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A screenplay penned by the acclaimed writer and featuring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward was expected to be a dream project for filmmaker Robin Hardy during the production of The Wicker Man more than 50 years ago.

Although it is now revered as an iconic horror film, the extent of misery it brought the film-makers has now been uncovered in newly discovered letters and early versions of the script.

The Storyline of This Classic Film

This 1973 movie centers on a puritan police officer, played by the actor, who arrives on a remote Scottish island looking for a lost child, but finds sinister local pagans who deny the girl was real. the actress was cast as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who seduces the religious policeman, with Lee as the pagan aristocrat.

Creative Conflict Revealed

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

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

Heavy edits include Summerisle’s lines in the final scene, which would have begun: “The girl was but the tip of the iceberg – the visible element. Do not reproach yourself, there was no way for you to know.”

Apart from Writer and Director

Tensions boiled over beyond the main pair. A producer commented: “The writer’s skill has been offset by excessive indulgence that impels him to show he was too clever by half.”

In a letter to the producers, the director expressed frustration about the film’s editor, the editing specialist: “I don’t think he appreciates the theme or style of the picture … and thinks that he is tired of it.”

In one letter, Christopher Lee referred to the film as “appealing and enigmatic”, even with “dealing with a talkative producer, an underpaid and harassed writer and a well-paid but difficult director”.

Lost Documents Uncovered

An extensive correspondence relating to the production was part of multiple bags of papers forgotten in the attic of the old house of the director’s spouse, his wife. Included were previously unseen scripts, visual plans, on-set photographs and budget records, which reflect the challenges experienced by the team.

Hardy’s sons Justin and Dominic, currently in their sixties, have drawn on the material for an upcoming publication, titled Children of The Wicker Man. It reveals the intense stress on the director throughout the making of the movie – including a health crisis to bankruptcy.

Personal Fallout

At first, the film failed commercially and, following the disappointment, the director left his spouse and his family for a fresh start in America. Court documents show his wife as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that he owed her as much as £1m in today’s money. She had to give up the family home and passed away in the 1980s, aged 51, suffering from alcoholism, unaware that the project eventually became a global hit.

His son, an acclaimed documentary maker, called The Wicker Man as “the film that ruined my family”.

When someone reached out by a resident living in the former family home, asking whether he wished to collect the documents, his initial reaction was to suggest destroying “the bloody things”.

But then he and his brother examined the bags and realised the significance of what they held.

Revelations from the Papers

Dominic, an art historian, commented: “All the big players is represented. We found an original script by the writer, but with dad’s annotations as director, ‘controlling’ the writer’s excess. Due to his legal background, he tended to overwrite and dad just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They respected each other and hated each other.”

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

Monetary Struggles

His family never benefited monetarily from the production, he explained: “This movie earned so much money for other people. It’s beyond a joke. His father accepted a small fee. Thus, he missed out on any of the upside. The actor also did not get payment from it as well, despite the fact that he did the film for no pay, to get out of Hammer [Horror films]. Therefore, it’s been a very unkind film.”