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A script written by the acclaimed writer and featuring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward should have been an ideal venture for director Robin Hardy during the production of The Wicker Man more than 50 years ago.

Although today it is celebrated as an iconic horror film, the extent of misery it caused the film-makers has now been revealed in previously unpublished correspondence and early versions of the script.

The Storyline of The Wicker Man

The 1973 film revolves around a devout policeman, played by the actor, who arrives on a remote Scottish island in search of a lost child, only to encounter sinister local pagans who claim the girl was real. the actress was cast as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who tempts the religious policeman, with Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle.

Production Tensions Revealed

But the creative atmosphere was frayed and contentious, the documents show. In a message to Shaffer, Hardy wrote: “How could you treat me like this?”

The screenwriter had already made his name with acclaimed works like Sleuth, but his typed draft of The Wicker Man reveals Hardy’s brutal cuts to his work.

Heavy edits feature Summerisle’s lines in the final scene, originally starting: “The child was only a small part – the part that showed. Don’t blame yourself, there was no way you could have known.”

Apart from the Creative Duo

Conflict escalated outside the main pair. One of the producers wrote: “The writer’s skill has been offset by a self-indulgence that impels him to prove himself too clever by half.”

In a note to the production team, Hardy complained about the film’s editor, the editing specialist: “I believe he likes the subject or approach of the picture … and thinks that he is tired of it.”

In one letter, Christopher Lee described the movie as “alluring and mysterious”, even with “dealing with a talkative producer, a stressed screenwriter and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Forgotten Papers Found

A large collection of letters about the production was among six sack-loads of papers left in the attic of the old house of the director’s spouse, his wife. There were also previously unseen scripts, storyboards, on-set photographs and budget records, many of which reflect the challenges experienced by the film-makers.

Hardy’s sons Justin and Dominic, now 60 and 63, have drawn on the material for a forthcoming book, called Children of The Wicker Man. The book uncovers the extreme pressures on the director throughout the making of the movie – including a health crisis to bankruptcy.

Family Fallout

Initially, the movie failed commercially and, following the disappointment, the director left his wife and their children for a fresh start in the US. Legal letters show his wife as an unacknowledged producer and that Hardy owed her as much as a large sum. She had to sell their house and passed away in the 1980s, in her fifties, suffering from alcoholism, never knowing that the project later turned into a global hit.

His son, a Bafta-nominated historian film-maker, called The Wicker Man as “the film that messed up our family”.

When he was contacted by a resident who had moved into the former family home, inquiring if he wished to retrieve the sacks of papers, his initial reaction was to suggest destroying “all of it”.

But then he and his stepbrother Dominic examined the bags and realised the significance of their contents.

Insights from the Documents

Dominic, an art historian, commented: “All the big players are in there. We discovered the first draft by Shaffer, but with his father’s notes as filmmaker, ‘controlling’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Because he was formerly a barrister, Shaffer did a lot of overexplaining and dad just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They respected each other and clashed frequently.”

Writing the book provided some “closure”, the son stated.

Financial Hardships

His family did not profit monetarily from the film, he added: “The bloody film earned a fortune for other people. It’s unfair. His father accepted a small fee. So he never received any of the upside. Christopher Lee never received any money from it either, although he performed the film for no pay, to get out of Hammer [Horror films]. So, in many ways, it was a very unkind film.”