about the cast and crew,
the connections, and we discussed some general thoughts about what
makes The Wickerman unique. For instance, the question what genre
is this? It's often called a horror movie, but I
think that is based largely on the last five to
ten minutes of the film. For most of the movie's

(02:23):
run time, it really doesn't feel like horror. It feels
more like a religiously themed mystery musical. So it really
is kind of its own genre. There is no other
movie quite like it. We also talked about the way
it creates this tangled garden of religious themes, with the
strained interactions between Christianity and some strange variant of Celtic

(02:47):
Paganism that seems to be partially made up for the movie,
and it achieves a lot of thoughtful commentary without ever
reaching an overly simplistic message. It's not like a thesis movie.
We talked about the weird and from my perspective, refreshingly
unusual character dynamics. For example, it's a detective story, but

(03:10):
the detective protagonist is largely unlikable. He's rude, puritanical, high handed,
and not even especially skilled at detective work, you know,
kind of contrasting with the Sherlock Holmes how he sergeant,
how he misses a lot of things in his investigation,
and yet he seems to be possibly the only person

(03:30):
in the movie who's actually trying to help an endangered child.
On the other hand, you've got the structural antagonists of
the detective story, like the local Pagans of summer Isle,
mostly rendered as friendly, fascinating, thoughtful, even joyful souls, and
yet we're constantly suspicious that they're up to something terrible.
So it really always kind of keeps you off balance.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
You know, I had a thought I wonder First of all,
I was wondering if anyone has ever pulled a reverse
wicker Man in a film. But then this idea solidified
a little bit, and I realized I would kind of
like to see a show in which a detective from
a secluded pagan island comes to the mainland to investigate

(04:14):
a crime, and we get we get this sort of
fish out of water tail. But in this case, the
detective is really good at what they do. But they're
also you know, they're they're bringing a totally different mindset,
and you know, they're handling frogs and whatnot. I think
there's a lot of room for amusement there.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
I mean, I would love that, but I think that
would be a lot more similar to the kind of
detective heroes were used to a kind of Oh yeah,
a smart, a smart, admirable in some way, likable, outsider protagonist.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, for the most part. But the twist in this
is he or she or they solves every case with
human sacrifice. That's that's that's how we arrive. It's formulaic,
you'll get the same thing every episode, but I think
people get behind it.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
People want something they can count on. I mean that's
part of you know, people like the murder mystery because
it's like it's got a surprise every time, but it's
also a very a very familiar format, so it's both
surprising and familiar every time. I think that's part of
the appeal. So yeah, I think you're onto something. We
also talked last time extensively about the role of music

(05:23):
in The Wicker Man and the fact that the movie
features not only in scene diegetic music where the characters
stand around playing musical instruments and singing songs, but it
actually has several scenes that are essentially musical numbers like
in a musical movie, where the characters break the fourth wall,
sing directly into the camera and they're singing along to

(05:45):
music playing not in the world of the movie but
on the soundtrack. So I don't know, it's just like again,
not another horror movie like that I can think of.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, it really does stand alone.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
But that gets us caught up to today. So, Robert,
are you ready to talk about the plot of The Wickerman.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, let's get into it.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
We are going to be. But by the way, this
came up last time, that there are multiple cuts of
the movie out there. I think we're going to be
talking about what's known as the final cut, which was
released in twenty thirteen. Any notes on the history of
the different cuts you want to talk about. If not,
that's okay.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
I mean, I'll be honest. Once there are more than
two cuts of a film, in consideration, I begin to
lose interest in the whole situation. Like if there are
two cuts, I can get more into it, like which
one's the good cut, which one's the bad one? What
does this one say versus this one? But when there
are three or more, it gets a little annoying for me.
But with The Wickerman, Yeah, there are also these added wrinkles.

(06:43):
There are all these loose ends of hearsay and perhaps
even movie myth about lost and destroyed footage, and I'm
not sure where the truth ultimately lies on all of it.
But yeah, essentially we have three cuts to consider, the
original theatrical cut eighty eight minutes, the director's cut ninety
nine minutes, said to be more of like a work print,
and then the final cut ninety four minutes, and this

(07:05):
has been this is said to be the director's preferred
cut of the picture. So I thought it was great
works for me, and I think the only if memory serves.
The only thing we're really missing out on from that
full ninety nine minute cut is some preliminary stuff with
Howie before he leaves for the island.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Oh, I don't know if we need that.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah, there's plenty to go on to know about him
and the world he came from.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Do we need to see him getting called into the
chief's office and being like, I got a case for you. Yeah,
I need you back on the force. I don't know that.
I don't know that's what's in there.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, you know, check what Check for details about the
runtime before you watch it, But I think the final
cut is widely available. This may be, in fact the
primary means of watching it these days.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
So we begin on a black screen with an image
of a godlike face, carved in a wooden dit suggesting
Celtic folk art as it's supposed to be. I think
a god of the Sun with dreamy, placid, upturned eyes.
And then the camera zooms through the darkness to the
wooden face, and when it gets closer and eventually fills

(08:14):
the screen, we can make out that the god's mouth
is ever so slightly bent into this little smile, not
like he's beaming with happiness, but instead like like he
knows something, like he's got a little joke. At least
that's how it looks to me.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, yeah, this is we will we will come to
know this deity as Nuanna. However, it is just a
super weird opening for this picture. This just appears out
of darkness without commentary, and you know, we later get
the idea that it's a solar deity, but at the
time it's like it is the at least part arboreal.

(08:52):
Is he fungal because he has this very woody look?
And I do agree with you about the about the face.
You know, the face is sublime and all knowing calm,
but also a little bit smug.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah, and once you've seen the whole movie and the ending,
I think the image of him having a little private
joke that's in this ever so slight smile. That makes
more sense.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
This is also the god of the Teletubbies. Right. Isn't
there a sun face that they also worship? Is there? Really?
I think so? Yeah, there's like a there's like a
child's face on the sun and they worship it. I think.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Is that part of the fundamentalist Christian complain against them?

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Probably?

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Yeah, they're paganism. It's the Wickerman the Wicker Tubbies. Yes,
all right, Well, anyway we come into the prologue. Now
this cut does have some things with Sergeant Howie before
he leaves for the island, but it doesn't have him
like at the station like we were joking about it. Instead,
we begin by hearing Christian churchgoers singing a hymn which

(09:51):
is based on the words of Psalm twenty three. That's
the one that says the Lord's my shepherd, shall I
shall not want? He makes me to lie down by
green pas as he leads me beside still waters, and
so forth and so. Text on the black screen tells
us Sunday, the twenty ninth of April nineteen seventy three.
The camera comes up on a church congregation singing from

(10:14):
their hymnal. The man in the middle of the frame
is Sergeant Howie, our protagonist, played by Edward Woodward. I
would say modestly handsome Scottish police detective of about forty.
I think he's in his early forties, dressed in a
suit for church, and there's a woman standing next to
him sharing his hymnal. Rob, did you take this woman

(10:34):
to be his fiance?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, yeah, that's the impression I got based on this scene,
and then some stuff that the character says later on.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, So they trade a little smile in between lines
of the song, and then the camera pulls back and
shows us the whole congregation. It's a it's a lot
of very old people with white and gray hair.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
You know.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
It's a maybe stereotypically old church crowd, especially for people
of the the mainline Protestant denominations.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah. Yeah, not to be confused with the afternoon service
where they have the rock band. This is This is
the other one where all the old people go.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
And the song goes on. After we see our characters here,
it goes on where they're singing. He leadeth me, He
leadeth me. The quiet waters By, and I can't help
but notice a thing that is often pointed out about
singing in a lot of mainline Protestant Christian denominations. The
singing does not sound especially joyful. It's kind of you know,
it's kind of wrote and robotic. The quiet waters By.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, this must be a John Wesley him.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Huh, yeah, I think so. But again based on the
words of Psalm twenty three, which will come up again
in the end of the movie. Anyway, after the hymn,
Sergeant Howie gets up to deliver a reading from the scripture.
And he's not the priest. This is just a lay reading.
He gets up and he reads in front of everyone,
I have received of the Lord that which also I

(12:00):
delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night
in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he
had given thanks, he broke it and said, take eat.
This is my body which is broken for you, this
dew in remembrance of me. I love that little inversion
and that this do not do this.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
I think this is a director's cameo as well. I
believe this is Robin Hardy, if memory serves Robin Hardy
doing what as the pastor of the preacher. Here, oh,
I see the priest in the church. Okay, oh, And
here also we see Sergeant how He taking communion himself
in a cutaway how he says, and after the same manner,
he also took the cup when he had eaten, saying,

(12:40):
this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This
oft as you drink in remembrance of me, For as
often as you eat this bread and drink this wine,
you do show the Lord's death till he comes again.
Then we cut to black.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
Next sound of seagulls and airplane propellers spinning up and
bagpie just blasting on into the bagpipes, and the credits
begin to play. So as the credits play, we see
Sergeant how we climb into a single engine prop seaplane
and take off from a bay on the Scottish coast.
He's flying out over the waters to a remote island,

(13:18):
and we see him traveling while a beautiful folk song plays.
And there's plenty of use of natural scenery here, which
is truly gorgeous. You've got these silent gray waters, rocky
islands with green pastures and very sharp cliffs and outcroppings
and Sergeant Howie flies over all this until eventually he
reaches an island where we see large fertile fields and

(13:41):
rows of trees and orchards. And here the music changes.
It goes from the first folk song that plays into
corn rigs and barley rigs. Rob, how much have you
been singing this one?

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah? I played the soundtrack quite a bit while making
notes for this episode, so I did catch myself humming
at a few times, and I rather like this tune.
It has a strong seventies folk vibe that puts me
in the mind of artist like Tom Rush.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
I'm not going to sing it, but just to read
for some of the lyrics. It was upon a Lamas night,
when corn rigs are Bonnie, beneath the moon's unclouded light.
I held a while to Annie. The time went by
with careless heed till tween the late and early, with
small persuasions, she agreed to see me through the barley
corn Rigs and barley rigs and corn rigs are Bonnie.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah. This song, like many of the others, is primarily
concerned with fertility, here painted with a little bit of
human sexuality and also some agricultural practices. This trend will continue.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
So Sergeant Howie lands his seaplane in the waters of
the summerle Harbor, and all around the little village here
we see pink flowers blooming on black tree limbs, green hedges,
but also a kind of gray on gray palette of
the cold sea and the cobbled stones streets by the dock.
There are several old men standing around watching the plane land,

(15:04):
just sort of gawking without saying anything, And we can
hear seagulls calling in the distance. And there is a
very strong atmosphere right at the beginning here, I think,
created in part by the sort of hollow soundscape, like
there's lapping water, the seagulls, kind of a faint echo everywhere.
This place is at once both desolate and lush, both

(15:28):
welcoming and a bit stand offish. That great sense of
ambivalence that you get through much of the movie begins
right here.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, this is a sense of like, well, this is beautiful,
but is life possible here? Do people live here? Well,
yes they do, we do. We do see them, but
they hear a bit hostile, respectfully to the newcomer.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
First line of the movie is Sergeant Howie yelling will
you send a dinghy please? He's out of the boat
and he he keeps yelling for a dinghy. In the
middle of his line, he gets out of megaphone and
starts yelling at them for the dinghy, and the guy's
standing around at the edge of the harbor call back
as if they didn't hear what he said, and they say, hello, sir,

(16:10):
have you lost your bearings? Kind of like are you
supposed to be here? And how he calls back into
his megaphone that yes, he's supposed to be here. He's
trying to reach summer Isle, and he triples down on
his request for a dinghy. They first try to tell
him that he cannot land without written permission from Lord Summerle,
and this is a theme that will repeat quite often.

(16:30):
But Sergeant Howie, now getting annoyed, says that he's a
police officer and they must allow him to come ashore.
He must have that dinghy. So they send the dinghy out.
And I like the dinghy too. It's got little decorations
on it.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, it's got an eye on it, as if to
ward away evil. And I've read that this just happened
to be the dinghy that was available. Like they didn't
decorate this or anything. This is just an accurate taste
of local decoration.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
Okay. So Sergeant Howie comes ashore, and as I said,
there are a bunch of old men just kind of
standing around. He explains his business to the harbor master.
He says that he is a representative of the West
Highland Police and that he has been summoned to the
island by an anonymous note that he received in the
mail saying that a twelve year old girl named Rowan

(17:27):
Morrison had gone missing. He is here to investigate the matter.
The note also came with a picture of the missing girl.
So how he takes out the photo and he shows
it to the men gathered around the harbor. They all
pass it around, they take a look, and they all
agree in the end they have never seen her before.
The note also says that Rowan is the daughter of

(17:47):
someone named May Morrison. Confusingly, the old men standing here
first act like they don't know who that is, but
then suddenly one of them says, oh, May Morrison, Yes,
she runs the post office. And then all of the
guys remember May. They're all like, oh yeah, may Ah.
But as how, he is walking away, I guess to

(18:07):
go to the post office. The harbormaster calls out that's
not May's daughter. Though not deterred yet, how he follows
up his first lead. He heads to the post office,
and along the way we see him passing some very
beautiful gardens. They are these blushing flowers and even kind
of tropical looking plants and corn rigs and barley riggs
play some more, of course, but along the way we

(18:28):
see local residents peeking out of windows curiously, almost suspiciously
at Sergeant Howie as he passes. But when he gets
to the post office, this we alluded to at the
end of the last episode. This ain't just a post office.
It is a combination post office and confection Err that's right.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, And like you were saying, I love the shop,
love all the details here. It feels very lived in
and legitimate. I imagine they took it like an actual storefront
of some sort here and filled it up with all
these customs, sweets, and I don't know, I don't know
the full story on these. Some of these feel they
just look too good to not also be some sort

(19:07):
of traditional pagan treat of one sort or Another's some
sort of traditional cake and cookie.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah, edible psychedelic toad cakes, little chocolate rams, heads with
yellow eyes. I don't know what those What are these
like black and yellow discs.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
I don't know. They look kind of like Saturn, also
kind of like the eye of Sauron, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
And then there are just like lollipops and stuff. There's
some stuff that is not very representative.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, some of us just sweets for sweets sake. Other
stuff we can already tell has some sort of ritual significance.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Anyway, how he goes into the shop. He's sort of
checking out the sweets, and a woman's voice calls out
from the back saying, good afternoon. So a woman comes
out and having been looking at some cakes shaped like rabbits,
Sergeant how He tries to pay a compliment. He says,
I like your rabbits, And the woman who runs the shop,
May Morrison, says, those are hairs, not silly old rabbits,

(20:01):
lovely march hares, shouldn't you know. The woman meets Sergeant
Howie and they introduce themselves. This is indeed May Morrison,
and she's curious to know what this is about. Sergeant
Howie says that he's here to see about her missing daughter,
but May reacts with bafflement. She says she does have
a daughter, but her daughter is not missing. She looks

(20:22):
at the photo that how he brought and says this
is not her daughter. And Howie tries to keep digging,
but May just says, I tell you no, and then laughs,
and then takes him into the back of the shop
to her residence, where she introduces him to her daughter, Myrtle,
who indeed looks nothing like the girl in the photograph.
The girl is in the middle of drawing this big

(20:45):
rabbit or I guess maybe it's a hair, not a rabbit,
big hair on sketch paper, and May gets called away
to the front of the shop by the bell, and
so Sergeant Howie is just left alone with Myrtle here,
So he squats down to talk with her. First, she
hands him a paint brush, and this gets paint all
over his hands. The first of There is a running

(21:06):
theme in the movie that people who apparently mean no
harm and are in fact being quite friendly, just constantly
in little ways kind of blemish or annoy or humiliate
Sergeant Howie by like handing him a paint brush brush
side first and he just gets brown paint all over
his hands.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, this is it's kind of the physical embodiment of
what goes on with ideas that are conveyed to him,
you know, because people will just in a very friendly tone,
like give them, give him a little bit of insight
into what they believe here on Summer Isle and how
they go about their lives. And it's it we're to
infer that there is no malice meant by these statements,

(21:49):
but they often, you know, they often poke him the
wrong way and sometimes provoke him to some embarrassing sequences
where we'll get into examples as we go.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Yeah. But so how he's still trying to get some
information makes sense of this confusing situation that he's coming to.
So he asks Myrtle, do you know Rowan? And Myrtle says,
in the fields she runs and plays there all day.
And he says, oh, do you think she'll be coming
back for tea? And Myrtle says tea. Hares don't have tea, silly. So,

(22:22):
according to Myrtle, Rowan is a hare. And how he
keeps trying to get confirmation on this and she's like
of course she's a hair She has a lovely time,
So this inquiry is off to a strange start. Later
that evening, we see Sergeant Howie wandering around. He has
to find lodgings on the island while he is on
the case, so he makes his way to the local inn.

(22:44):
I get the sense that this is the only local inn.
There's probably just one, and this is the green Man Inn.
And wow, the sign on this place, by the way,
is amazing. So it is one of the kind of
wild man green man and motifs that you will find
in the British Isles. But the eyes on the green

(23:04):
Man are first of all, it's just like a vegetation head,
you know, the kind of the green night. But then
the eyes are these sunken, spiraling down concentric circles of
brass or gold that look like they're like the structure
of Dante's Inferno, but they're going down and these like
gold metal pits. It looks insane.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, absolutely overflowing with psychedelic pagan mischief. I also want
to note this is something that I made note of
several times. We're more likely to say the wicker Man,
but every time I feel like, especially Christopher Lee says
the wicker Man. He says the wicker Man. And when

(23:48):
they talk about the green Man in they say the
green Man in. So I just noted that found it interesting. Yeah,
like when they speak of Batman in that way, I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Do you know where Batman is now?

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (24:04):
He flies through the caves. He has a lovely time.
So when Sergeant Howie arrives, the pub is hoppin. It
looks like a good time. It is full of people
drinking lively music. But the music stops as soon as
he walks in. It's like that scene in a western,
you know, where the wrong guy walks into the saloon
and the piano player eh oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
And this is a great scene too because we have
a lot of musicians and non actors in this scene.
So this is definitely one of those scenes where they
was talking about in the last episode that really has
that authentic feel to it. You kind of feel like
you're in a documentary here and these are these are
just the locals, like we are in a very authentic setting.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah. So how He goes up to the counter and
he meets the innkeeper and this guy has such suspicious energy.
We mentioned him last time. This is Alder McGregor, the landlord,
the innkeeper, and he's just got this raised die bro.
He's like you oh a policeman.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
I yeah, yeah, this is Lindsay Kemp, fun fun performance.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, he's great. So Sergeant Howie requests a room for
the night and a hot supper, and the landlord calls
his daughter to the counter to show Sergeant Howie to
his room. Here we meet another one of the main
characters in the movie, played by Britt Eklund in the
role of Willow McGregor, the quote landlord's daughter and on

(25:26):
cue as she comes into the room. First of all,
when she comes into the room and meets Howie, she
like gives him a real good like look up and down,
and all the locals start singing a dirty pub song
about her, and I want to be clear, Willow seems
not to mind the dirty pub song. As soon as
she sees Sergeant Howie, she looks at him with this
mischievous smile like, yes, I am going to make this

(25:49):
Christian do some sinning. And I think it's the harbor
master who starts singing the song and the lyrics begins
saying much has been said of the strumpets of view
of winches and body house queens by the score. But
I sing of a baggage that we all adore the
landlord's daughter.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
And if it were not already clear, Sergeant Howie has
landed on the hornist island in the British Isles.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yes, Now, something I want to note about the tone
of this scene, which I think is interesting. In another context,
you could imagine that this exact song, this horny drinking song,
with the same lyrics, would have more of the quality
of an insult, like it would have more of a

(26:35):
misogynist tone and a kind of insult to the woman
that the song is about. And somehow to me, this
scene does not feel like it has any implication of
that kind. There's obviously humor in the song, but it
actually does not feel like the characters understand the song
to be at Willow's expense. Instead, the song feels like

(26:58):
it is genuinely meant as a kind of cheeky celebration
of a woman who is beloved by the pub community,
and she seems to be reveling in this adoration. She's
like smiling and laughing and dancing along.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, I agree, I'm left After this scene, in particular,
I'm left with an impression of a very sex positive
culture here on Summer Isle and the way it hits
given that this, again was filmed in seventy two, came
out like seventy three. Initially I assume this is bringing
in a lot of like sixties free love energy along
with these older pagan vibes, pre Christian vibes. But yeah,

(27:32):
this is an island where we're already getting the idea
that sex is no sin, but rather the chiefest of
virtues to be celebrated as such. And to someone like Howie,
for whom sex is original sin, this just absolutely flips
his universe on its head because it quickly becomes obvious
that this is not just a young folks thing or

(27:53):
a subgroup thing. Everyone here on Summer Issle has this worldview.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah, everybody's having a great time. It's a lot of
old people in the pub, they're all they all love this.
H Another thing that I think is kind of interesting
about this, about the tone of this song and the
way the characters seem to feel and understand it, especially
given what we learned later about the history of the island,
It almost feels like this song could be a relic

(28:18):
from a different time from people with different values, and
now the words and melody are still being sung but
by people who understand them differently.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah, but anyway, everybody starts singing and dancing. The pub
is happening. By the way, like half of the patrons
have musical instruments. Some of the dance moves not so
much in this scene, but we will see in later
scenes are basically wrestling moves, like they'll be playing music
and people are like picking each other up in the
air as if to do a suplex or something.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah, there are a lot of clearly, as this crowd
really gets into their cups, there are some tests of
strength involved. Yeah, nobody has this is This is where
everyone is going tonight. And there is no second location. Well,
there's one possible second location. There is the field. There's
also the cemetery, but we'll get into that later.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah. So, as the song about the landlord's daughter is
really heating up, Sergeant Howie is just like, stop all
this nonsense. He starts rapping on the counter to make
everybody shut up and listen to him, total scold, and
once everybody is finally quiet, he tells them he's a
policeman and that he is looking for a child named
Rowan Morrison and if anyone has knowledge of her whereabouts,

(29:30):
they should come speak with him. And it's funny because, like,
if you force yourself to think about it, like his
business is important. He is actually trying to solve what's
going on within an apparently missing child who people are
like giving him weird, conflicting information about. And yet it
feels like this is completely inappropriate behavior on his part.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, yeah, I mean part of it is that so far,
no one has acknowledged that anyone is actually missing. Yeah,
so like maybe we're inclined to forgive them a bit
more for just not answering any of his questions all
that night, because I mean, so far we're to assume that, well,
there's no kid missing, Like what, you're just gonna shout
out us some more about this, but we can't help you.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
So while Sergeant Howie is showing the photo to everyone,
we also see some photos up on the wall of
the Green Man in from each of the ten years past. Actually,
there's a photo of the Harvest Festival featuring a girl
who is the Queen of the Harvest I'm not sure
if this is supposed to be the same as the
Queen of the May Festival. She crowned the Queen of

(30:35):
the May and then she also is the Queen of
the Harvest Festival, or it's different girls. I'm not sure,
But anyway, it'll have like a girl with like a
wreath of flowers on her hair, and she'll be surrounded
by crates of fruit and other produce the harvest of
the island. The photo from last year's Harvest festival is missing.
All of the other photos are lined up, but how

(30:55):
He asks about it, and the landlord says that the
frame was broken and it's being repaired anyway. Time for supper.
We cut away to Howie eating and we see his
food which looks gross, so we just hear him mutter disgusting.
He's got like a little cut of meat on his plate,
and then some beans that look blue, and then some
canned boiled potatoes. It does not look like a very

(31:17):
good plate of food. Willow comes in to clear his
plate and she's like, what's the matter. Aren't you hungry?
And how He says, yes, he says he's hungry, But
he says that most of the food. I've had the
farmhouse soup, the potatoes, broadbeans all come out of a can.
Broad Beans in their natural state aren't usually turquois, are they?

(31:38):
And Willow says, oh. This is the part where Willow
just like looks at him. She goes, some things in
their natural state have the most vivid colors.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Yeah, she was laying it on a bit thick here,
but I do love the continued botanical sexual themes here.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Also, Willow asked him you want any Do you want
any dessert? She says, do you want? Afters he asks
for an apple, but she's as, no apples, they don't
have any, And Sergeant how He is shocked by this.
He's like, well, I thought summer Isle was famous for
its fruit and vegetables. Your apples are what you do here,
that's your whole thing. And she says, sorry, I expect

(32:14):
they've all been exported. You can have peaches and cream
if you like, seant. Sergeant how He asks if it
will come from a can, and Willow nods oh, But
she also gives him another sexy stinger. She's like, cheer
up food isn't everything in life?

Speaker 2 (32:28):
You know? I love this little scene. It made me
start thinking about religion as fruit here, with Christianity Howie's
Christianity being the canned fruit from a distant land introduced here.
While the pagan beliefs are of the soil and of
the people, they're like the crops that are grown locally,

(32:51):
or at least at this point in the film. That's
how it may seem things may seem different later on.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
That is interesting. I didn't think of that. I wonder
how that interfaces with the fact that the local fruits
have failed in the last harvest exactly.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, And I think again, that's one of the great
things about this film is you can kind of drop
in at different points and it makes you think about
things in one direction, and the new information will kind
of make you consider the alternate argument. So this is
just yeah, this is one of those moments right here
where everything you think you might understand about the balance

(33:29):
is going to shift later on.

Speaker 3 (33:32):
Though actually I got ahead of things because we actually
don't know at this point in the movie that the
last harvest failed yet.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, as far as we know at this point, this
is just an island where the apples are bountiful, and
for some reason they're serving this guy can potatoes.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
Yeah, maybe it's just superfluous disrespect for how we even
though they're being very nice to him. And again, yeah,
most people are being very nice to him. I should
just say that again, Like he's gotten a little bit
of an icy reception here and there, but it's you know,
they're they're welcoming him.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Their vibe is just very different than his too, Like
he's still on the case, on the job, and no
one else is working exactly, I mean except for the
people working in the pub. Everyone else here is out
for a good time. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
The people working in the pub seem like they're partying
in the pub at the same time.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
We work hard, we play hard at the same time simultaneously.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
Anyway, right after this, how he decides to go out
for a walk. This is, by the way, right after
Willow told him, you know, there's more to life than food.
So he goes out for a walk on the lane
outside the inn, and he discovers in the fields outside
there just happens to be an orgy taking place. Dozens
of people are out having passionate sex in the grass,

(34:46):
and how he is incredibly startled by this. Next he
comes to the edge of the old churchyard and peeks
over the stone wall and he sees people in the
graveyard with watering cans, watering graves and moonlight, and he
sees a naked woman sitting on another grave and sobbing.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah. Yeah, Stephen King's character from Sleepwalkers would not approve
of it.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah, I don't need this action, yea. So Howie goes
back to the end, clearly disturbed. He something is not
right with this place from his perspective. He quickly gets
his key goes up to his room. Now Here we

(35:29):
get a deleted scene of the first night at the inn.
Later that night, while Howie is alone in his room
writing in his notebook, we hear a deep voice outside
the window calling out. It's the voice of Christopher Lee,
and we hear Christopher Lee saying, Willow McGregor, I have
the honor to present you Ash Buchanan. And then outside

(35:53):
the window we look down and we see there stands
Christopher Lee in the role of Lord Sumerle. I can't
remember he rest in a kilt in this see yeah,
with kind of the Scottish dress, with like a pouch
of some kind. And then there's a young man standing
beside him, Willow comes to the window and she is

(36:14):
overjoyed to see them. She's laughing and she says, come
on up, Ash Buchanan, and Lord Somerle says another sacrifice
at the altar of Aphrodite, So Willow is the goddess
of love in the local mythology. They also have a
conversation of how she needs to be ready for Tomorrow's tomorrow,
the day of a more serious offering, and the people

(36:38):
in the pub downstairs by the way are singing a
song about sex. This is not a rowdy drinking song
this time. It's kind of a soft, sad minor key song.
Sounds like it could be by Nick Drake.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Also, this is the part I think we talked about
this in the last episode, the once deleted scene now
restored where Christopher Lee looks at slugs. Yes, and he's
like staring at slugs crawling on a leaf, and he says,
I think I could turn and live with animals. They
are so placid and self contained. They do not lie

(37:10):
awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They
do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.
Not one of them meals to another or to his
own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one
of them is respectable or unhappy all over the earth.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah, it's really nice. I love this sequence. I've noted
that some folks online disagree and think that this scene
kind of like messes with the pace of the picture,
And I mean, I can maybe acknowledge some ways it
might do that a little bit, but I feel like
the benefits of it outweigh any negatives, you know, because

(37:50):
we get kind of a we get a little more
about the sort of outlook that the locals have about
their place and relationship to nature, about like the value
that they place on willow and on sex in the community.
So I think it's it's all it's all an upside here.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
Yeah, I can see both sides about the scene. Having
seen the movie without it as well, I can see
how it does sort of disrupt the slow build towards
the first meeting with Christopher Lee, and it also sort
of it reveals more about the island's culture earlier on,
and because without the scene you get a very very

(38:33):
nice slow build of revelations about what's going on up
to the payoff. So I see that point. But also
I just really like the scene, and so I kind
of hate to lose it.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
I think the first time I saw this film on television,
I suspect this sequence was missing. And on top of that,
I'm not sure what else might have been cut for
length on TPE, So that's a possible fourth different cut.
I always always forget to flu that. Yeah, anytime you
have something for cable television back in the day, or
certainly broadcast television, there's the chance that something else has

(39:07):
been cut or sometimes added, depending on what run time
you're trying to hit.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
You know, another thing regarding the carefree, sex positive culture
of the island that I wanted to talk about, Maybe
this is a good place to bring it up, because
I don't know where else to bring it up. I
think this story would play differently if as soon as
Sergeant Howie arrived on the island we were seeing lots

(39:34):
of like hot young people in diaphanous gowns or people
dancing around naked with flowers in their hair. But we
don't see that. Instead, to the extent that we get
any of that, it comes much later in the story,
and that is not generally the local fashion, at least
not for the day to day The characters that we
meet early on are mostly older, windburned, gray haired people

(39:58):
with a kind of wooly authentically rural Scotland in the
seventies fashion sense. It's not woodstock out here, at least
not early on. Early on, it's just it's lots of
old people apparently living a kind of dowdy Scottish village life.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah, it's it's firmly established that this is not a
generational thing here. Then there are some nods later on
to the fact that the older members of the community
are more likely to have biblical names, Biblical first names,
as opposed to the younger people who all have names
like Rowan and so forth. And it's you know, it's
more botanical in nature. But yeah, I think this is

(40:36):
a this is a great point anyway.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
The next day, we check back in with Sergeant Howie
as he continues his investigation, and the first thing we
see is that as Sergeant Howie is setting out to
the island schoolhouse, he passes a big celebration out in
a meadow across the way from the school. The boys
of the elementary school are out with their teacher, dancing

(40:59):
around a may pole which is hung with red and
white streamers, and there is a band playing. We've got
a guitar, clarinet, violin, and a very prominent mouth harp,
going boying, boying. And here we get another musical number
sung by the school master in a glorious pink shirt
with a wide seventies collar, and the boys are running around.

(41:22):
They're weaving their streamers around the maypole, twisting them up.
I think most people have probably seen that kind of
dance where you go around the maypole and you weave,
you weave the fibers in and out. The tune of
the song is it's both lighthearted and sing songy, but
also a little bit eerie. And I'm just going to
read the lyrics here because they do they are kind

(41:43):
of important for establishing the tone of the movie as
it's developing. So the schoolmaster sings in the woods, there
grew a tree, and a fine, fine tree was he.
And on that tree there was a limb, and on
that limb there was a branch, and on that branch
there was a nest. And in that nest there was
an egg, and in that egg there was a bird,
and from that bird a feather came, and of that
feather was a bed, and on that bed there was

(42:06):
a girl, and on that girl there was a man.
And from that man there was a seed. And from
that seed there was a boy, and from that boy
there was a man. And for that man there was
a grave. And from that grave there grew a tree.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
This is a great song. This is one I definitely
did catch myself singing a couple of times because it
has just such a nice, jaunty energy to it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
Yeah, Howie is again obviously weirded out by this, but
he walks past to the schoolhouse where the girls of
the school are sitting at their desks, and as Sergeant
how he walks into the room. The teacher, Miss Rose,
played by Diane Cilento, is in the middle of a lesson.
And I love the way Chilento is dressed for this
role because or at least in the scene, because on

(42:49):
one hand, she looks like a classic proper school teacher
in the conservative fashion. It's like a long gray wool
dress going down to the floor and like a ruffled
white top with this like buttoned up to the throat
with long sleeves. But also at the same time she's
got a big chain necklace with what looks like some

(43:09):
kind of giant talismanic tooth or horn hanging over her stomach.
I don't know if that was. I don't know which
that is, but it's good anyway. Miss Rose is doing
her lesson and she asks one of the students in
the class, can you tell us what the maypole represents?
The first girl she calls on doesn't know the answer,

(43:29):
but then everybody else in the class calls out phallic symbol,
and Miss Rose says, quote, the phallic symbol that is correct.
It is the image of the penis, which is venerated
in religions such as ours, as symbolizing the generative force
in nature. And here's the point where suddenly how he
interrupts the school. He's like, ah, right in the school door,

(43:52):
and you might think how he's gonna get right down
to business, trying to track down leads on the Rowan
Morrison case. Except no he doesn't. Instead, he miss Rose
aside and he's like, he says, miss you can be
quite sure that I shall report this to the proper authorities.
Everywhere I go on this island, it seems to me
I find degeneracy. There was brawling in bars, there's indecency

(44:13):
in public places, and there is corruption of the young.
And now I see it all stems from here. It
stems from the filth taught here in this very school room.
And miss Rose just very calmly, is like I was
unaware that the police got to set school curriculum. And
he's just he's just constantly frustrated and annoyed. He's like, well,

(44:33):
we'll see about that anyway to take this is.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
A great sequence though, and I would say this is
the one that feels just a few degrees away from
being a money python sketch. You know, certainly some dry
comedic energy here, even if it doesn't like go for
big punchline laughs or anything.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
So how he takes over the class and addresses all
the girls. He introduces himself as a police officer, and
he explains that he's looking for a girl named Rowan Morrison.
Without asking, he erases the lesson that Miss Rose was
working on on the blackboard so we can write over it.
I happened to pause it so I could copy down
what the class was covering before. How he barged in,

(45:16):
this is great, this is what the blackboard said. The
pith of the Snailstone preserves the eye from darkness. The
toadstone preserves the newly born from the weird woman. The
Hagstone preserves the people from the nightmare.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Oh wow, I think they were about to get to
their lesson about the shadow Man. That class is interrupted. First,
I want to go to this school. Do they do
adult education there? I mean, one assumes they get around
to mathematics eventually.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
Well, that is a good point. I don't get the
sense from Miss Rose that this school only teaches witchcraft.
It seems like they maybe have like a witchcraft class,
but otherwise I think these students are probably getting a
good education. They're learning math and science and history and
all that. But then they're also just this is like
their religious instruction.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Yeah, he just happened to walk in and eavesdrop right
before lunch when they normally cover this stuff.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Anyway, how he writes Rowan's name on the blackboard. He
passes her photo around, and he asks, do any of
you know Rowan? Everyone in the class says no. Miss
Rose says, there's your answer, Sergeant, if she existed, we
would know of her. But Sergeant Howie is not satisfied.
He points to an empty desk in the middle of
the classroom and asks who sits there. Miss Rose says
no one does. Then, still suspicious, he goes and he

(46:37):
flips up the lid of the desk, and in the
cavity inside he is shocked to see a nail partially
hammered into the wood, protruding up several inches, and it's
tied with a thread, and the other end of the
thread is tied around a beadle who is crawling in
circles around the nail. I would note the visual similarity

(46:57):
to the boys running around the maypole holding the end
of the street from just a minute before. And then
the girl at the desk beside says, the little old
beadle goes round and round, always the same way, you see,
until it ends up right up tight to the nail,
poor old thing. And Howie is just he's freaked out.
He's like, poor old thing. And then why in God's

(47:17):
name do you do it?

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Girl?

Speaker 3 (47:19):
He's yelling at the children, Still suspicious, he wants to
see the school registerry. Miss Rose tries to say she
can't share that without permission from Lord Sumerle once again
needs Lord Somerle's sign off. But how he just ignores her,
barges past, pulls it off the desk and looks through it,
and sure enough, when looking at through the list of students,
he finds the name Rowan Morrison residents the post office.

(47:42):
Now upon finding this, his first reaction appears to be disgusted.
Discussed at Miss Rose and at the children in the classroom.
He looks up and he points at all of the
children in their desks, and he says, you are all
despicable little liars. Rowan Morris as a schoolmate of yours,
isn't she? And that is her desk, isn't it? And

(48:04):
they all just look completely blank, stone faced at him.
A few kind of avert their eyes to the floor,
but mostly it's just crickets nothing. He tries to threaten
Miss Rose, telling her that he's going to charge her
with obstruction, but she persuades him to step outside with
her so they can talk. And so she gives the
girl some reading to get back to and they go outside,

(48:27):
and she insists that despite how it seems to him
from their perspective, no one was lying to him. Miss
Rose says, I told you plainly, if Rowan Morrison existed,
we would know of her He's like, what do you
mean by that? You mean she's dead? And Miss Rose says,
you would say so, and Sergeant Howie's just he's like fuming.

(48:49):
He's like, come on, she's either dead or she's not dead.
And I love the way Miss Rose appears to be
navigating this conversation carefully. She's doing her best to authentically
represent her beliefs, so she's not like just caving and
talking about things the way that how we would like
to like. She's staying in her own mode of speaking

(49:12):
about the world. But she's also trying to be kind
of sensitive and accommodating, accommodating to this irritated policeman who
has no patience for her. So she says, here, we
do not use the word and then she mouths the
word dead. She says that we believe when human life
is over, the soul returns to the trees, to the air,
to fire, to water, to animals, so that Rowan Morrison

(49:35):
is simply returned to the life forces in another form.
Now how he begins to argue, He's like, he can't
believe that they're teaching the children this stuff. He's like,
this is nonsense, it's insane. What about teaching them Christianity,
Miss Rose is like, actually, you know, the children have
it much have a much easier time understanding the concept

(49:56):
of reincarnation than of resurrection, because resurrection and like the
you know, the raising of rotting bodies, that makes no
sense to the children, but the children's imagination can quite
well understand coming back as other forces in nature. And
again how he's just like flummixed by this and he
has to move on. So finally he's like, okay, okay, okay,

(50:17):
where is Rowan Morrison's body, her physical body? I want
to know where it is? And she says, you know,
it's in what you would call the churchyard. It's no
longer consecrated to the Christian religion.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
That it does feel like she's baiting him a little
bit with this, yes, yes, yeah, Now, as we mentioned already,
this is at heart a horror movie, so we should
keep that in mind when we consider its representation of
either you know, Christianity or any variation on pagan religion here.
But I love I love this sequence and this idea
that for the children reincarnation just rings more true and

(50:50):
requires less rigorous reprogramming of their natural inclinations. You know,
it's it's definitely one of the notes in the film
that makes the viewers see Howie and his world as
being one of more more tortured thought and morals.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
Yeah, and it sort of fits with something that Lord
Summerle will say later that suggests at least the locals
think of it as paganism is not just their religion,
but they think of it as something that kind of
fits onto human life naturally. It fits us like a
glove and it's easy to put on and to assume.

(51:26):
Whereas they talk about how He's religion and about Christianity
like it is a thing that must be kind of
like forced into place with great effort and against great resistance.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Yeah. Yeah, and we see some more examples of this
idea as we proceed.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
But okay, so how he finally has his next clue.
He's going to go look for the grave of Rowan
Morrison in the churchyard, or at least the yard formerly
known as a church. Now remember this was before the
night before where how we saw people watering trees growing
out of the grave plots and naked people getting sad
or getting sexy. So how he walks in and he

(52:14):
looks around the first gravestone he looks at, says, Hereliath
Beech Buchanan, protected by the ejaculation of serpents. Yes, the
graveyard is both ugly and beautiful. It's beautiful in the
sense that it's damp and green, so it's got old
stones that have a kind of stately magic. But it's

(52:35):
also covered with this green vegetation, so quite beautiful. But
also there are random piles of junk and debris scattered around.
It's like it is both taken care of and not.
Somebody is watering the grave trees and there's it's kind
of beautifully chaotically gardened in a way, but also nobody
is cleaning up the mess or keeping it tidy.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Yeah. Yeah, it feels more like a return to nature
and death, which of course is very much what they
seem to be all about here.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Yeah. So, as how, he keeps wandering. He sees one
grave that has what looks like the Jolly Roger engraved
on it. It's skull and crossbones. He also comes across
a woman sitting on a gravestone, holding a baby in
one arm and breastfeeding her while she's rocking back and forth,
and then the other hand she is holding out a
chicken egg as if doing some kind of ritual or magic.

(53:27):
And then finally how he comes to one large stone
grave that's covered in wooden crates with the remains of
rotting fruit and produce. He reacts to this with just
bitter revulsion. He breaks apart one of the crates and
uses two steaks from it to fashion a makeshift cross,
and he just leaves that by itself on the tomb,
almost as like a I know, he wouldn't think of

(53:49):
it this way, because he's just like, I'm trying to
reconsecrate this with the one true religion. But it feels
like he's just giving a middle finger.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Yeah, yeah, that's one way of looking at it.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
Now. Finally we get to the meeting with the grounds keeper.
We flagged the actor who plays the grounds keeper in
the last episode because he's got a real good seething laughter.
This is the same actor who's the guy in a
clockwork orange who gets to tell Alex that he committed murder. You, Alex,
you a little murderer. Yeah, this is Morris, yes, And

(54:21):
how he asks him about the trees on the graves.
The groundskeeper is like, oh, oh, yes, we plant the
trees on the graves, you know, as if this should
be obvious, And how he points to a tree on
an unmarked grave, one with no headstone. He says, what
kind of tree is that? It's a Rowan tree? Whose
grave is it Rowan Morrison's? And here there is a

(54:41):
moment of quiet exasperation, I think because of the contrast
between how cagey everybody has been all like denying that
they knew who Rowan was or denying she existed, and
then suddenly the ease with which this guy just offers
up the information.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Mm hm. I' he's been trying to get somebody to
just point him to this spot all day, Yeah, and
he keeps getting the run around.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
Yes, But it's also like how he doesn't understand. He's frustrated,
I think because he doesn't understand what exactly he's dealing with.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Here.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
He's like, are these people all mad? Are they participating
in a cover up or a conspiracy? Is it somehow
part of their religion to like deny knowing someone existed
once they're dead? He truly, he just doesn't understand what
he's dealing with.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
Anyway, so they have a little chat about the dried
and bilical cord hanging from the row and tree. And
eventually this is the part where how he is like,
where is your minister? It's almost with the energy of
I need to speak.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
To your manager.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Yeah, And this is when the groundskeeper just starts laughing
hysterically about the idea of a minister and wanders away.
Now we get a few more investigation scenes. I'm not
really gonna dwell on these, but how he briefly goes
back to the post office slash sweet shop to see
May Morrison again, but he just like tells her they're
all raving mad and no new information has exchanged. He

(56:02):
goes to visit the town librarian played by Ingrid Pitt.
He wants to see records of local deaths, and at
first Ingrid Pitt says that he's gonna need permission from
Lord Summerle, but he strong arms her into handing it over.
And just another moment we're flagging here is I think
it's the name of Rowan Morrison's grand parents that he
sees in the register and he's like, oh, these are

(56:24):
names from the Bible, unlike everybody else here, and she's like, oh, yes,
they were very old little clue there. He also visits
the chemist slash photographer, mister Lennox. This shop is full
of weird things preserved in jars. You got whole toads,
pig fetuses, stuff like that. How he finds out from him,

(56:45):
or how he finds out that he takes the harvest
festival photo each year, and how he wants to see
the photo from last year, but Lenox does not have
a copy. Does he remember who was in the photo? No? Anyway,
time to go meet Lord Summerle. So here's like the
big kind of centerpiece scene of the movies, the first
meeting between Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. Here on the way,

(57:06):
Howie rides in a horse drawn buggy and we get
to hear corn rigs and barley rigs again.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
A great song. Might as well play it some more.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
Once it was not enough. We also see plenty of
the local scenery. There are hedges cut into animal shapes
and some just seem to be like phalluses, a lot
of flowers, budding fruit trees. There is one scene where
we see pregnant women wandering around in an orchard, touching
the trees and what seems to be a kind of
ritual and speaking of rituals. As we get closer to

(57:36):
Lord Somerle's manner, the music changes into an eerie minor
key flute melody, and we see a giant stone circle
like stone hinge positioned atop a hill, and in the
center of the stone circle there is a hearth with
a blazing fire, and all around it are naked young
women performing a religious dance. Is seemingly being led I

(58:02):
think by miss Rose. Was this Miss Rose from the school?

Speaker 2 (58:04):
I think you think you're right?

Speaker 3 (58:05):
Yeah, And she's now dressed in a white gown wearing
a giant pendant of hammered gold in the shape of
the sun, and the women are singing a song. The
lyrics are take the flame inside you, burn and burn below,
fire seed and fire seed to make the baby grow.
And then they take turns running and leaping over the

(58:26):
fire as the song goes on.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
I like the song here, it has an I like
even as you recited the lyrics, I can hear the
tune in my head. Yeah. Yeah. I also should note
that modern Blu Ray viewers will note that these dancers
are in fact not naked, but dressed in skin colored tights,
which doesn't distract from the scene at all. But I
just find this kind of thing interesting, like the things
that I'm assuming it might have been lost, you know

(58:50):
originally when this was shown theatrically.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
Because originally it would have been grainy enough that in
their filmed at a distance, so you assume they are naked.
But actually now that there's like high enough definition that
you can yeah, yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
I mean I think I saw this originally on Ane,
and I think I would probably just thought, wow, that
Ani just allows nudity. I think maybe they did allow
just a little bit of nudity on an e versus
other channels.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
Anyway, Howie arrives at Lord Somerle's mansion. Is this technically
a castle, I don't know what counts as a castle.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
I mean, it's it's somewhere in there. There's a lot
of stone here.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
It is big Lord Somerle's manor. I wonder what you
make of this, rob The manor is not decorated like
a pagan temple. It feels like the house of a
Scottish lord. There's a lot of polished wooden furnishings, hunting trophies,
big framed el cantlers and things like that. Big paintings
on the walls, suits of armor and heraldry, all that

(59:49):
kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Yeah, and it ties in with a lot of what
we've seen regarding this community. They haven't rejected modernity, they
haven't rejected their Scottishness. They just have this other entire
aspect of their worldview they have. They have rejected you,
Christianity to a large degree, but they haven't set everything aside.

(01:00:13):
They're not they're not living in just this this you know,
this time out of mind and out of place.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
That's right, And so I remember being kind of surprised
by this. I would have thought, the way they're building
up Lord summer Isle, it's going to be like he's
going to be the most and the most pagan anesthetically
pagan one. And he might be, I don't know, he
might be the most pagan one. But his house doesn't
look like you know, it doesn't look like an apothecary,
herbalist shop or something.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
And I think this could easily make you think, well,
maybe he's a hypocrite, maybe he doesn't actually live like this.
But once you get into Lee's performance in these scenes,
I think all of that is dismissed because his performance.
That the energy of it, as we talked about in
the last episode, he just has this youthful vigor and
enthusiasm like I think any other Christopher Lee performance I've

(01:01:02):
ever seen any other character I've seen him take on
and therefore you just totally buy into it. Of course,
this is summer Isle, and of course he believes all
these things.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Oh okay, I was gonna ask a question about that,
but you may have answered in advance, but we can
still discuss later. So how he's waiting to meet Lord
Summerle uh, and he thinks he is alone, like waiting
for I guess for Lord Somerl to come down and
meet him. So he's standing at the window watching the
fire dance across the lawn. But how he's not alone. Instead,

(01:01:32):
suddenly Christopher Lee pops his head out from around the
from around like the corner of a chair the size
of a panel van. What is going on with this chair?
They've made high backed chairs that are just like, I
don't know, needs to be ten feet wide.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
This just this place is full of old castle stuff. Yeah,
it's enormous and unnecessary.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
So I don't know, Rob, do you want to describe
Christopher Lee's appearance and aura. In this scene, He's wearing
like a tweed jacket and a green shirt and he's
just so happy. He's just beaming.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Yeah goodness, Yeah, he's he just has this useful energy.
Like I've said, he was I think around fifty at
the time, and feels ten years younger than anywhere I've
ever seen it before. You know, this is not Christopher Lee,
the vampire of the Hammer films before and after this.
This is just a guy that's just full of energy,

(01:02:27):
Like it's delightful to be in his presence, or you
know it would be for anyone else other than how
he here, you know, is a bit rough around the
edges of regarding all of this paganism and and optimism,
but yeah, I think optimism is the vibe that he
is exuding the most. It's like, you know, everything is possible,

(01:02:48):
and I'm gonna say yes and to whatever you've come
here to ask. And how he is also unprepared for that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Yeah. Also he's got big hair, did we mentioned, Yes,
Christopher Lee not usually with big hair, but here big hair.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Yeah, and this will this will be key compared to
the way his hair looks in a later scene here
that the hair is, you know, he's got a little
bit of gray going on, but it's also not black.
It's not vampire black. But the overall appearance is very
almost almost blonde. It's he almost appears blonde in the
way that the gray and the brown mixes together. So, yeah,

(01:03:26):
just he's beaming. He's like the sun.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Yeah, his hair is like the radiance around the edge
of the sun. Yeah, kind of like the face of
Nuauta we saw at the beginning. Yeah, But anyway, so
he pops his head around the corner, uh, and he's
he's talking about the young women dancing naked outside, and
Lord somewhere else says, good, good afternoon. Sergeant how he
he says, I trust the sight of the young people

(01:03:50):
refreshes you, and Sergeant how he says, no, sir, it
does not refresh me. But somehow unfazed, he recommends that
we all be open to the regenerative influences, and how
he describes the situation. He explains to Lord Somerl that

(01:04:10):
he suspects a girl on the island has been the
victim of murder and conspiracy to murder, and he needs
Lord Somerle's permission to exhume the body for an autopsy,
and Lord Somerrale is like, yes, permission granted, go for it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Yeah, and so it is totally unprepared to get a
yes here that he kind of just keeps going.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Yeah, exactly. And so here I want to quote a
good bit of the dialogue because I think you kind
of need to hear what is said in this scene
to appreciate it. How he's like, your lordship seems strangely unconcerned,
and Somemrle explains, he's like, well, I'm just confident your
suspicions are wrong. We don't commit murder here on Smoerle,
he says, we're a deeply religious people, and how he

(01:04:52):
is so annoyed. He's like religious with ruined churches, no ministers,
no priests, and children dancing naked and Somemorle's like, oh,
they do love their divinity lessons, and how he says,
but they're naked.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
And to be clear, those looked like those were grown
women dancing around those stems. Yeah. Yeah, how he's like
newborn babies dancing naked around the stuffs.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
Also some are ill, he said, He's like, they're naked
and somewhere Ill's like, well, naturally, it's too dangerous to
jump through the fire with your clothes on, and how
He's like, what religion are they learning jumping over fires?
And somemore Ile explains, he's like parthenogenesis. He's like what. Uh.
Somewhere else says you know, uh, this is a sexual

(01:05:42):
reproduction without sexual union, and how he goes, oh, what
is all this? He's like, you've got fake biology, fake religion, sir?
Have these children never heard of Jesus? And then somehere
al says himself, the son of a virgin impregnated, I
believe by a ghost.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Solid pagan burn right there, solid burn, Yeah, yeah, but
I love that. Have these children never heard of Jesus?
Lord somemerre owl, did they know it's Christmas at all?

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
Now there's kind of a break in the tension here
because Christopher Lee he goes on to explain what's happening.
He says, you know, these girls are jumping naked over
the fire in the hope that the god of the
fire will make them fruitful. And he says, after all,
who would not prefer to bear the child of a
god over that of an acne? S good? Autizan and
how he again tries to argue, but Lord Smerle says,

(01:06:36):
you know, it's most important for the young people of
the island to learn that here the old gods are
not dead. Now how he is very offended. He's like,
and what of the true God? You know, what of him?
And Lord Somerrel says, he's dead. Can't complain, had his
chance and in modern parlance, blew it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
This is the first, I think, major overtly stressed note
of religion failing modern humans. And we'll come back to
this in an important way later.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Now Here, Lord Somerrel begins to explain the backstory of
the island a Sergeant Howie. Now, of course we could
wonder if he is being honest with Sergeant Howie about everything.
But I take it that everything he says here is true.
I don't think he's trying to trick Howie at all.
This seems to me is just like, this is the

(01:07:28):
actual backstory of the island.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Yeah, I don't think up Lord Sumerle really lies at all.
There's well, there's one kind of big Ville, but everything
else he seems like he's being very truthful about.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
So I'm just going to read from a transcription of
the dialogue here, because this part's important. This is Lord
Somerle's story. He says, in the last century the islanders
were starving like our neighbors today. They were scratching a
bear subsistence from sheep and sea. Then in eighteen sixty eight,
my grandfather bought this baron island and began to change.

(01:08:00):
A distinguished Victorian scientist, agronomist, free thinker, how formidably benevolent,
he seems essentially the face of a man incredulous of
all human good, And Sergeant Howie says, very cynical. My
Lord Samril says, what attracted my grandfather to the island,
apart from the profuse source of wiry labor that it promised,

(01:08:23):
was the unique combination of volcanic soil and the warm
gulf stream that surrounded it. You see, his experiments had
led him to believe that it was possible to induce
here the successful growth of certain new strains of fruit
that he had developed. So, with typical mid Victorian zeal,
he set to work. The best way of accomplishing this,

(01:08:44):
so it seemed to him, was to rouse the people
from their apathy by giving them back their joyous old gods.
And it is as a result of this worship the
barren island would burgeon and bring forth fruit in great abundance.
What he did, of course, was to develop new cultivars
of hardy fruits suited to local conditions. But of course,

(01:09:05):
to begin with, they worked for him because he fed
them and clothed them. But then later, when the trees
started fruiting, it became a very different matter, and the
ministers fled the island, never to return. What my grandfather
had started out of expediency, my father continued out of love.
He brought me up the same way, to reverence the
music and the drama and the rituals of the old gods,

(01:09:28):
to love nature, and to fear it, and to rely
on it, and to appease it where necessary. He brought
me up. And how he interrupts him, says, he brought
you up to be a pagan. And somemr Ale says,
with a soft smile, he says, a heathen conceivably, but not,
I hope an unenlightened one now here. Rob. I think

(01:09:49):
you already answered your take on this question, but I
was going to ask after this monologue one might wonder
if the present Lord Somemrrele of Christopher Lee is in
reality more like what he accuses his grandfather of, Like
if the paganism of Summerle is something that he cynically

(01:10:10):
impresses upon the ignorant locals but does not believe himself.
That seems to be Howie's interpretation, and you can certainly
see that when you hear kind of the material motivation
of the original Lord Samrle, and how the same motivations
would be present for the current Lord Samerle. But also
is that really the case? I mean, when he says

(01:10:31):
that it was continued out of love, he seems to
be claiming that he now believes the pagan myth or
at least he I don't know. He says he at
least reverences them. Whether that means he believes the Celtic
pagan gods literally exist and have power over his fate
or not. I guess it's hard to see how to

(01:10:52):
translate that, but it feels like maybe he does.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Yeah. I mean, that is the vibe I've always gotten,
and I think a lot of it comes from the
nature of Lee's performance here and even what we see
from him much later on in the picture. I feel
like it's it's ultimately even though there's a shift that
takes place, I think it's consistent. I think that he
truly believes in this faith. But as he's already alluded to,

(01:11:17):
like there there is of course this dark side, you know,
there is the fear of nature, there's the terror of nature,
and there's already like this, this realization that that to
be a worshiper of a god like this is to
also engage in a certain amount of uncertainty.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Another thing from
this monologue that really strikes me is the way it
just assumes that the people, the locals, the you know,
the wiry labor of the island, in the words of
his grandfather, that the locals are always just going to

(01:11:57):
be ready for paganism again, and that you know, even
though they had been Christian for many hundreds of years
at the point when his grandfather came along, somehow his
grandfather knew that you could just give them back the
pagan gods that they themselves had never worshiped, and probably
their parents and grandparents had never worshiped for many generations
going back. But at any point, it was like it

(01:12:20):
was in their blood. You could just give them the
pagan gods back and they would immediately take them up
without any coercion, Isn't it strange? But that does appear
to be sort of the belief that's present in the
movie here.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
Yeah, and you know, I don't know that it's ultimately
that disconnected from the reality of places where Christianity was
introduced and ended up replacing traditional beliefs to at least
some extent, because if we've as we've seen from various examples,
the old ways never or rarely completely go away. Some

(01:12:55):
aspects of them are folded into this new alien faith asumed. Yeah, yeah,
so the old gods take on new you know, slightly
new roles, or you know, the or something continues to
exist at like the folk belief and folk lore level
of things, and therefore, yeah, nothing completely goes away, and
therefore it would be possible perhaps for someone to come

(01:13:18):
free you from these newer ideas and allow those older
ideas to grow fresh.

Speaker 3 (01:13:23):
Again, even if the quote newer ideas have been around
for hundreds of years at this point and you've never
known anything else.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
Right, right, And I think you know summer. I would
would argue that it's it's in their DNA like it,
and it is. It is. It's a way of it's
a it's a worldview that is more in keeping with
the natural order of the human organism. And therefore, like
we take to it like we take to breath and
to water.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
Yeah, And that they believe that they are in fact
the reincarnations of pagans from years past. Yeah, as laundered
through many stages of nature. You know, they have been
the bird and the and its feather and the tree
and everything else, but at some point also they were
they're pagan ancestor.

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
Well, anyway, how he tries to he tries to burn
Lord somerl He's like, well, whatever you believe personally, you
are the subject of a Christian country. And he demands
to be given permission to exum Rowan Morrison's body, and
then Lord Somerrel reminds him that he already gave him
permission at the beginning of their conversation. And I love
this moment. It's so good. It's like how he he

(01:14:29):
is somehow mentally manufacturing more friction in his investigation than
actually exists.

Speaker 2 (01:14:36):
Yeah, Yeah, because he told him yes right away. But yeah,
I just kept arguing with him.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
Somerle says, as he's leaving, he's like, it's been a
great pleasure meeting a Christian copper. Okay, I'm looking at
the time now, so I'm realizing, I think we need
to be a little more summary as as we go

(01:15:02):
on with the rest of the plot.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
We got a speed onto the main event.

Speaker 3 (01:15:05):
Yeah, okay, So how He goes and exhumes the what
he believes to be the body of Rowan Morrison, but
uh oh, nobody in there. Well, there is a body,
it's not a human body, it's a dead hair inside
the coffin. So Howie is very, once again, very annoyed.
He goes back to the mansion of Lord Somerle, and
when he goes there, inside Lord Somerle is hanging out

(01:15:25):
with Miss Rose by the way. They're like drinking wine
from a golden gomblet. She's laying on a big fur
pelt on the floor and they're singing and playing the piano.
He's singing in his big, booming bass voice, and how
He interrupts them by throwing the dead hair from Rowan's
grave on the floor. He demands to know once again,
where is Rowan Morrison, and they're still giving him more

(01:15:46):
run around. Miss Rose is like, oh, you know, Rowan
always did loves the march hares. I think it's a
very fitting transmutation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
Yeah, like, what did you expect to find it in
her grave? But a hair? We already told you, children
have been telling you that she's a hare now.

Speaker 3 (01:16:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, why didn't you just listen to
us the first time? But so Sergeant how he starts
giving them all these threats. He's like, I suspect that
Rowan Morrison has been murdered under circumstances of pagan barbarity
which I can scarcely bring myself to believe, or taking
place in the twentieth century. So he says, look, I'm
gonna go to the mainland, I'm gonna get a bunch
more cops and we're gonna come back here and do

(01:16:22):
a full inquiry. And Lord Somerle's like, great, okay, oh,
and he also says at the end of day, He's like,
it's just as well that you won't be here tomorrow
to be offended by the sight of our May Day celebrations.
You wouldn't you probably wouldn't like what you're gonna see tomorrow,
with like a big smile and a twinkle in his eye. Now,

(01:16:43):
later that night, how He breaks into the chemist's shop
to like kind of write, like search through his photos,
the one that the chemist said he didn't have, and
he does, in fact find the picture of the harvest
festival from the year previous, and he confirms his suspicions.
It is what he believed. The harvest queen from the
year before was Rowan Morrison. And where there is normally

(01:17:05):
a huge pile of fruit next to the harvest queen,
instead in this photo there are only a few meager
boxes of produce, and he puts it all together. He
says it's Rowan and the crops failed. So this is
his theory. It was Rowan. Rowan was the harvest queen.
The crops last year were bad, and so they killed
Rowan as a sacrifice. All right, So we're almost to

(01:17:26):
May Day, but first we got to have a scene
of a wretchedly horny Mayday eve where Sergeant Howie goes
back to the inn and there is a musical number
where Willow again that's britt Ecklund. She gets naked and
then sings a song to him through the wall of
the inn, being like, hey, how about it, and he's

(01:17:47):
he's just in there, being like.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
That's that's true. That's that's essentially what happens. But the
music is great. Yeah, song is Willow's song, and I
would argue it's among the best in the picture. It's great, yeah,
I mean, and then like the physical performances on both
sides of the wall are amazing. It's just a great
musical sequence of juxtapose temptation and denial on one side

(01:18:12):
with Howie and then on Willow's side, just unabashed sexual freedom,
you know, and this whole sequence charged with eroticism, but
without either of the chief characters ever occupying the same room.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
And the next morning they have a meetup. Willow comes
to see him at breakfast and she's like, hey, I
thought you were gonna come see me last night. I
invited you and he's like sorry, I'm engaged to be married.
And she's like, oh, well, you know you're a very
gallant fellow sergeant, and he says, it's nothing personal. I
just don't believe in it before marriage. She's like, okay, cool,

(01:18:45):
suit yourself. You really should head back, though before we
get May Day festivities started, you wouldn't like them, not
with how you feel.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
So there's some important plot stuff going on in this
dialogue exchange. But I also really love how He's vulnerability
and honesty here, which I think is a nice touch.
It's very much one sided because she's still kind of
like taunting and temptacy. But you might expect Howie to
have been really gruff here and like call her out
as a temptress and preach to her on the values

(01:19:14):
of saving yourself for marriage and so forth. But instead
we get this nice scene that you had deliver some
important plot points, but also deepens our understanding of how
He's character.

Speaker 3 (01:19:23):
I think Howie at this point is actually exhausted by
like being self righteous at everyone. He's literally tired of it.
He's been self righteous at everyone for like many scenes
in a row, and he's just worn out.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
And this is very much in keeping with the idea
that's presented in the film that how at least Howie's
version of Christianity and enforced morality is exhausting, and if
he were just to like let go and let this
fall away from him, he could find another way to.

Speaker 3 (01:19:52):
Live all right. Well, after this how he tries to
leave the island. He goes to his seaplane, but oh,
engine won't start. Classic horror movie problem. I did say
that this movie it doesn't rely too much on cliches,
but there are there are some. I mean, you can't
have a full Corra movie without the vehicle that won't start.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
And this is where the creepy masks starts showing up, right,
goes up to the plane and there like the villagers
are peeking over the wall with the bunny masks and
so forth, and we could start getting some more overtly
creepy notes from the local folk beliefs.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
It's a mix of whimsical and humorous and creepy. Yeah,
and I love that mix.

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
Yeah. It never truly goes full creep mode at this point,
Like a lesser film would, I mean a lesser film,
much lesser film would have been creep mode the whole time. Yes,
it continues to play this nice balance.

Speaker 3 (01:20:43):
But I love the masks. So the villagers start showing
up in animal masks for the May Day celebration. They're
dressed as hares, as foxes, as squirrels. One is the
salmon of knowledge.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Ooh, we've talked about that fish on the show before. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:56):
Yeah, And I'd love all the masks, but I love
that a lot of the masks look so dingy. They
look like really kind of weathered and like they've been
used in many May Day festivals and like they smell
bad now.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):
Yeah, even crumpled up in a drawer.

Speaker 3 (01:21:12):
We do get a library research scene where he goes
to the town library, which it's funny, has books like
of anthropology. I think he may read from the Golden
Bough perhaps, Oh, I'm not sure, but he you know,
he reads from something that's like James Fraser that tells
about the May Day festivals. In fact, I'll just read

(01:21:33):
briefly from what he comes across. So he's reading in
the library. Primitive man lived and died by his harvest.
The purpose of his spring ceremonies was to ensure a
plentiful autumn. Relics of these fertility dramas are to be
found all over Europe. In Great Britain, for example, one
can still see harmless versions of them danced in obscure
villages on May Day. Their cast includes many alarming characters,

(01:21:54):
a man, animal or hobby horse who canter is at
the head of the procession, charging at the earls a
man woman, the sinister teaser played by the community leader
or a priest, and the man fool punch. Most complex
of all, the symbolic figures, the privileged, simpleton and king
for a day. Six swordsmen follow these figures, and at
the climax of the ceremony lock their swords together in

(01:22:17):
a clear symbol of the sun. In pagan times, however,
these dances were not simply picturesque jigs. They were frenzied rights,
ending in a sacrifice by which the dancers hoped desperately
to win over the Goddess of the fields. In good times,
they offered produce to the gods and slaughtered animals, But
in bad years, when the harvest had been poor, the
sacrifice was a human being.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (01:22:41):
Sometimes the victim would be drowned in the sea, or
burnt to death in a huge sacrificial bonfire. Sometimes the
six swordsmen ritually beheaded the virgin, and he says, Dear
God in Heaven, even these people can't be that mad.
But he puts it all together. It's the picture of
Rowan from last year's harvest. And he he knows, he
knows it's Rowan, she's the sacrifice, but now he realizes

(01:23:04):
something's different. He doesn't think they killed her last year.
He thinks she's still alive and they're going to kill
her today and so it's up to him to save her.
So this turns into the frantic hunt. We get sort
of a montage of how we popping around to all
the different locations on the island trying to find Rowan Morrison.
He thinks she's alive and being held somewhere for the sacrifice.

(01:23:28):
For example, he tries to go to May Morrison, her mother,
and he's like, don't you realize what they're doing? And
May is not any help. She's just like, oh, sergeant,
you'll simply never understand the true nature of sacrifice. Eventually,
after he's checked a bunch of places and come up
empty handed. But by the way, it's also very funny
while he's checking things, because the locals are all kind

(01:23:48):
of peeping around, taunting him and like running around in
masks playing little pranks on him.

Speaker 2 (01:23:53):
Oh yeah, and we see the hobby horse guy.

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
Yes, yes, and the children who are like pretending to
be dead, and he's like what And then they pop
up and laugh at him, so like the whole town
has started just treating Howie as if he is a joke.
Now the here we get the hand of Glory scene
coming up, because how he comes back to the inn

(01:24:16):
and he's like, I'm so tired, I've got to take
a nap. He lays down in his bed. I think
he has a dram of whiskey and then lays in
his bed for an hour.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
Yeah, and then you know he's he's laying there and
he hears a Willow and Willow's dad plotting and they're like, oh,
you don't don't don't want to don't want to make
him sleep too long, do you? And there we don't
want him getting in the way and so forth. And
then when those voices subside, he comes to and they've
lit a hand of glory in his room. This is

(01:24:44):
the scene that always stuck with me because this is
like a really this may be Is this the first
like more overt horror note in the picture? Really?

Speaker 3 (01:24:52):
I think it could be. Yeah, it's the first bit
of anything that's like gore because he does in the
in the the Undertaker's house, he comes across a body
that has the hand removed. Yeah, and then later this happens, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:07):
The Hand of Glory, where this version of it is
a disembodied hand that's set up on this candlestick and
each finger is a lit candle, and they're different versions
of what the Hand of Glory means. But basically it's
tied to different stories where a thief would use it
as a magical item to subdue a household and force
them to sleep. We actually just reran the Artifact episode

(01:25:29):
about the Hand of Glory. But yeah, in short, we
have an occult European item here tied to these different stories,
and it may ultimately be linked to ideas concerning the
mandrake root, which was attributed with similar powers and was
sometimes described as being handlike in form like a clod hand.
Whatever the case, it doesn't work, and he's just like ah,

(01:25:51):
and he like knocks it over, puts it out, and
he's back on the case and oh yeah. Then he
goes and finds the landlord. The landlord's putting on his
food costume for the big parade, and so heck.

Speaker 3 (01:26:04):
Yeah, beats him over the head and takes his costume
and then goes down to join the parade, and oh boy,
the parade is one of my favorite parts of the movie.
We have Christopher Lee wearing a long wig and a dress.
It's like a purple and blue kind of outfit, but
with sneakers he's wearing like looks like Converse sneakers.

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
Oh, I didn't notice the sneakers.

Speaker 3 (01:26:24):
Oh yeah, they're great. And then there is one of
the guys that we frequently see at the bar as
the man horse, the hobby horse. It's like bumping up
and down. And then this is supposed to be McGregor,
the innkeeper as the Fool, but instead behind the costume
it is in fact Sergeant Howie. He's following. He's going
along with the parade to try to get there and

(01:26:46):
save Rowan. But this is the part where when they're
they're walking down the way. Oh and by the way,
all the other townspeople. We've got some guys in kilts
with their swords to be the swordsman that he read
about in the library. And then everybody else is wearing
animal masks. Christopher Lee is just dancing heroically. I love
his capering about. And then also this is the scene
where he yells at Edward Woodward he's thinking, he's McGregor.

(01:27:10):
He's like, cut some capers, man, I told you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
And then eventually they do the deal that the reading
prepared is for, with the swords aligned in a pentagram
in the shape of the sun, and there's even a
mock beheading. He thinks, oh, my goodness, they've done it.
They've cut a kid's head off, but it was a
mock beheading. And then you realize, oh, it's just part
of this, right, And it's also this kind of like
moment of relief for us as the viewer, like, Okay,

(01:27:38):
maybe this isn't a big human sacrifice thing he's attending.
Maybe it is all just some you know, muted folkloric
version of some ancient right, right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:49):
But then from there they proceed down to the shore,
where first Christopher Lee gets out an axe and he
chops open some barrels of ale, which they roll into
the sea as a gift to the god of the sea.
And then from there he says it's time to move
on to our more dreadful sacrifice, and there we see
Rowan Morrison standing flanked by some people with torches at

(01:28:10):
the mouth of a cave. And what happens, well, it's
just Howie in his fool costume just breaks out in
a run in front of everybody. Everybody's gathered there, and
he runs up to her and he's like, Rowan, come on,
and so they run off together through the cave. Through
the cave.

Speaker 2 (01:28:28):
Describe this music here, Joe, Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:28:31):
I don't know, I forget what the music is.

Speaker 2 (01:28:36):
Yeah, yeah, someone like some bass going on. It's it's a.

Speaker 3 (01:28:39):
Little more electric rock and roll than anything else in
the movie. Yeah, chase music. And so they run around
through the cave while they're being pursued by people from
the island, and eventually Rowan shows him here, here's where
we can go, and they crawl out through an opening
where they come out through the top of the cave
onto a big meadow that's on these cliffs overlooking the

(01:28:59):
rocky shoreline below. And when they come out above, everyone's
waiting for them. Lord Somerrile's up there, and May Morrison,
Rowan's mother is standing there. And Rowan runs directly to
Lord Somerrile and she says, did I do it right?
And he says, you did beautifully, my dear, And so

(01:29:20):
now we're left wondering what Rowan does not seem to
be afraid at all. It's like she knows that she
is not, in fact, in any danger, and instead everyone's
attention turns to Howie in his fool costume. Lord Somerile
tells him, welcome, fool. You have come of your own
free will to the appointed place. The game is over,

(01:29:42):
the game of the hunted leading the hunter. You came
here to find Rowan Morrison. But it is we who
have found you and brought you here and controlled your
every thought and action since you arrived. Principally, we persuaded
you to think that Rowan Morrison was being held as
a sacrifice because our crops failed last year. And how
He says, but I know your crops failed. I saw

(01:30:03):
the harvest photograph, and summer Ale says, oh, yes, they failed,
all right, disastrously. So for the first time since my
grandfather came here, the blossom came, but the fruit withered
and died on the bow. That must not happen again
this year. It is our most earnest belief that the
best way of presenting this is to offer to our

(01:30:24):
God of the Sun and to the Goddess of our orchards,
the most acceptable sacrifice that lies in our power. Animals
are fine, but their acceptability is limited. A little child
is even better, but not nearly as effective as the
right kind of adult.

Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
Now, it was worth noting that at this point, Lord
Summrle has now subtly changed in demeanor and appearance for starters.
Here we get more of the signature of Christopher Lee grimness,
you know. And also they're on the coast that they're
wind swept, and so his hair is wilder and the
gray hair is more apparent, and I don't know, the

(01:31:02):
way it's set against the sun, the setting sun, it
feels it feels even more like a halo. But also
he looks more gray. He doesn't look maybe as full
of life as he was, not that he looks like
a vampire or anything, but he looks like a little
older and you know, he feels like the embodiment of
approaching winter. Now at this point, and it's worth noting

(01:31:24):
that this film is supposed to take place at the
beginning of summer. They're supposed to take place May first,
but it was filmed in November and December, So all
these scenes where you see like fruiting trees, they had
to bring those in or dress up other trees. You know,
they had to fake it. And it feels fitting at
this point in the picture that we have been living

(01:31:45):
in a fake summer, you know, because here, especially as
manifested the idea that the world is growing colder, the
sun is leaving our world, and are and what are
we going to have to do to ensure Nuada's blessings
and the blessed of all the other gods and goddesses
and they're pantheon.

Speaker 3 (01:32:03):
I think that's beautifully said, exactly right. What are you
going to have to do to get Nuauda's blessings? You'll
have to give him a man. And they say, and
hear the women from the town come in the willow,
and the librarian and miss Rose, they come in to
explain what kind of man they were looking for. A
man who woud come here of his own free will,
a man who had come here with the power of

(01:32:24):
a king by representing the law, a man who had
come here as a virgin, and a man who would
come here as a fool. How he is all these things?

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
Now, that's right, And I'd say we'll ignore the overly
complex nature of this trap, just given how splendidly the
trap has been sprung here and the drama and ideas
surrounding it, like what if they'd sent a different cop though,
what if they sent the cop played by like Oliver Reed.
He shows up, He's like, he's been married. This is
the CoP's been married three times. And they're like, oh,

(01:32:55):
go lord, this guy's not going to do Nuada is
not going to accept this guy.

Speaker 3 (01:32:59):
This cop is not a virgin. I think it's interesting
also that Howie is like also not like super young,
that he's like, you know, he's like a forty something man,
but he's now engaged to be married, but is still
a virgin. And that seems like that is exactly what
they wanted. They must have somehow engineered they found out,
like how he is the one we need.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
Yeah, yeah, they pulled it off. They pulled it off.

Speaker 3 (01:33:22):
So he tries to argue with them about the principle
behind their sacrifice. There will be a lot of exchange here.
He tries to argue that he has hope for the resurrection,
and he says, even if you kill me now, it
is I who will live again in the resurrection of Christ,
not your damned apples. And he Also, there's a wonderful

(01:33:43):
moment where he says to Lord Somemrrel. He says, I
believe in the life eternal has promised to us by
our Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord Somerrel says, that is
good for believing what you do, we confer upon you
a rare gift these days, a martyr's death.

Speaker 2 (01:33:59):
Yeah, that's the line that always stood out to me
because it's it's not completely mocking, like there's grim comfort
in what Summerle is saying to him, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
Yeah. Also in this exchange, there's an interesting moment where
Lord Somerle seems to almost through the entire movie, have
complete mastery of every situation he's in. He never really
seems bothered. There's only one moment where maybe he does.
I wonder what you think. There's a part where Sergeant
how He is saying, you know, kill He says, killing

(01:34:27):
me will not bring back your apples, that these pagan
gods they're not real, you're all making this up. This
is insanity. And then he says he says, Lord Somerle,
your crops may may fail again. And he says, if
the crops fail next year, Somemerrile next year, the people
will kill you on May Day, and Christopher Lee it's

(01:34:48):
kind of hard to read his expression in response, but
all he says is they will not fail. He doesn't
really argue with how he and everybody's standing around there
so everybody can hear. It's like how he's giving them
the idea if they didn't have it themselves, that they're
going to have to do that next year. But but
Somerl doesn't argue with him that the people will do that.

(01:35:11):
He just argues that this will work killing you or
will will not fail.

Speaker 2 (01:35:16):
I think I think summer Isle is shaken here by this.
I think the mask not that it's a matter. I
do believe that Somerle believes in all of this, but
I think dowt enters in here because you know, the
crops have failed once and it's they're trying to appease
these gods and it might not work. And this is
also the moment where I think the conflict in the
movie reaches its peak, because it's clear that well, maybe

(01:35:39):
we're just in a position as humans that neither faith
can protect us anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:35:44):
What if we are.

Speaker 2 (01:35:45):
Truly on our own against the approaching darkness, you know,
the darkness of a winter beyond which spring may not
save us, the darkness of our continual fall from the
optimism of the nineteen sixties into the grim realities of
the nineteen seventies, Like, what if we don't have these
answers and we don't have these powers we can reach
out to at all, what are we going to do? Well?

Speaker 3 (01:36:07):
I think this movie does have a sort of answer
to that, And the answer is what we will do
is every year more desperately increase the violent intensity of
our rituals. Yeah, anyway, Lord summer El says, come, it
is time to keep your appointment with the wicker Man.
And here we get the final revelation, which is just

(01:36:28):
blood chilling. They bring Sergeant Howie up above the top
of the hill and he sees out in the field
above the cliffs, and you can hear the waves crashing
on the rocks down below at the sea. There's this
big field, and he sees the wicker Man itself of
the title, a giant man made out of wood, a

(01:36:49):
man shaped figure with sacrificial animals loaded inside in the
arms and legs, and an open chamber, a cell in
its chest, with the door hanging open, and then the
ladder leading up to it, and bonfires lit and ready
all around, and Sergeant how He begins to scream. It's
it's amazing the way he completely loses his composure and

(01:37:12):
he just begins to shriek. Oh God, oh Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:37:16):
Yeah, I mean it becomes obvious that you know, there
wasn't any fruit to harvest. This is all everyone's.

Speaker 3 (01:37:21):
Been working on.

Speaker 2 (01:37:22):
Yes, on this island. This is it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:23):
This is the product of their labor. Now they've been
planning this and building the Wickerman and yeah, and this
is it. So they load Sergeant how He inside the Wickerman,
and they light the fires to make him a burnt
offering and to their gods. And meanwhile, so like how
He inside, he begins to scream and scream and protest.

(01:37:46):
He also tries to sing the hymn from the church
service at the beginning. He sings, the Lord's my shepherd.
I'll not want he leadeth me, He leadeth me the
quiet waters by, But eventually it leads to him just
shrieking out into the sky as the fires climb up
higher and higher into the cage. And meanwhile, Lord summerle

(01:38:07):
and the people of the island are singing a jolly song.
They are out there. They're out there like holding hands
and swinging their hands back and forth and singing. Summer
is a coming in loudly sing cuckoo. There's so many
things I could say about the scene, but it's it
is something you just kind of need to see for itself.
We alluded in the last episode to how it is

(01:38:29):
one of the bleakest and most terrifying endings of any
movie I can think of, but also it is shot
with a real beauty. Like we see the sun setting
and there's a kind of bleariness in the sky as
it's all and we see the as the the Wickerman
burns up and we see it kind of beginning to
collapse and come down, and as the people are singing

(01:38:53):
and they're singing with real joy and hope, and I
don't even know how to put it. It's it's it's
just such a powerful effect.

Speaker 2 (01:39:01):
I mean, we're on the we're on the shore, we're
on the coast of this island. It's like we're on
the edge of the world, We're on the edge of time.
And yeah, this this final closing shot, I think is
probably It's one of, if not the finest closing shots
I've ever seen in a film, where they're singing and
we were viewing it from behind, and we see the
head of the burning Wickerman collapse in on itself with

(01:39:22):
kind of a roar and a crackle as we reveal
the setting sun behind it, and then you know, we
close out, we close out the credits, and we get
one last look at that that image, that kind of
wooden icon of the sublime face of Nuada, the sun
god of these people, and we're just left to ponder

(01:39:43):
what it all means.

Speaker 3 (01:39:44):
Do you think it works or do you think that
they're going to put Christopher Lee in the Wickerman next year?

Speaker 2 (01:39:50):
Oh? I don't know. I mean, I've honestly, I've honestly
never really thought about what actually comes after this. Like,
I feel like the movie does such a great job
of nicely tying up the narrative and then like handing
it to us to think about our own self and
our own world. You know, I mean not to say
you can't think about that. I was actually reading just

(01:40:12):
the other day that Robin Hardy wrote a novelization of
the film that came out years later, and there's like
a little bit at the end where they find how
he's airplane and it's like implied maybe he got away
and lived. It's like, oh my god, what a horrible
way to actually tack ending, to tack onto all of this,
Like that's I mean, maybe it works within the context

(01:40:34):
of the written form. I haven't read it, so I
can't actually speak to it, but in summary, it sounds
like a terrible idea.

Speaker 3 (01:40:41):
Was it you who was telling me that the producers
had the idea because they hated the ending? Obviously, the
producers had the idea that, like, what if a rainstorm
breaks out and it puts out the fire in the
Wickerman and saves him, you know, it's a miracle.

Speaker 2 (01:40:55):
Oh my gosh, that would have been terrible. Yeah, Like,
it's just such a it's a it's a very bleak ending,
but such a perfect ending like this. I think the
film would still have its following, obviously, and it would
still be great in its own way. But yeah, if
you've gone with a different ending here, it just wouldn't
have been punctuated quite the same way. It wouldn't. It
would have robbed it of part of its power.

Speaker 3 (01:41:16):
Okay, we've been going a long time. I think we've
got to call it on The Wickerman all.

Speaker 2 (01:41:21):
Right, Yep, we've loaded it all up in the effigy
and we're going to set it alight now. So we
would obviously love to hear from everyone out there if
you have even more thoughts as we did about The
Wickerman from seventy three or any other version of the
Wickerman sequels, remakes and so forth, novelizations. If you have
read the novelization right in and give me more information

(01:41:44):
about what we were talking about here, all of that
is fair game. Other full car films you'd like us
to cover, just right in, we'd love to hear from you.
Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here
on Weird House Cinema. If you want to follow Weird

(01:42:05):
House Cinema online, you can go to Stbim podcast on Instagram,
but also on letterboxed. We are weird House. That's our
user name there, and you can follow our list of
all the films we've covered so far, and sometimes a
peek ahead at what comes next.

Speaker 3 (01:42:19):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:42:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Weirdhouse Cinema: The Wicker Man (1973) - part 2

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema: The Wicker Man (1973) - part 2