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A script written by the acclaimed writer and starring Christopher Lee and the lead actor should have been a dream project for director Robin Hardy while the filming of The Wicker Man more than 50 years ago.

Even though today it is revered as an iconic horror film, the degree of misery it brought the film-makers has now been uncovered in newly discovered correspondence and script drafts.

The Storyline of This Classic Film

The 1973 film revolves around a puritan police officer, played by the actor, who travels on a remote Scottish island looking for a missing girl, only to encounter mysterious pagan residents who claim she ever existed. Britt Ekland was cast as the daughter of a local innkeeper, who tempts the God-fearing officer, with Lee as Lord Summerisle.

Production Tensions Uncovered

But the creative atmosphere was tense and fractious, the documents show. In a letter to the writer, Hardy stated: “How could you handle me this way?”

Shaffer was already famous with acclaimed works like Sleuth, but his typed draft of The Wicker Man shows Hardy’s brutal cuts to the screenplay.

Heavy edits feature Summerisle’s lines in the final scene, originally starting: “The child was only a small part – the visible element. Don’t blame yourself, there was no way for you to know.”

Apart from Writer and Director

Tensions boiled over beyond the writer and director. One of the producers wrote: “The writer’s skill has been offset by excessive indulgence that impels him to show he was too clever by half.”

In a note to the production team, Hardy complained about the film’s editor, Eric Boyd-Perkins: “I don’t think he appreciates the theme or approach of the picture … and thinks that he has had enough of it.”

In one letter, Christopher Lee referred to the movie as “appealing and enigmatic”, even with “having to cope with a garrulous producer, a stressed screenwriter and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Forgotten Papers Found

An extensive correspondence relating to the production was part of multiple bags of documents forgotten in the attic of the old house of the director’s spouse, his wife. Included were previously unseen scripts, storyboards, production photos and financial accounts, many of which reflect the struggles faced by the film-makers.

The director’s children his two sons, currently in their sixties, have drawn on the material for an upcoming publication, titled Children of The Wicker Man. The book uncovers the extreme pressures on Hardy throughout the production of the film – including a health crisis to bankruptcy.

Personal Fallout

Initially, the movie was a box office flop and, following the disappointment, Hardy left his wife and their children for a fresh start in the US. Legal letters reveal Caroline as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that he was indebted to her up to a large sum. She was forced to give up their house and died in 1984, in her fifties, battling addiction, never knowing that her film later turned into a global hit.

His son, an acclaimed documentary maker, described The Wicker Man as “the movie that messed up my family”.

When someone reached out by a woman who had moved into the former family home, asking whether he wished to retrieve the sacks of papers, his first thought was to propose destroying “the bloody things”.

But afterward he and his brother opened up the bags and realised the importance of their contents.

Insights from the Documents

Dominic, an art historian, commented: “Every key figure is represented. We found an original script by Shaffer, but with his father’s notes as filmmaker, ‘controlling’ the writer’s excess. Due to his legal background, he tended to overwrite and his father just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They sort of loved each other and clashed frequently.”

Compiling the publication has brought some “closure”, the son said.

Financial Hardships

The family did not profit financially from the production, he explained: “The bloody film has gone on to make a fortune for other people. It’s beyond a joke. His father agreed to take five grand. So he never received any of the upside. Christopher Lee never received payment from it as well, despite the fact that he did his role for no pay, to get out of Hammer [Horror films]. Therefore, it was a harsh experience.”