(2) THE WICKER MAN (1973)

No – not the one with the bees, Robin Hardy’s original cult classic “creep-fest starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee – with a final reel that’s become an intrinsic piece of horror iconography”.

Of course, it’s slow-burn horror more in the sense of classical tragedy of creeping doom a la Euripides’ The Bacchae (and a stealth sequel to Caesar’s The Gallic Wars). Also a classic in the subgenre of folk horror – horror based on old folklore or old folkloric rituals, typically the pagan faiths of yore as here. While it was most common in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s surprisingly prevalent, particularly in the so-called folk horror revival in the 2010s – The Wicker Man is predecessor to 2019’s Midsommar.

A Variety article summed it up nicely – “It’s a film set on an island in the Scottish Hebrides, full of gnarly blokes in pubs, that turns out to be a secret sect of Celtic pagan worship. There are dances around the maypole and nymphs leaping through fire, and there is Christopher Lee, sinister in a benevolent sherry-club way, as if he were presiding over a kinky episode of “Fantasy Island,” as the commune’s lord and master. There’s period kitsch in “The Wicker Man,” yet the movie taps into something memorable: a death cult that wears a gleaming smile, as if it were the missing link between Charles Manson’s followers and the Jonestown horde. In spirit, the film takes off from the last scene of “Rosemary’s Baby,” with all those devil worshippers gathered for a party in the Castavets’ apartment — a terrifying vision of middle-class evil. Yet “The Wicker Man” lands, if anything, in an even more unruly place. Watching it, you can’t see the devil, but you can see the scary power of mass belief”.

Also – naked Britt Ekland (and Britt Ekland’s body double) with that infamous wall-slapping seductive dancing and singing.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)