Paul Giovanni composed The Wicker Man soundtrack — a recording cited as a major influence in neofolk and psych folk artists.

Inside 2000, the British heavily metal band Iron Maiden recorded "The Wicker Man" (on the album Brave New World), which was based on this flick. Scottish Band Summerisle are named fallowing a film. The Coral also paid homage to the film in the streaming of their Top 40 hit So long within 2002. Around 2004 the magazine Total Film named The Wicker Human a Sixth greatest British film ever.

A motion-picture show is existence remade by having Brightlight Pictures producing and by having Nicolas Cage in the starring role for the 2006 release.

Plot

Sergeant Neil Howie (Woodward), of the West Highlands Constabulary, is sent an anonymous letter recommending that he investigate the disappearance of a lassie, Rowan Morrison, on the remote Hebridean island of Summerisle. He flies dead set the isl& and when you took his investigations discovers that the entire people watch a neo-pagan religion under the island's creator Lord Summerisle (Lee), worshipping a sun & engaging inside more rituals.

Howie, the devout Christian who holds very traditional values, is more and more shocked per island-dweller' behaviour; he is besides two attracted & repulsed per beguiling & overtly intimate Willow (Ekland), a landlord's girl. He has there is no assistance around his research from either the isl&-dweller, world health organization possibly deny Morrison is, however applying his law authority he persists and uncovers grounds to believe suggesting a girl was a victim of human sacrifice. Delving deeper into a island's culture, he disguises himself when Punch, the chief character of the May Day festival, in an attempt to study a details of the sacrificial dying. However the isl&-dweller are non fooled, & at a prevent of a festival these are revealed that a girl is alive and unhurt: the letter was section of a ploy to bring Howie to the island sequentially for him to exist as a sacrifice.

When Howie is seized per island-dweller, Lord Summerisle drolly notes that a sacrifice is especially efficacious since a engaged Howie is a virgin, & such as Punch, is at the same time caring and the fool (for 'solving' Morrison's disappearance & however for his high-handedness towards a island-dweller). Howie is forced into the stomach of a big hollow wicker statue of a human, which is set aflame. In a final shot of a film, a isl&-dweller surround the burning wicker human and sing the ancient English folk-song Sumer Is Icumen In while the panicky Howie shouts out Psalm 23 & implores divine vengeance on the island and its habitant.

Problematic release

A film was produced at one time of crisis in the British screenland. A studio around charge of production, 'British Lion films' was within fiscal pain & was bought out by millionaire man of affairs John Bentley. Sequentially to convince a unions that he wasn't about to asset-strip the company, Bentley needed for the film into production quickly. This intended that A Wicker Human, the film placed when you took early summertime, was actually filmed within October; within order to look convincing, unreal leaves & blossom got to exist as glued to trees in numbers of scenes. Christopher Lee was highly lament for a film manufactured; he & others worked on the production forgoing wage. Per instance of the film's completion a studio experienced been bought out by Michael Deeley. At a personal screening, he described a film when one of the worst Decade films he'd ever seen. Cuts were manufactured & the copy of the film was sent to American film producer Roger Corman in Hollywood to make a judgement of training market the film in the America. Inside Britain, the film wwhen cut again & sooner or later freed as section of a double bill. Despite Lee's claims that a cuts got butchered a film's continuity, the film met by using critical plaudit & won 1st prize in the 1974 Festival of Fantastic Films within Paris. Erstwhile thenceforth, a original negatives & a merely print of the foremost cut of the film were 'misused'.

Them-disc edition of the DVD includes two versions. A film when it was originally freed is an 87-microscopic cut. The part restored version (which contains scenes recovered from either the videotape of the version sent to Roger Corman) diarrhea 99 proceedings.

Filming locations
Skye: Opening aerial shots Plockton: Initial landing and walking along harbour front Kirkcudbright: Most of the houses in Summerisle Culzean Castle: Lord Summerisle's castle Dumfries and Galloway: Most more location shots

Reference
Black, Allan (2000). Within A Wicker Human: A Morbid Ingenuities. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-283-06355-6.