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A script penned by Anthony Shaffer and starring a horror icon and the lead actor could have been an ideal venture for filmmaker Robin Hardy during the filming of The Wicker Man more than 50 years ago.

Although today it is revered as a cult horror masterpiece, the extent of misery it brought the film-makers is now uncovered in newly discovered correspondence and script drafts.

The Storyline of This Classic Film

The 1973 film centers on a puritan police officer, portrayed by Edward Woodward, who travels on a remote Scottish island in search of a lost child, only to encounter mysterious pagan residents who deny she ever existed. Britt Ekland was cast as the daughter of a local innkeeper, who seduces the God-fearing officer, with Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle.

Production Tensions Uncovered

But the creative atmosphere was tense and contentious, the documents show. In a message to the writer, the director wrote: “How dare you treat me this way?”

Shaffer was already famous with acclaimed works such as Sleuth, but his script of The Wicker Man shows the director’s harsh edits to the screenplay.

Extensive crossings-out include the aristocrat’s dialogue 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 for you to know.”

Apart from Writer and Director

Tensions boiled over outside the main pair. One of the producers commented: “Shaffer’s talent has been offset by excessive indulgence that impels him to prove himself too clever by half.”

In a letter to the production team, Hardy complained about the film’s editor, Eric Boyd-Perkins: “I believe he likes the theme or style of the picture … and thinks that he has had enough of it.”

In a correspondence, Lee referred to the movie as “alluring and mysterious”, despite “having to cope with a talkative producer, an underpaid and harassed writer and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Forgotten Documents Uncovered

An extensive correspondence about the production was among multiple bags of papers left in the attic of the old house of Hardy’s third wife, Caroline. There were also previously unseen scripts, visual plans, production photos and budget records, many of which show the struggles experienced by the team.

Hardy’s sons his two sons, now 60 and 63, have drawn on these documents for a forthcoming book, called Children of The Wicker Man. It reveals the intense stress on Hardy throughout the making of the film – from his heart attack to financial ruin.

Family Fallout

At first, the movie was a box office flop and, in the aftermath of its failure, Hardy abandoned his wife and his family for a new life in America. Legal letters reveal his wife as an unacknowledged producer and that Hardy owed her up to a large sum. She had to give up the family home and passed away in the 1980s, aged 51, battling alcoholism, never knowing that her film later turned into a global hit.

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

When someone reached out by a woman living in the former family home, asking whether he wished to retrieve the documents, his initial reaction was to propose burning “all of it”.

But then he and his brother examined the bags and understood the importance of their contents.

Insights from the Papers

Dominic, an art historian, said: “Every key figure are in there. We discovered the first draft by the writer, but with dad’s annotations as filmmaker, ‘containing’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Because he was formerly a barrister, he did a lot of overexplaining and dad just went ‘edit, edit, edit’. They respected each other and clashed frequently.”

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

Financial Struggles

His family did not profit financially from the film, he added: “This movie has gone on to make so much money for other people. It’s beyond a joke. Dad accepted five grand. Thus, he missed out on any of the upside. Christopher Lee also did not get payment from it either, despite the fact that he did the film for zero, to get out of his previous studio. So, in many ways, it was a very unkind film.”