Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 3: two of our Weird House Cinema feature on the nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy three British folk horror classic The wicker Man, starring
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward, and Diane Chillento. Normally on Weird
Speaker 3: House we keep it to one episode per movie, but
Speaker 3: we figured we would have more than usual to say
Speaker 3: about The wicker Man, especially since it's one of my
Speaker 3: personal favorite films. I don't know, is it one of
Speaker 3: yours too, Rob, I don't want to speak for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say it's in there somewhere. You know.
Speaker 2: It's a film that I used to own on VHS
Speaker 2: that had a profound impact on me when I first
Speaker 2: watched it, and even though I hadn't seen it in
Speaker 2: many years before rewatching it for this episode, it certainly
Speaker 2: has resonated with me. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So if we were going to do it in one episode,
Speaker 3: I think there was extreme danger of that becoming like
Speaker 3: a three hour episode. So it's a good thing we
Speaker 3: split it up so we aired part one last week.
Speaker 3: If you haven't heard part one, please go back and
Speaker 3: listen to that first. And also if you haven't seen
Speaker 3: the film, let me reiterate what I said last time.
Speaker 3: As always, there are going to be extensive spoilers. In
Speaker 3: our discussion, we usually talk about the plot in pretty
Speaker 3: great detail, and The wicker Man is a movie that
Speaker 3: I think really benefits from viewing with no foreknowledge or
Speaker 3: as little fore knowledge as possible. So if you have
Speaker 3: an appetite for this kind of thing, if you're comfortable
Speaker 3: with seventies full corror themes. In general, R rated content
Speaker 3: are rated in terms of sex and violence. Strangely, I
Speaker 3: don't recall much foul language in the movie. If any,
Speaker 3: they say fallus that's true. Yeah, But as long as
Speaker 3: you're comfortable with that kind of material and it's the
Speaker 3: sort of thing you'd be into, I would recommend watching
Speaker 3: this movie without reading anything or listening any further.
Speaker 2: All right, you've been so.
Speaker 3: Last time, of course, we talked about the cast and crew,
Speaker 3: the connections, and we discussed some general thoughts about what
Speaker 3: makes The Wickerman unique. For instance, the question what genre
Speaker 3: is this? It's often called a horror movie, but I
Speaker 3: think that is based largely on the last five to
Speaker 3: ten minutes of the film. For most of the movie's
Speaker 3: run time, it really doesn't feel like horror. It feels
Speaker 3: more like a religiously themed mystery musical. So it really
Speaker 3: is kind of its own genre. There is no other
Speaker 3: movie quite like it. We also talked about the way
Speaker 3: it creates this tangled garden of religious themes, with the
Speaker 3: strained interactions between Christianity and some strange variant of Celtic
Speaker 3: Paganism that seems to be partially made up for the movie,
Speaker 3: and it achieves a lot of thoughtful commentary without ever
Speaker 3: reaching an overly simplistic message. It's not like a thesis movie.
Speaker 3: We talked about the weird and from my perspective, refreshingly
Speaker 3: unusual character dynamics. For example, it's a detective story, but
Speaker 3: the detective protagonist is largely unlikable. He's rude, puritanical, high handed,
Speaker 3: and not even especially skilled at detective work, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of contrasting with the Sherlock Holmes how he sergeant,
Speaker 3: how he misses a lot of things in his investigation,
Speaker 3: and yet he seems to be possibly the only person
Speaker 3: in the movie who's actually trying to help an endangered child.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, you've got the structural antagonists of
Speaker 3: the detective story, like the local Pagans of summer Isle,
Speaker 3: mostly rendered as friendly, fascinating, thoughtful, even joyful souls, and
Speaker 3: yet we're constantly suspicious that they're up to something terrible.
Speaker 3: So it really always kind of keeps you off balance.
Speaker 2: You know, I had a thought I wonder First of all,
Speaker 2: I was wondering if anyone has ever pulled a reverse
Speaker 2: wicker Man in a film. But then this idea solidified
Speaker 2: a little bit, and I realized I would kind of
Speaker 2: like to see a show in which a detective from
Speaker 2: a secluded pagan island comes to the mainland to investigate
Speaker 2: a crime, and we get we get this sort of
Speaker 2: fish out of water tail. But in this case, the
Speaker 2: detective is really good at what they do. But they're
Speaker 2: also you know, they're they're bringing a totally different mindset,
Speaker 2: and you know, they're handling frogs and whatnot. I think
Speaker 2: there's a lot of room for amusement there.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would love that, but I think that
Speaker 3: would be a lot more similar to the kind of
Speaker 3: detective heroes were used to a kind of Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: a smart, a smart, admirable in some way, likable, outsider protagonist.
Speaker 2: Yes, for the most part. But the twist in this
Speaker 2: is he or she or they solves every case with
Speaker 2: human sacrifice. That's that's that's how we arrive. It's formulaic,
Speaker 2: you'll get the same thing every episode, but I think
Speaker 2: people get behind it.
Speaker 3: People want something they can count on. I mean that's
Speaker 3: part of you know, people like the murder mystery because
Speaker 3: it's like it's got a surprise every time, but it's
Speaker 3: also a very a very familiar format, so it's both
Speaker 3: surprising and familiar every time. I think that's part of
Speaker 3: the appeal. So yeah, I think you're onto something. We
Speaker 3: also talked last time extensively about the role of music
Speaker 3: in The Wicker Man and the fact that the movie
Speaker 3: features not only in scene diegetic music where the characters
Speaker 3: stand around playing musical instruments and singing songs, but it
Speaker 3: actually has several scenes that are essentially musical numbers like
Speaker 3: in a musical movie, where the characters break the fourth wall,
Speaker 3: sing directly into the camera and they're singing along to
Speaker 3: music playing not in the world of the movie but
Speaker 3: on the soundtrack. So I don't know, it's just like again,
Speaker 3: not another horror movie like that I can think of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does stand alone.
Speaker 3: But that gets us caught up to today. So, Robert,
Speaker 3: are you ready to talk about the plot of The Wickerman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 3: We are going to be. But by the way, this
Speaker 3: came up last time, that there are multiple cuts of
Speaker 3: the movie out there. I think we're going to be
Speaker 3: talking about what's known as the final cut, which was
Speaker 3: released in twenty thirteen. Any notes on the history of
Speaker 3: the different cuts you want to talk about. If not,
Speaker 3: that's okay.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll be honest. Once there are more than
Speaker 2: two cuts of a film, in consideration, I begin to
Speaker 2: lose interest in the whole situation. Like if there are
Speaker 2: two cuts, I can get more into it, like which
Speaker 2: one's the good cut, which one's the bad one? What
Speaker 2: does this one say versus this one? But when there
Speaker 2: are three or more, it gets a little annoying for me.
Speaker 2: But with The Wickerman, Yeah, there are also these added wrinkles.
Speaker 2: There are all these loose ends of hearsay and perhaps
Speaker 2: even movie myth about lost and destroyed footage, and I'm
Speaker 2: not sure where the truth ultimately lies on all of it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, essentially we have three cuts to consider, the
Speaker 2: original theatrical cut eighty eight minutes, the director's cut ninety
Speaker 2: nine minutes, said to be more of like a work print,
Speaker 2: and then the final cut ninety four minutes, and this
Speaker 2: has been this is said to be the director's preferred
Speaker 2: cut of the picture. So I thought it was great
Speaker 2: works for me, and I think the only if memory serves.
Speaker 2: The only thing we're really missing out on from that
Speaker 2: full ninety nine minute cut is some preliminary stuff with
Speaker 2: Howie before he leaves for the island.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know if we need that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's plenty to go on to know about him
Speaker 2: and the world he came from.
Speaker 3: Do we need to see him getting called into the
Speaker 3: chief's office and being like, I got a case for you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I need you back on the force. I don't know that.
Speaker 3: I don't know that's what's in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, check what Check for details about the
Speaker 2: runtime before you watch it, But I think the final
Speaker 2: cut is widely available. This may be, in fact the
Speaker 2: primary means of watching it these days.
Speaker 3: So we begin on a black screen with an image
Speaker 3: of a godlike face, carved in a wooden dit suggesting
Speaker 3: Celtic folk art as it's supposed to be. I think
Speaker 3: a god of the Sun with dreamy, placid, upturned eyes.
Speaker 3: And then the camera zooms through the darkness to the
Speaker 3: wooden face, and when it gets closer and eventually fills
Speaker 3: the screen, we can make out that the god's mouth
Speaker 3: is ever so slightly bent into this little smile, not
Speaker 3: like he's beaming with happiness, but instead like like he
Speaker 3: knows something, like he's got a little joke. At least
Speaker 3: that's how it looks to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is we will we will come to
Speaker 2: know this deity as Nuanna. However, it is just a
Speaker 2: super weird opening for this picture. This just appears out
Speaker 2: of darkness without commentary, and you know, we later get
Speaker 2: the idea that it's a solar deity, but at the
Speaker 2: time it's like it is the at least part arboreal.
Speaker 2: Is he fungal because he has this very woody look?
Speaker 2: And I do agree with you about the about the face.
Speaker 2: You know, the face is sublime and all knowing calm,
Speaker 2: but also a little bit smug.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and once you've seen the whole movie and the ending,
Speaker 3: I think the image of him having a little private
Speaker 3: joke that's in this ever so slight smile. That makes
Speaker 3: more sense.
Speaker 2: This is also the god of the Teletubbies. Right. Isn't
Speaker 2: there a sun face that they also worship? Is there? Really?
Speaker 2: I think so? Yeah, there's like a there's like a
Speaker 2: child's face on the sun and they worship it. I think.
Speaker 3: Is that part of the fundamentalist Christian complain against them?
Speaker 2: Probably?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're paganism. It's the Wickerman the Wicker Tubbies. Yes,
Speaker 3: all right, Well, anyway we come into the prologue. Now
Speaker 3: this cut does have some things with Sergeant Howie before
Speaker 3: he leaves for the island, but it doesn't have him
Speaker 3: like at the station like we were joking about it. Instead,
Speaker 3: we begin by hearing Christian churchgoers singing a hymn which
Speaker 3: is based on the words of Psalm twenty three. That's
Speaker 3: the one that says the Lord's my shepherd, shall I
Speaker 3: shall not want? He makes me to lie down by
Speaker 3: green pas as he leads me beside still waters, and
Speaker 3: so forth and so. Text on the black screen tells
Speaker 3: us Sunday, the twenty ninth of April nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: The camera comes up on a church congregation singing from
Speaker 3: their hymnal. The man in the middle of the frame
Speaker 3: is Sergeant Howie, our protagonist, played by Edward Woodward. I
Speaker 3: would say modestly handsome Scottish police detective of about forty.
Speaker 3: I think he's in his early forties, dressed in a
Speaker 3: suit for church, and there's a woman standing next to
Speaker 3: him sharing his hymnal. Rob, did you take this woman
Speaker 3: to be his fiance?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the impression I got based on this scene,
Speaker 2: and then some stuff that the character says later on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they trade a little smile in between lines
Speaker 3: of the song, and then the camera pulls back and
Speaker 3: shows us the whole congregation. It's a it's a lot
Speaker 3: of very old people with white and gray hair.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's a maybe stereotypically old church crowd, especially for people
Speaker 3: of the the mainline Protestant denominations.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, not to be confused with the afternoon service
Speaker 2: where they have the rock band. This is This is
Speaker 2: the other one where all the old people go.
Speaker 3: And the song goes on. After we see our characters here,
Speaker 3: it goes on where they're singing. He leadeth me, He
Speaker 3: leadeth me. The quiet waters By, and I can't help
Speaker 3: but notice a thing that is often pointed out about
Speaker 3: singing in a lot of mainline Protestant Christian denominations. The
Speaker 3: singing does not sound especially joyful. It's kind of you know,
Speaker 3: it's kind of wrote and robotic. The quiet waters By.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this must be a John Wesley him.
Speaker 3: Huh, yeah, I think so. But again based on the
Speaker 3: words of Psalm twenty three, which will come up again
Speaker 3: in the end of the movie. Anyway, after the hymn,
Speaker 3: Sergeant Howie gets up to deliver a reading from the scripture.
Speaker 3: And he's not the priest. This is just a lay reading.
Speaker 3: He gets up and he reads in front of everyone,
Speaker 3: I have received of the Lord that which also I
Speaker 3: delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night
Speaker 3: in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he
Speaker 3: had given thanks, he broke it and said, take eat.
Speaker 3: This is my body which is broken for you, this
Speaker 3: dew in remembrance of me. I love that little inversion
Speaker 3: and that this do not do this.
Speaker 2: I think this is a director's cameo as well. I
Speaker 2: believe this is Robin Hardy, if memory serves Robin Hardy
Speaker 2: doing what as the pastor of the preacher. Here, oh,
Speaker 2: I see the priest in the church. Okay, oh, And
Speaker 2: here also we see Sergeant how He taking communion himself
Speaker 2: in a cutaway how he says, and after the same manner,
Speaker 2: he also took the cup when he had eaten, saying,
Speaker 2: this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This
Speaker 2: oft as you drink in remembrance of me, For as
Speaker 2: often as you eat this bread and drink this wine,
Speaker 2: you do show the Lord's death till he comes again.
Speaker 2: Then we cut to black.
Speaker 3: Next sound of seagulls and airplane propellers spinning up and
Speaker 3: bagpie just blasting on into the bagpipes, and the credits
Speaker 3: begin to play. So as the credits play, we see
Speaker 3: Sergeant how we climb into a single engine prop seaplane
Speaker 3: and take off from a bay on the Scottish coast.
Speaker 3: He's flying out over the waters to a remote island,
Speaker 3: and we see him traveling while a beautiful folk song plays.
Speaker 3: And there's plenty of use of natural scenery here, which
Speaker 3: is truly gorgeous. You've got these silent gray waters, rocky
Speaker 3: islands with green pastures and very sharp cliffs and outcroppings
Speaker 3: and Sergeant Howie flies over all this until eventually he
Speaker 3: reaches an island where we see large fertile fields and
Speaker 3: rows of trees and orchards. And here the music changes.
Speaker 3: It goes from the first folk song that plays into
Speaker 3: corn rigs and barley rigs. Rob, how much have you
Speaker 3: been singing this one?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I played the soundtrack quite a bit while making
Speaker 2: notes for this episode, so I did catch myself humming
Speaker 2: at a few times, and I rather like this tune.
Speaker 2: It has a strong seventies folk vibe that puts me
Speaker 2: in the mind of artist like Tom Rush.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to sing it, but just to read
Speaker 3: for some of the lyrics. It was upon a Lamas night,
Speaker 3: when corn rigs are Bonnie, beneath the moon's unclouded light.
Speaker 3: I held a while to Annie. The time went by
Speaker 3: with careless heed till tween the late and early, with
Speaker 3: small persuasions, she agreed to see me through the barley
Speaker 3: corn Rigs and barley rigs and corn rigs are Bonnie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This song, like many of the others, is primarily
Speaker 2: concerned with fertility, here painted with a little bit of
Speaker 2: human sexuality and also some agricultural practices. This trend will continue.
Speaker 3: So Sergeant Howie lands his seaplane in the waters of
Speaker 3: the summerle Harbor, and all around the little village here
Speaker 3: we see pink flowers blooming on black tree limbs, green hedges,
Speaker 3: but also a kind of gray on gray palette of
Speaker 3: the cold sea and the cobbled stones streets by the dock.
Speaker 3: There are several old men standing around watching the plane land,
Speaker 3: just sort of gawking without saying anything, And we can
Speaker 3: hear seagulls calling in the distance. And there is a
Speaker 3: very strong atmosphere right at the beginning here, I think,
Speaker 3: created in part by the sort of hollow soundscape, like
Speaker 3: there's lapping water, the seagulls, kind of a faint echo everywhere.
Speaker 3: This place is at once both desolate and lush, both
Speaker 3: welcoming and a bit stand offish. That great sense of
Speaker 3: ambivalence that you get through much of the movie begins
Speaker 3: right here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a sense of like, well, this is beautiful,
Speaker 2: but is life possible here? Do people live here? Well,
Speaker 2: yes they do, we do. We do see them, but
Speaker 2: they hear a bit hostile, respectfully to the newcomer.
Speaker 3: First line of the movie is Sergeant Howie yelling will
Speaker 3: you send a dinghy please? He's out of the boat
Speaker 3: and he he keeps yelling for a dinghy. In the
Speaker 3: middle of his line, he gets out of megaphone and
Speaker 3: starts yelling at them for the dinghy, and the guy's
Speaker 3: standing around at the edge of the harbor call back
Speaker 3: as if they didn't hear what he said, and they say, hello, sir,
Speaker 3: have you lost your bearings? Kind of like are you
Speaker 3: supposed to be here? And how he calls back into
Speaker 3: his megaphone that yes, he's supposed to be here. He's
Speaker 3: trying to reach summer Isle, and he triples down on
Speaker 3: his request for a dinghy. They first try to tell
Speaker 3: him that he cannot land without written permission from Lord Summerle,
Speaker 3: and this is a theme that will repeat quite often.
Speaker 3: But Sergeant Howie, now getting annoyed, says that he's a
Speaker 3: police officer and they must allow him to come ashore.
Speaker 3: He must have that dinghy. So they send the dinghy out.
Speaker 3: And I like the dinghy too. It's got little decorations
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got an eye on it, as if to
Speaker 2: ward away evil. And I've read that this just happened
Speaker 2: to be the dinghy that was available. Like they didn't
Speaker 2: decorate this or anything. This is just an accurate taste
Speaker 2: of local decoration.
Speaker 3: Okay. So Sergeant Howie comes ashore, and as I said,
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of old men just kind of
Speaker 3: standing around. He explains his business to the harbor master.
Speaker 3: He says that he is a representative of the West
Speaker 3: Highland Police and that he has been summoned to the
Speaker 3: island by an anonymous note that he received in the
Speaker 3: mail saying that a twelve year old girl named Rowan
Speaker 3: Morrison had gone missing. He is here to investigate the matter.
Speaker 3: The note also came with a picture of the missing girl.
Speaker 3: So how he takes out the photo and he shows
Speaker 3: it to the men gathered around the harbor. They all
Speaker 3: pass it around, they take a look, and they all
Speaker 3: agree in the end they have never seen her before.
Speaker 3: The note also says that Rowan is the daughter of
Speaker 3: someone named May Morrison. Confusingly, the old men standing here
Speaker 3: first act like they don't know who that is, but
Speaker 3: then suddenly one of them says, oh, May Morrison, Yes,
Speaker 3: she runs the post office. And then all of the
Speaker 3: guys remember May. They're all like, oh yeah, may Ah.
Speaker 3: But as how, he is walking away, I guess to
Speaker 3: go to the post office. The harbormaster calls out that's
Speaker 3: not May's daughter. Though not deterred yet, how he follows
Speaker 3: up his first lead. He heads to the post office,
Speaker 3: and along the way we see him passing some very
Speaker 3: beautiful gardens. They are these blushing flowers and even kind
Speaker 3: of tropical looking plants and corn rigs and barley riggs
Speaker 3: play some more, of course, but along the way we
Speaker 3: see local residents peeking out of windows curiously, almost suspiciously
Speaker 3: at Sergeant Howie as he passes. But when he gets
Speaker 3: to the post office, this we alluded to at the
Speaker 3: end of the last episode. This ain't just a post office.
Speaker 3: It is a combination post office and confection Err that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like you were saying, I love the shop,
Speaker 2: love all the details here. It feels very lived in
Speaker 2: and legitimate. I imagine they took it like an actual storefront
Speaker 2: of some sort here and filled it up with all
Speaker 2: these customs, sweets, and I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 2: the full story on these. Some of these feel they
Speaker 2: just look too good to not also be some sort
Speaker 2: of traditional pagan treat of one sort or Another's some
Speaker 2: sort of traditional cake and cookie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, edible psychedelic toad cakes, little chocolate rams, heads with
Speaker 3: yellow eyes. I don't know what those What are these
Speaker 3: like black and yellow discs.
Speaker 2: I don't know. They look kind of like Saturn, also
Speaker 2: kind of like the eye of Sauron, I don't know.
Speaker 3: And then there are just like lollipops and stuff. There's
Speaker 3: some stuff that is not very representative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of us just sweets for sweets sake. Other
Speaker 2: stuff we can already tell has some sort of ritual significance.
Speaker 3: Anyway, how he goes into the shop. He's sort of
Speaker 3: checking out the sweets, and a woman's voice calls out
Speaker 3: from the back saying, good afternoon. So a woman comes
Speaker 3: out and having been looking at some cakes shaped like rabbits,
Speaker 3: Sergeant how He tries to pay a compliment. He says,
Speaker 3: I like your rabbits, And the woman who runs the shop,
Speaker 3: May Morrison, says, those are hairs, not silly old rabbits,
Speaker 3: lovely march hares, shouldn't you know. The woman meets Sergeant
Speaker 3: Howie and they introduce themselves. This is indeed May Morrison,
Speaker 3: and she's curious to know what this is about. Sergeant
Speaker 3: Howie says that he's here to see about her missing daughter,
Speaker 3: but May reacts with bafflement. She says she does have
Speaker 3: a daughter, but her daughter is not missing. She looks
Speaker 3: at the photo that how he brought and says this
Speaker 3: is not her daughter. And Howie tries to keep digging,
Speaker 3: but May just says, I tell you no, and then laughs,
Speaker 3: and then takes him into the back of the shop
Speaker 3: to her residence, where she introduces him to her daughter, Myrtle,
Speaker 3: who indeed looks nothing like the girl in the photograph.
Speaker 3: The girl is in the middle of drawing this big
Speaker 3: rabbit or I guess maybe it's a hair, not a rabbit,
Speaker 3: big hair on sketch paper, and May gets called away
Speaker 3: to the front of the shop by the bell, and
Speaker 3: so Sergeant Howie is just left alone with Myrtle here,
Speaker 3: So he squats down to talk with her. First, she
Speaker 3: hands him a paint brush, and this gets paint all
Speaker 3: over his hands. The first of There is a running
Speaker 3: theme in the movie that people who apparently mean no
Speaker 3: harm and are in fact being quite friendly, just constantly
Speaker 3: in little ways kind of blemish or annoy or humiliate
Speaker 3: Sergeant Howie by like handing him a paint brush brush
Speaker 3: side first and he just gets brown paint all over
Speaker 3: his hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is it's kind of the physical embodiment of
Speaker 2: what goes on with ideas that are conveyed to him,
Speaker 2: you know, because people will just in a very friendly tone,
Speaker 2: like give them, give him a little bit of insight
Speaker 2: into what they believe here on Summer Isle and how
Speaker 2: they go about their lives. And it's it we're to
Speaker 2: infer that there is no malice meant by these statements,
Speaker 2: but they often, you know, they often poke him the
Speaker 2: wrong way and sometimes provoke him to some embarrassing sequences
Speaker 2: where we'll get into examples as we go.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But so how he's still trying to get some
Speaker 3: information makes sense of this confusing situation that he's coming to.
Speaker 3: So he asks Myrtle, do you know Rowan? And Myrtle says,
Speaker 3: in the fields she runs and plays there all day.
Speaker 3: And he says, oh, do you think she'll be coming
Speaker 3: back for tea? And Myrtle says tea. Hares don't have tea, silly. So,
Speaker 3: according to Myrtle, Rowan is a hare. And how he
Speaker 3: keeps trying to get confirmation on this and she's like
Speaker 3: of course she's a hair She has a lovely time,
Speaker 3: So this inquiry is off to a strange start. Later
Speaker 3: that evening, we see Sergeant Howie wandering around. He has
Speaker 3: to find lodgings on the island while he is on
Speaker 3: the case, so he makes his way to the local inn.
Speaker 3: I get the sense that this is the only local inn.
Speaker 3: There's probably just one, and this is the green Man Inn.
Speaker 3: And wow, the sign on this place, by the way,
Speaker 3: is amazing. So it is one of the kind of
Speaker 3: wild man green man and motifs that you will find
Speaker 3: in the British Isles. But the eyes on the green
Speaker 3: Man are first of all, it's just like a vegetation head,
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of the green night. But then
Speaker 3: the eyes are these sunken, spiraling down concentric circles of
Speaker 3: brass or gold that look like they're like the structure
Speaker 3: of Dante's Inferno, but they're going down and these like
Speaker 3: gold metal pits. It looks insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely overflowing with psychedelic pagan mischief. I also want
Speaker 2: to note this is something that I made note of
Speaker 2: several times. We're more likely to say the wicker Man,
Speaker 2: but every time I feel like, especially Christopher Lee says
Speaker 2: the wicker Man. He says the wicker Man. And when
Speaker 2: they talk about the green Man in they say the
Speaker 2: green Man in. So I just noted that found it interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like when they speak of Batman in that way, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Do you know where Batman is now?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: He flies through the caves. He has a lovely time.
Speaker 3: So when Sergeant Howie arrives, the pub is hoppin. It
Speaker 3: looks like a good time. It is full of people
Speaker 3: drinking lively music. But the music stops as soon as
Speaker 3: he walks in. It's like that scene in a western,
Speaker 3: you know, where the wrong guy walks into the saloon
Speaker 3: and the piano player eh oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And this is a great scene too because we have
Speaker 2: a lot of musicians and non actors in this scene.
Speaker 2: So this is definitely one of those scenes where they
Speaker 2: was talking about in the last episode that really has
Speaker 2: that authentic feel to it. You kind of feel like
Speaker 2: you're in a documentary here and these are these are
Speaker 2: just the locals, like we are in a very authentic setting.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So how He goes up to the counter and
Speaker 3: he meets the innkeeper and this guy has such suspicious energy.
Speaker 3: We mentioned him last time. This is Alder McGregor, the landlord,
Speaker 3: the innkeeper, and he's just got this raised die bro.
Speaker 3: He's like you oh a policeman.
Speaker 2: I yeah, yeah, this is Lindsay Kemp, fun fun performance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's great. So Sergeant Howie requests a room for
Speaker 3: the night and a hot supper, and the landlord calls
Speaker 3: his daughter to the counter to show Sergeant Howie to
Speaker 3: his room. Here we meet another one of the main
Speaker 3: characters in the movie, played by Britt Eklund in the
Speaker 3: role of Willow McGregor, the quote landlord's daughter and on
Speaker 3: cue as she comes into the room. First of all,
Speaker 3: when she comes into the room and meets Howie, she
Speaker 3: like gives him a real good like look up and down,
Speaker 3: and all the locals start singing a dirty pub song
Speaker 3: about her, and I want to be clear, Willow seems
Speaker 3: not to mind the dirty pub song. As soon as
Speaker 3: she sees Sergeant Howie, she looks at him with this
Speaker 3: mischievous smile like, yes, I am going to make this
Speaker 3: Christian do some sinning. And I think it's the harbor
Speaker 3: master who starts singing the song and the lyrics begins
Speaker 3: saying much has been said of the strumpets of view
Speaker 3: of winches and body house queens by the score. But
Speaker 3: I sing of a baggage that we all adore the
Speaker 3: landlord's daughter.
Speaker 2: And if it were not already clear, Sergeant Howie has
Speaker 2: landed on the hornist island in the British Isles.
Speaker 3: Yes, Now, something I want to note about the tone
Speaker 3: of this scene, which I think is interesting. In another context,
Speaker 3: you could imagine that this exact song, this horny drinking song,
Speaker 3: with the same lyrics, would have more of the quality
Speaker 3: of an insult, like it would have more of a
Speaker 3: misogynist tone and a kind of insult to the woman
Speaker 3: that the song is about. And somehow to me, this
Speaker 3: scene does not feel like it has any implication of
Speaker 3: that kind. There's obviously humor in the song, but it
Speaker 3: actually does not feel like the characters understand the song
Speaker 3: to be at Willow's expense. Instead, the song feels like
Speaker 3: it is genuinely meant as a kind of cheeky celebration
Speaker 3: of a woman who is beloved by the pub community,
Speaker 3: and she seems to be reveling in this adoration. She's
Speaker 3: like smiling and laughing and dancing along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, I'm left After this scene, in particular,
Speaker 2: I'm left with an impression of a very sex positive
Speaker 2: culture here on Summer Isle and the way it hits
Speaker 2: given that this, again was filmed in seventy two, came
Speaker 2: out like seventy three. Initially I assume this is bringing
Speaker 2: in a lot of like sixties free love energy along
Speaker 2: with these older pagan vibes, pre Christian vibes. But yeah,
Speaker 2: this is an island where we're already getting the idea
Speaker 2: that sex is no sin, but rather the chiefest of
Speaker 2: virtues to be celebrated as such. And to someone like Howie,
Speaker 2: for whom sex is original sin, this just absolutely flips
Speaker 2: his universe on its head because it quickly becomes obvious
Speaker 2: that this is not just a young folks thing or
Speaker 2: a subgroup thing. Everyone here on Summer Issle has this worldview.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody's having a great time. It's a lot of
Speaker 3: old people in the pub, they're all they all love this.
Speaker 3: H Another thing that I think is kind of interesting
Speaker 3: about this, about the tone of this song and the
Speaker 3: way the characters seem to feel and understand it, especially
Speaker 3: given what we learned later about the history of the island,
Speaker 3: It almost feels like this song could be a relic
Speaker 3: from a different time from people with different values, and
Speaker 3: now the words and melody are still being sung but
Speaker 3: by people who understand them differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, everybody starts singing and dancing. The pub
Speaker 3: is happening. By the way, like half of the patrons
Speaker 3: have musical instruments. Some of the dance moves not so
Speaker 3: much in this scene, but we will see in later
Speaker 3: scenes are basically wrestling moves, like they'll be playing music
Speaker 3: and people are like picking each other up in the
Speaker 3: air as if to do a suplex or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot of clearly, as this crowd
Speaker 2: really gets into their cups, there are some tests of
Speaker 2: strength involved. Yeah, nobody has this is This is where
Speaker 2: everyone is going tonight. And there is no second location. Well,
Speaker 2: there's one possible second location. There is the field. There's
Speaker 2: also the cemetery, but we'll get into that later.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, as the song about the landlord's daughter is
Speaker 3: really heating up, Sergeant Howie is just like, stop all
Speaker 3: this nonsense. He starts rapping on the counter to make
Speaker 3: everybody shut up and listen to him, total scold, and
Speaker 3: once everybody is finally quiet, he tells them he's a
Speaker 3: policeman and that he is looking for a child named
Speaker 3: Rowan Morrison and if anyone has knowledge of her whereabouts,
Speaker 3: they should come speak with him. And it's funny because, like,
Speaker 3: if you force yourself to think about it, like his
Speaker 3: business is important. He is actually trying to solve what's
Speaker 3: going on within an apparently missing child who people are
Speaker 3: like giving him weird, conflicting information about. And yet it
Speaker 3: feels like this is completely inappropriate behavior on his part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean part of it is that so far,
Speaker 2: no one has acknowledged that anyone is actually missing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so like maybe we're inclined to forgive them a bit
Speaker 2: more for just not answering any of his questions all
Speaker 2: that night, because I mean, so far we're to assume that, well,
Speaker 2: there's no kid missing, Like what, you're just gonna shout
Speaker 2: out us some more about this, but we can't help you.
Speaker 3: So while Sergeant Howie is showing the photo to everyone,
Speaker 3: we also see some photos up on the wall of
Speaker 3: the Green Man in from each of the ten years past. Actually,
Speaker 3: there's a photo of the Harvest Festival featuring a girl
Speaker 3: who is the Queen of the Harvest I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if this is supposed to be the same as the
Speaker 3: Queen of the May Festival. She crowned the Queen of
Speaker 3: the May and then she also is the Queen of
Speaker 3: the Harvest Festival, or it's different girls. I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: But anyway, it'll have like a girl with like a
Speaker 3: wreath of flowers on her hair, and she'll be surrounded
Speaker 3: by crates of fruit and other produce the harvest of
Speaker 3: the island. The photo from last year's Harvest festival is missing.
Speaker 3: All of the other photos are lined up, but how
Speaker 3: He asks about it, and the landlord says that the
Speaker 3: frame was broken and it's being repaired anyway. Time for supper.
Speaker 3: We cut away to Howie eating and we see his
Speaker 3: food which looks gross, so we just hear him mutter disgusting.
Speaker 3: He's got like a little cut of meat on his plate,
Speaker 3: and then some beans that look blue, and then some
Speaker 3: canned boiled potatoes. It does not look like a very
Speaker 3: good plate of food. Willow comes in to clear his
Speaker 3: plate and she's like, what's the matter. Aren't you hungry?
Speaker 3: And how He says, yes, he says he's hungry, But
Speaker 3: he says that most of the food. I've had the
Speaker 3: farmhouse soup, the potatoes, broadbeans all come out of a can.
Speaker 3: Broad Beans in their natural state aren't usually turquois, are they?
Speaker 3: And Willow says, oh. This is the part where Willow
Speaker 3: just like looks at him. She goes, some things in
Speaker 3: their natural state have the most vivid colors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was laying it on a bit thick here,
Speaker 2: but I do love the continued botanical sexual themes here.
Speaker 3: Also, Willow asked him you want any Do you want
Speaker 3: any dessert? She says, do you want? Afters he asks
Speaker 3: for an apple, but she's as, no apples, they don't
Speaker 3: have any, And Sergeant how He is shocked by this.
Speaker 3: He's like, well, I thought summer Isle was famous for
Speaker 3: its fruit and vegetables. Your apples are what you do here,
Speaker 3: that's your whole thing. And she says, sorry, I expect
Speaker 3: they've all been exported. You can have peaches and cream
Speaker 3: if you like, seant. Sergeant how He asks if it
Speaker 3: will come from a can, and Willow nods oh, But
Speaker 3: she also gives him another sexy stinger. She's like, cheer
Speaker 3: up food isn't everything in life?
Speaker 2: You know? I love this little scene. It made me
Speaker 2: start thinking about religion as fruit here, with Christianity Howie's
Speaker 2: Christianity being the canned fruit from a distant land introduced here.
Speaker 2: While the pagan beliefs are of the soil and of
Speaker 2: the people, they're like the crops that are grown locally,
Speaker 2: or at least at this point in the film. That's
Speaker 2: how it may seem things may seem different later on.
Speaker 3: That is interesting. I didn't think of that. I wonder
Speaker 3: how that interfaces with the fact that the local fruits
Speaker 3: have failed in the last harvest exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think again, that's one of the great
Speaker 2: things about this film is you can kind of drop
Speaker 2: in at different points and it makes you think about
Speaker 2: things in one direction, and the new information will kind
Speaker 2: of make you consider the alternate argument. So this is
Speaker 2: just yeah, this is one of those moments right here
Speaker 2: where everything you think you might understand about the balance
Speaker 2: is going to shift later on.
Speaker 3: Though actually I got ahead of things because we actually
Speaker 3: don't know at this point in the movie that the
Speaker 3: last harvest failed yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as we know at this point, this
Speaker 2: is just an island where the apples are bountiful, and
Speaker 2: for some reason they're serving this guy can potatoes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe it's just superfluous disrespect for how we even
Speaker 3: though they're being very nice to him. And again, yeah,
Speaker 3: most people are being very nice to him. I should
Speaker 3: just say that again, Like he's gotten a little bit
Speaker 3: of an icy reception here and there, but it's you know,
Speaker 3: they're they're welcoming him.
Speaker 2: Their vibe is just very different than his too, Like
Speaker 2: he's still on the case, on the job, and no
Speaker 2: one else is working exactly, I mean except for the
Speaker 2: people working in the pub. Everyone else here is out
Speaker 2: for a good time. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The people working in the pub seem like they're partying
Speaker 3: in the pub at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We work hard, we play hard at the same time simultaneously.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, right after this, how he decides to go out
Speaker 3: for a walk. This is, by the way, right after
Speaker 3: Willow told him, you know, there's more to life than food.
Speaker 3: So he goes out for a walk on the lane
Speaker 3: outside the inn, and he discovers in the fields outside
Speaker 3: there just happens to be an orgy taking place. Dozens
Speaker 3: of people are out having passionate sex in the grass,
Speaker 3: and how he is incredibly startled by this. Next he
Speaker 3: comes to the edge of the old churchyard and peeks
Speaker 3: over the stone wall and he sees people in the
Speaker 3: graveyard with watering cans, watering graves and moonlight, and he
Speaker 3: sees a naked woman sitting on another grave and sobbing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Stephen King's character from Sleepwalkers would not approve
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't need this action, yea. So Howie goes
Speaker 3: back to the end, clearly disturbed. He something is not
Speaker 3: right with this place from his perspective. He quickly gets
Speaker 3: his key goes up to his room. Now Here we
Speaker 3: get a deleted scene of the first night at the inn.
Speaker 3: Later that night, while Howie is alone in his room
Speaker 3: writing in his notebook, we hear a deep voice outside
Speaker 3: the window calling out. It's the voice of Christopher Lee,
Speaker 3: and we hear Christopher Lee saying, Willow McGregor, I have
Speaker 3: the honor to present you Ash Buchanan. And then outside
Speaker 3: the window we look down and we see there stands
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee in the role of Lord Sumerle. I can't
Speaker 3: remember he rest in a kilt in this see yeah,
Speaker 3: with kind of the Scottish dress, with like a pouch
Speaker 3: of some kind. And then there's a young man standing
Speaker 3: beside him, Willow comes to the window and she is
Speaker 3: overjoyed to see them. She's laughing and she says, come
Speaker 3: on up, Ash Buchanan, and Lord Somerle says another sacrifice
Speaker 3: at the altar of Aphrodite, So Willow is the goddess
Speaker 3: of love in the local mythology. They also have a
Speaker 3: conversation of how she needs to be ready for Tomorrow's tomorrow,
Speaker 3: the day of a more serious offering, and the people
Speaker 3: in the pub downstairs by the way are singing a
Speaker 3: song about sex. This is not a rowdy drinking song
Speaker 3: this time. It's kind of a soft, sad minor key song.
Speaker 3: Sounds like it could be by Nick Drake.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: Also, this is the part I think we talked about
Speaker 3: this in the last episode, the once deleted scene now
Speaker 3: restored where Christopher Lee looks at slugs. Yes, and he's
Speaker 3: like staring at slugs crawling on a leaf, and he says,
Speaker 3: I think I could turn and live with animals. They
Speaker 3: are so placid and self contained. They do not lie
Speaker 3: awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They
Speaker 3: do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.
Speaker 3: Not one of them meals to another or to his
Speaker 3: own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one
Speaker 3: of them is respectable or unhappy all over the earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really nice. I love this sequence. I've noted
Speaker 2: that some folks online disagree and think that this scene
Speaker 2: kind of like messes with the pace of the picture,
Speaker 2: And I mean, I can maybe acknowledge some ways it
Speaker 2: might do that a little bit, but I feel like
Speaker 2: the benefits of it outweigh any negatives, you know, because
Speaker 2: we get kind of a we get a little more
Speaker 2: about the sort of outlook that the locals have about
Speaker 2: their place and relationship to nature, about like the value
Speaker 2: that they place on willow and on sex in the community.
Speaker 2: So I think it's it's all it's all an upside here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can see both sides about the scene. Having
Speaker 3: seen the movie without it as well, I can see
Speaker 3: how it does sort of disrupt the slow build towards
Speaker 3: the first meeting with Christopher Lee, and it also sort
Speaker 3: of it reveals more about the island's culture earlier on,
Speaker 3: and because without the scene you get a very very
Speaker 3: nice slow build of revelations about what's going on up
Speaker 3: to the payoff. So I see that point. But also
Speaker 3: I just really like the scene, and so I kind
Speaker 3: of hate to lose it.
Speaker 2: I think the first time I saw this film on television,
Speaker 2: I suspect this sequence was missing. And on top of that,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what else might have been cut for
Speaker 2: length on TPE, So that's a possible fourth different cut.
Speaker 2: I always always forget to flu that. Yeah, anytime you
Speaker 2: have something for cable television back in the day, or
Speaker 2: certainly broadcast television, there's the chance that something else has
Speaker 2: been cut or sometimes added, depending on what run time
Speaker 2: you're trying to hit.
Speaker 3: You know, another thing regarding the carefree, sex positive culture
Speaker 3: of the island that I wanted to talk about, Maybe
Speaker 3: this is a good place to bring it up, because
Speaker 3: I don't know where else to bring it up. I
Speaker 3: think this story would play differently if as soon as
Speaker 3: Sergeant Howie arrived on the island we were seeing lots
Speaker 3: of like hot young people in diaphanous gowns or people
Speaker 3: dancing around naked with flowers in their hair. But we
Speaker 3: don't see that. Instead, to the extent that we get
Speaker 3: any of that, it comes much later in the story,
Speaker 3: and that is not generally the local fashion, at least
Speaker 3: not for the day to day The characters that we
Speaker 3: meet early on are mostly older, windburned, gray haired people
Speaker 3: with a kind of wooly authentically rural Scotland in the
Speaker 3: seventies fashion sense. It's not woodstock out here, at least
Speaker 3: not early on. Early on, it's just it's lots of
Speaker 3: old people apparently living a kind of dowdy Scottish village life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's firmly established that this is not a
Speaker 2: generational thing here. Then there are some nods later on
Speaker 2: to the fact that the older members of the community
Speaker 2: are more likely to have biblical names, Biblical first names,
Speaker 2: as opposed to the younger people who all have names
Speaker 2: like Rowan and so forth. And it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: more botanical in nature. But yeah, I think this is
Speaker 2: a this is a great point anyway.
Speaker 3: The next day, we check back in with Sergeant Howie
Speaker 3: as he continues his investigation, and the first thing we
Speaker 3: see is that as Sergeant Howie is setting out to
Speaker 3: the island schoolhouse, he passes a big celebration out in
Speaker 3: a meadow across the way from the school. The boys
Speaker 3: of the elementary school are out with their teacher, dancing
Speaker 3: around a may pole which is hung with red and
Speaker 3: white streamers, and there is a band playing. We've got
Speaker 3: a guitar, clarinet, violin, and a very prominent mouth harp,
Speaker 3: going boying, boying. And here we get another musical number
Speaker 3: sung by the school master in a glorious pink shirt
Speaker 3: with a wide seventies collar, and the boys are running around.
Speaker 3: They're weaving their streamers around the maypole, twisting them up.
Speaker 3: I think most people have probably seen that kind of
Speaker 3: dance where you go around the maypole and you weave,
Speaker 3: you weave the fibers in and out. The tune of
Speaker 3: the song is it's both lighthearted and sing songy, but
Speaker 3: also a little bit eerie. And I'm just going to
Speaker 3: read the lyrics here because they do they are kind
Speaker 3: of important for establishing the tone of the movie as
Speaker 3: it's developing. So the schoolmaster sings in the woods, there
Speaker 3: grew a tree, and a fine, fine tree was he.
Speaker 3: And on that tree there was a limb, and on
Speaker 3: that limb there was a branch, and on that branch
Speaker 3: there was a nest. And in that nest there was
Speaker 3: an egg, and in that egg there was a bird,
Speaker 3: and from that bird a feather came, and of that
Speaker 3: feather was a bed, and on that bed there was
Speaker 3: a girl, and on that girl there was a man.
Speaker 3: And from that man there was a seed. And from
Speaker 3: that seed there was a boy, and from that boy
Speaker 3: there was a man. And for that man there was
Speaker 3: a grave. And from that grave there grew a tree.
Speaker 2: This is a great song. This is one I definitely
Speaker 2: did catch myself singing a couple of times because it
Speaker 2: has just such a nice, jaunty energy to it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Howie is again obviously weirded out by this, but
Speaker 3: he walks past to the schoolhouse where the girls of
Speaker 3: the school are sitting at their desks, and as Sergeant
Speaker 3: how he walks into the room. The teacher, Miss Rose,
Speaker 3: played by Diane Cilento, is in the middle of a lesson.
Speaker 3: And I love the way Chilento is dressed for this
Speaker 3: role because or at least in the scene, because on
Speaker 3: one hand, she looks like a classic proper school teacher
Speaker 3: in the conservative fashion. It's like a long gray wool
Speaker 3: dress going down to the floor and like a ruffled
Speaker 3: white top with this like buttoned up to the throat
Speaker 3: with long sleeves. But also at the same time she's
Speaker 3: got a big chain necklace with what looks like some
Speaker 3: kind of giant talismanic tooth or horn hanging over her stomach.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that was. I don't know which
Speaker 3: that is, but it's good anyway. Miss Rose is doing
Speaker 3: her lesson and she asks one of the students in
Speaker 3: the class, can you tell us what the maypole represents?
Speaker 3: The first girl she calls on doesn't know the answer,
Speaker 3: but then everybody else in the class calls out phallic symbol,
Speaker 3: and Miss Rose says, quote, the phallic symbol that is correct.
Speaker 3: It is the image of the penis, which is venerated
Speaker 3: in religions such as ours, as symbolizing the generative force
Speaker 3: in nature. And here's the point where suddenly how he
Speaker 3: interrupts the school. He's like, ah, right in the school door,
Speaker 3: and you might think how he's gonna get right down
Speaker 3: to business, trying to track down leads on the Rowan
Speaker 3: Morrison case. Except no he doesn't. Instead, he miss Rose
Speaker 3: aside and he's like, he says, miss you can be
Speaker 3: quite sure that I shall report this to the proper authorities.
Speaker 3: Everywhere I go on this island, it seems to me
Speaker 3: I find degeneracy. There was brawling in bars, there's indecency
Speaker 3: in public places, and there is corruption of the young.
Speaker 3: And now I see it all stems from here. It
Speaker 3: stems from the filth taught here in this very school room.
Speaker 3: And miss Rose just very calmly, is like I was
Speaker 3: unaware that the police got to set school curriculum. And
Speaker 3: he's just he's just constantly frustrated and annoyed. He's like, well,
Speaker 3: we'll see about that anyway to take this is.
Speaker 2: A great sequence though, and I would say this is
Speaker 2: the one that feels just a few degrees away from
Speaker 2: being a money python sketch. You know, certainly some dry
Speaker 2: comedic energy here, even if it doesn't like go for
Speaker 2: big punchline laughs or anything.
Speaker 3: So how he takes over the class and addresses all
Speaker 3: the girls. He introduces himself as a police officer, and
Speaker 3: he explains that he's looking for a girl named Rowan Morrison.
Speaker 3: Without asking, he erases the lesson that Miss Rose was
Speaker 3: working on on the blackboard so we can write over it.
Speaker 3: I happened to pause it so I could copy down
Speaker 3: what the class was covering before. How he barged in,
Speaker 3: this is great, this is what the blackboard said. The
Speaker 3: pith of the Snailstone preserves the eye from darkness. The
Speaker 3: toadstone preserves the newly born from the weird woman. The
Speaker 3: Hagstone preserves the people from the nightmare.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I think they were about to get to
Speaker 2: their lesson about the shadow Man. That class is interrupted. First,
Speaker 2: I want to go to this school. Do they do
Speaker 2: adult education there? I mean, one assumes they get around
Speaker 2: to mathematics eventually.
Speaker 3: Well, that is a good point. I don't get the
Speaker 3: sense from Miss Rose that this school only teaches witchcraft.
Speaker 3: It seems like they maybe have like a witchcraft class,
Speaker 3: but otherwise I think these students are probably getting a
Speaker 3: good education. They're learning math and science and history and
Speaker 3: all that. But then they're also just this is like
Speaker 3: their religious instruction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just happened to walk in and eavesdrop right
Speaker 2: before lunch when they normally cover this stuff.
Speaker 3: Anyway, how he writes Rowan's name on the blackboard. He
Speaker 3: passes her photo around, and he asks, do any of
Speaker 3: you know Rowan? Everyone in the class says no. Miss
Speaker 3: Rose says, there's your answer, Sergeant, if she existed, we
Speaker 3: would know of her. But Sergeant Howie is not satisfied.
Speaker 3: He points to an empty desk in the middle of
Speaker 3: the classroom and asks who sits there. Miss Rose says
Speaker 3: no one does. Then, still suspicious, he goes and he
Speaker 3: flips up the lid of the desk, and in the
Speaker 3: cavity inside he is shocked to see a nail partially
Speaker 3: hammered into the wood, protruding up several inches, and it's
Speaker 3: tied with a thread, and the other end of the
Speaker 3: thread is tied around a beadle who is crawling in
Speaker 3: circles around the nail. I would note the visual similarity
Speaker 3: to the boys running around the maypole holding the end
Speaker 3: of the street from just a minute before. And then
Speaker 3: the girl at the desk beside says, the little old
Speaker 3: beadle goes round and round, always the same way, you see,
Speaker 3: until it ends up right up tight to the nail,
Speaker 3: poor old thing. And Howie is just he's freaked out.
Speaker 3: He's like, poor old thing. And then why in God's
Speaker 3: name do you do it?
Speaker 2: Girl?
Speaker 3: He's yelling at the children, Still suspicious, he wants to
Speaker 3: see the school registerry. Miss Rose tries to say she
Speaker 3: can't share that without permission from Lord Sumerle once again
Speaker 3: needs Lord Somerle's sign off. But how he just ignores her,
Speaker 3: barges past, pulls it off the desk and looks through it,
Speaker 3: and sure enough, when looking at through the list of students,
Speaker 3: he finds the name Rowan Morrison residents the post office.
Speaker 3: Now upon finding this, his first reaction appears to be disgusted.
Speaker 3: Discussed at Miss Rose and at the children in the classroom.
Speaker 3: He looks up and he points at all of the
Speaker 3: children in their desks, and he says, you are all
Speaker 3: despicable little liars. Rowan Morris as a schoolmate of yours,
Speaker 3: isn't she? And that is her desk, isn't it? And
Speaker 3: they all just look completely blank, stone faced at him.
Speaker 3: A few kind of avert their eyes to the floor,
Speaker 3: but mostly it's just crickets nothing. He tries to threaten
Speaker 3: Miss Rose, telling her that he's going to charge her
Speaker 3: with obstruction, but she persuades him to step outside with
Speaker 3: her so they can talk. And so she gives the
Speaker 3: girl some reading to get back to and they go outside,
Speaker 3: and she insists that despite how it seems to him
Speaker 3: from their perspective, no one was lying to him. Miss
Speaker 3: Rose says, I told you plainly, if Rowan Morrison existed,
Speaker 3: we would know of her He's like, what do you
Speaker 3: mean by that? You mean she's dead? And Miss Rose says,
Speaker 3: you would say so, and Sergeant Howie's just he's like fuming.
Speaker 3: He's like, come on, she's either dead or she's not dead.
Speaker 3: And I love the way Miss Rose appears to be
Speaker 3: navigating this conversation carefully. She's doing her best to authentically
Speaker 3: represent her beliefs, so she's not like just caving and
Speaker 3: talking about things the way that how we would like
Speaker 3: to like. She's staying in her own mode of speaking
Speaker 3: about the world. But she's also trying to be kind
Speaker 3: of sensitive and accommodating, accommodating to this irritated policeman who
Speaker 3: has no patience for her. So she says, here, we
Speaker 3: do not use the word and then she mouths the
Speaker 3: word dead. She says that we believe when human life
Speaker 3: is over, the soul returns to the trees, to the air,
Speaker 3: to fire, to water, to animals, so that Rowan Morrison
Speaker 3: is simply returned to the life forces in another form.
Speaker 3: Now how he begins to argue, He's like, he can't
Speaker 3: believe that they're teaching the children this stuff. He's like,
Speaker 3: this is nonsense, it's insane. What about teaching them Christianity,
Speaker 3: Miss Rose is like, actually, you know, the children have
Speaker 3: it much have a much easier time understanding the concept
Speaker 3: of reincarnation than of resurrection, because resurrection and like the
Speaker 3: you know, the raising of rotting bodies, that makes no
Speaker 3: sense to the children, but the children's imagination can quite
Speaker 3: well understand coming back as other forces in nature. And
Speaker 3: again how he's just like flummixed by this and he
Speaker 3: has to move on. So finally he's like, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 3: where is Rowan Morrison's body, her physical body? I want
Speaker 3: to know where it is? And she says, you know,
Speaker 3: it's in what you would call the churchyard. It's no
Speaker 3: longer consecrated to the Christian religion.
Speaker 2: That it does feel like she's baiting him a little
Speaker 2: bit with this, yes, yes, yeah, Now, as we mentioned already,
Speaker 2: this is at heart a horror movie, so we should
Speaker 2: keep that in mind when we consider its representation of
Speaker 2: either you know, Christianity or any variation on pagan religion here.
Speaker 2: But I love I love this sequence and this idea
Speaker 2: that for the children reincarnation just rings more true and
Speaker 2: requires less rigorous reprogramming of their natural inclinations. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's definitely one of the notes in the film
Speaker 2: that makes the viewers see Howie and his world as
Speaker 2: being one of more more tortured thought and morals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it sort of fits with something that Lord
Speaker 3: Summerle will say later that suggests at least the locals
Speaker 3: think of it as paganism is not just their religion,
Speaker 3: but they think of it as something that kind of
Speaker 3: fits onto human life naturally. It fits us like a
Speaker 3: glove and it's easy to put on and to assume.
Speaker 3: Whereas they talk about how He's religion and about Christianity
Speaker 3: like it is a thing that must be kind of
Speaker 3: like forced into place with great effort and against great resistance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and we see some more examples of this
Speaker 2: idea as we proceed.
Speaker 3: But okay, so how he finally has his next clue.
Speaker 3: He's going to go look for the grave of Rowan
Speaker 3: Morrison in the churchyard, or at least the yard formerly
Speaker 3: known as a church. Now remember this was before the
Speaker 3: night before where how we saw people watering trees growing
Speaker 3: out of the grave plots and naked people getting sad
Speaker 3: or getting sexy. So how he walks in and he
Speaker 3: looks around the first gravestone he looks at, says, Hereliath
Speaker 3: Beech Buchanan, protected by the ejaculation of serpents. Yes, the
Speaker 3: graveyard is both ugly and beautiful. It's beautiful in the
Speaker 3: sense that it's damp and green, so it's got old
Speaker 3: stones that have a kind of stately magic. But it's
Speaker 3: also covered with this green vegetation, so quite beautiful. But
Speaker 3: also there are random piles of junk and debris scattered around.
Speaker 3: It's like it is both taken care of and not.
Speaker 3: Somebody is watering the grave trees and there's it's kind
Speaker 3: of beautifully chaotically gardened in a way, but also nobody
Speaker 3: is cleaning up the mess or keeping it tidy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it feels more like a return to nature
Speaker 2: and death, which of course is very much what they
Speaker 2: seem to be all about here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, as how, he keeps wandering. He sees one
Speaker 3: grave that has what looks like the Jolly Roger engraved
Speaker 3: on it. It's skull and crossbones. He also comes across
Speaker 3: a woman sitting on a gravestone, holding a baby in
Speaker 3: one arm and breastfeeding her while she's rocking back and forth,
Speaker 3: and then the other hand she is holding out a
Speaker 3: chicken egg as if doing some kind of ritual or magic.
Speaker 3: And then finally how he comes to one large stone
Speaker 3: grave that's covered in wooden crates with the remains of
Speaker 3: rotting fruit and produce. He reacts to this with just
Speaker 3: bitter revulsion. He breaks apart one of the crates and
Speaker 3: uses two steaks from it to fashion a makeshift cross,
Speaker 3: and he just leaves that by itself on the tomb,
Speaker 3: almost as like a I know, he wouldn't think of
Speaker 3: it this way, because he's just like, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: reconsecrate this with the one true religion. But it feels
Speaker 3: like he's just giving a middle finger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's one way of looking at it.
Speaker 3: Now. Finally we get to the meeting with the grounds keeper.
Speaker 3: We flagged the actor who plays the grounds keeper in
Speaker 3: the last episode because he's got a real good seething laughter.
Speaker 3: This is the same actor who's the guy in a
Speaker 3: clockwork orange who gets to tell Alex that he committed murder. You, Alex,
Speaker 3: you a little murderer. Yeah, this is Morris, yes, And
Speaker 3: how he asks him about the trees on the graves.
Speaker 3: The groundskeeper is like, oh, oh, yes, we plant the
Speaker 3: trees on the graves, you know, as if this should
Speaker 3: be obvious, And how he points to a tree on
Speaker 3: an unmarked grave, one with no headstone. He says, what
Speaker 3: kind of tree is that? It's a Rowan tree? Whose
Speaker 3: grave is it Rowan Morrison's? And here there is a
Speaker 3: moment of quiet exasperation, I think because of the contrast
Speaker 3: between how cagey everybody has been all like denying that
Speaker 3: they knew who Rowan was or denying she existed, and
Speaker 3: then suddenly the ease with which this guy just offers
Speaker 3: up the information.
Speaker 2: Mm hm. I' he's been trying to get somebody to
Speaker 2: just point him to this spot all day, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he keeps getting the run around.
Speaker 3: Yes, But it's also like how he doesn't understand. He's frustrated,
Speaker 3: I think because he doesn't understand what exactly he's dealing with.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: He's like, are these people all mad? Are they participating
Speaker 3: in a cover up or a conspiracy? Is it somehow
Speaker 3: part of their religion to like deny knowing someone existed
Speaker 3: once they're dead? He truly, he just doesn't understand what
Speaker 3: he's dealing with.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so they have a little chat about the dried
Speaker 3: and bilical cord hanging from the row and tree. And
Speaker 3: eventually this is the part where how he is like,
Speaker 3: where is your minister? It's almost with the energy of
Speaker 3: I need to speak.
Speaker 2: To your manager.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is when the groundskeeper just starts laughing
Speaker 3: hysterically about the idea of a minister and wanders away.
Speaker 3: Now we get a few more investigation scenes. I'm not
Speaker 3: really gonna dwell on these, but how he briefly goes
Speaker 3: back to the post office slash sweet shop to see
Speaker 3: May Morrison again, but he just like tells her they're
Speaker 3: all raving mad and no new information has exchanged. He
Speaker 3: goes to visit the town librarian played by Ingrid Pitt.
Speaker 3: He wants to see records of local deaths, and at
Speaker 3: first Ingrid Pitt says that he's gonna need permission from
Speaker 3: Lord Summerle, but he strong arms her into handing it over.
Speaker 3: And just another moment we're flagging here is I think
Speaker 3: it's the name of Rowan Morrison's grand parents that he
Speaker 3: sees in the register and he's like, oh, these are
Speaker 3: names from the Bible, unlike everybody else here, and she's like, oh, yes,
Speaker 3: they were very old little clue there. He also visits
Speaker 3: the chemist slash photographer, mister Lennox. This shop is full
Speaker 3: of weird things preserved in jars. You got whole toads,
Speaker 3: pig fetuses, stuff like that. How he finds out from him,
Speaker 3: or how he finds out that he takes the harvest
Speaker 3: festival photo each year, and how he wants to see
Speaker 3: the photo from last year, but Lenox does not have
Speaker 3: a copy. Does he remember who was in the photo? No? Anyway,
Speaker 3: time to go meet Lord Summerle. So here's like the
Speaker 3: big kind of centerpiece scene of the movies, the first
Speaker 3: meeting between Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. Here on the way,
Speaker 3: Howie rides in a horse drawn buggy and we get
Speaker 3: to hear corn rigs and barley rigs again.
Speaker 2: A great song. Might as well play it some more.
Speaker 3: Once it was not enough. We also see plenty of
Speaker 3: the local scenery. There are hedges cut into animal shapes
Speaker 3: and some just seem to be like phalluses, a lot
Speaker 3: of flowers, budding fruit trees. There is one scene where
Speaker 3: we see pregnant women wandering around in an orchard, touching
Speaker 3: the trees and what seems to be a kind of
Speaker 3: ritual and speaking of rituals. As we get closer to
Speaker 3: Lord Somerle's manner, the music changes into an eerie minor
Speaker 3: key flute melody, and we see a giant stone circle
Speaker 3: like stone hinge positioned atop a hill, and in the
Speaker 3: center of the stone circle there is a hearth with
Speaker 3: a blazing fire, and all around it are naked young
Speaker 3: women performing a religious dance. Is seemingly being led I
Speaker 3: think by miss Rose. Was this Miss Rose from the school?
Speaker 2: I think you think you're right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And she's now dressed in a white gown wearing
Speaker 3: a giant pendant of hammered gold in the shape of
Speaker 3: the sun, and the women are singing a song. The
Speaker 3: lyrics are take the flame inside you, burn and burn below,
Speaker 3: fire seed and fire seed to make the baby grow.
Speaker 3: And then they take turns running and leaping over the
Speaker 3: fire as the song goes on.
Speaker 2: I like the song here, it has an I like
Speaker 2: even as you recited the lyrics, I can hear the
Speaker 2: tune in my head. Yeah. Yeah. I also should note
Speaker 2: that modern Blu Ray viewers will note that these dancers
Speaker 2: are in fact not naked, but dressed in skin colored tights,
Speaker 2: which doesn't distract from the scene at all. But I
Speaker 2: just find this kind of thing interesting, like the things
Speaker 2: that I'm assuming it might have been lost, you know
Speaker 2: originally when this was shown theatrically.
Speaker 3: Because originally it would have been grainy enough that in
Speaker 3: their filmed at a distance, so you assume they are naked.
Speaker 3: But actually now that there's like high enough definition that
Speaker 3: you can yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: I mean I think I saw this originally on Ane,
Speaker 2: and I think I would probably just thought, wow, that
Speaker 2: Ani just allows nudity. I think maybe they did allow
Speaker 2: just a little bit of nudity on an e versus
Speaker 2: other channels.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Howie arrives at Lord Somerle's mansion. Is this technically
Speaker 3: a castle, I don't know what counts as a castle.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's somewhere in there. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of stone here.
Speaker 3: It is big Lord Somerle's manor. I wonder what you
Speaker 3: make of this, rob The manor is not decorated like
Speaker 3: a pagan temple. It feels like the house of a
Speaker 3: Scottish lord. There's a lot of polished wooden furnishings, hunting trophies,
Speaker 3: big framed el cantlers and things like that. Big paintings
Speaker 3: on the walls, suits of armor and heraldry, all that
Speaker 3: kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it ties in with a lot of what
Speaker 2: we've seen regarding this community. They haven't rejected modernity, they
Speaker 2: haven't rejected their Scottishness. They just have this other entire
Speaker 2: aspect of their worldview they have. They have rejected you,
Speaker 2: Christianity to a large degree, but they haven't set everything aside.
Speaker 2: They're not they're not living in just this this you know,
Speaker 2: this time out of mind and out of place.
Speaker 3: That's right, And so I remember being kind of surprised
Speaker 3: by this. I would have thought, the way they're building
Speaker 3: up Lord summer Isle, it's going to be like he's
Speaker 3: going to be the most and the most pagan anesthetically
Speaker 3: pagan one. And he might be, I don't know, he
Speaker 3: might be the most pagan one. But his house doesn't
Speaker 3: look like you know, it doesn't look like an apothecary,
Speaker 3: herbalist shop or something.
Speaker 2: And I think this could easily make you think, well,
Speaker 2: maybe he's a hypocrite, maybe he doesn't actually live like this.
Speaker 2: But once you get into Lee's performance in these scenes,
Speaker 2: I think all of that is dismissed because his performance.
Speaker 2: That the energy of it, as we talked about in
Speaker 2: the last episode, he just has this youthful vigor and
Speaker 2: enthusiasm like I think any other Christopher Lee performance I've
Speaker 2: ever seen any other character I've seen him take on
Speaker 2: and therefore you just totally buy into it. Of course,
Speaker 2: this is summer Isle, and of course he believes all
Speaker 2: these things.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I was gonna ask a question about that,
Speaker 3: but you may have answered in advance, but we can
Speaker 3: still discuss later. So how he's waiting to meet Lord
Speaker 3: Summerle uh, and he thinks he is alone, like waiting
Speaker 3: for I guess for Lord Somerl to come down and
Speaker 3: meet him. So he's standing at the window watching the
Speaker 3: fire dance across the lawn. But how he's not alone. Instead,
Speaker 3: suddenly Christopher Lee pops his head out from around the
Speaker 3: from around like the corner of a chair the size
Speaker 3: of a panel van. What is going on with this chair?
Speaker 3: They've made high backed chairs that are just like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, needs to be ten feet wide.
Speaker 2: This just this place is full of old castle stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's enormous and unnecessary.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, Rob, do you want to describe
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee's appearance and aura. In this scene, He's wearing
Speaker 3: like a tweed jacket and a green shirt and he's
Speaker 3: just so happy. He's just beaming.
Speaker 2: Yeah goodness, Yeah, he's he just has this useful energy.
Speaker 2: Like I've said, he was I think around fifty at
Speaker 2: the time, and feels ten years younger than anywhere I've
Speaker 2: ever seen it before. You know, this is not Christopher Lee,
Speaker 2: the vampire of the Hammer films before and after this.
Speaker 2: This is just a guy that's just full of energy,
Speaker 2: Like it's delightful to be in his presence, or you
Speaker 2: know it would be for anyone else other than how
Speaker 2: he here, you know, is a bit rough around the
Speaker 2: edges of regarding all of this paganism and and optimism,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I think optimism is the vibe that he
Speaker 2: is exuding the most. It's like, you know, everything is possible,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna say yes and to whatever you've come
Speaker 2: here to ask. And how he is also unprepared for that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also he's got big hair, did we mentioned, Yes,
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee not usually with big hair, but here big hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this will this will be key compared to
Speaker 2: the way his hair looks in a later scene here
Speaker 2: that the hair is, you know, he's got a little
Speaker 2: bit of gray going on, but it's also not black.
Speaker 2: It's not vampire black. But the overall appearance is very
Speaker 2: almost almost blonde. It's he almost appears blonde in the
Speaker 2: way that the gray and the brown mixes together. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: just he's beaming. He's like the sun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his hair is like the radiance around the edge
Speaker 3: of the sun. Yeah, kind of like the face of
Speaker 3: Nuauta we saw at the beginning. Yeah, But anyway, so
Speaker 3: he pops his head around the corner, uh, and he's
Speaker 3: he's talking about the young women dancing naked outside, and
Speaker 3: Lord somewhere else says, good, good afternoon. Sergeant how he
Speaker 3: he says, I trust the sight of the young people
Speaker 3: refreshes you, and Sergeant how he says, no, sir, it
Speaker 3: does not refresh me. But somehow unfazed, he recommends that
Speaker 3: we all be open to the regenerative influences, and how
Speaker 3: he describes the situation. He explains to Lord Somerl that
Speaker 3: he suspects a girl on the island has been the
Speaker 3: victim of murder and conspiracy to murder, and he needs
Speaker 3: Lord Somerle's permission to exhume the body for an autopsy,
Speaker 3: and Lord Somerrale is like, yes, permission granted, go for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it is totally unprepared to get a
Speaker 2: yes here that he kind of just keeps going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And so here I want to quote a
Speaker 3: good bit of the dialogue because I think you kind
Speaker 3: of need to hear what is said in this scene
Speaker 3: to appreciate it. How he's like, your lordship seems strangely unconcerned,
Speaker 3: and Somemrle explains, he's like, well, I'm just confident your
Speaker 3: suspicions are wrong. We don't commit murder here on Smoerle,
Speaker 3: he says, we're a deeply religious people, and how he
Speaker 3: is so annoyed. He's like religious with ruined churches, no ministers,
Speaker 3: no priests, and children dancing naked and Somemorle's like, oh,
Speaker 3: they do love their divinity lessons, and how he says,
Speaker 3: but they're naked.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, those looked like those were grown
Speaker 2: women dancing around those stems. Yeah. Yeah, how he's like
Speaker 2: newborn babies dancing naked around the stuffs.
Speaker 3: Also some are ill, he said, He's like, they're naked
Speaker 3: and somewhere Ill's like, well, naturally, it's too dangerous to
Speaker 3: jump through the fire with your clothes on, and how
Speaker 3: He's like, what religion are they learning jumping over fires?
Speaker 3: And somemore Ile explains, he's like parthenogenesis. He's like what. Uh.
Speaker 3: Somewhere else says you know, uh, this is a sexual
Speaker 3: reproduction without sexual union, and how he goes, oh, what
Speaker 3: is all this? He's like, you've got fake biology, fake religion, sir?
Speaker 3: Have these children never heard of Jesus? And then somehere
Speaker 3: al says himself, the son of a virgin impregnated, I
Speaker 3: believe by a ghost.
Speaker 2: Solid pagan burn right there, solid burn, Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 2: I love that. Have these children never heard of Jesus?
Speaker 2: Lord somemerre owl, did they know it's Christmas at all?
Speaker 3: Now there's kind of a break in the tension here
Speaker 3: because Christopher Lee he goes on to explain what's happening.
Speaker 3: He says, you know, these girls are jumping naked over
Speaker 3: the fire in the hope that the god of the
Speaker 3: fire will make them fruitful. And he says, after all,
Speaker 3: who would not prefer to bear the child of a
Speaker 3: god over that of an acne? S good? Autizan and
Speaker 3: how he again tries to argue, but Lord Smerle says,
Speaker 3: you know, it's most important for the young people of
Speaker 3: the island to learn that here the old gods are
Speaker 3: not dead. Now how he is very offended. He's like,
Speaker 3: and what of the true God? You know, what of him?
Speaker 3: And Lord Somerrel says, he's dead. Can't complain, had his
Speaker 3: chance and in modern parlance, blew it.
Speaker 2: This is the first, I think, major overtly stressed note
Speaker 2: of religion failing modern humans. And we'll come back to
Speaker 2: this in an important way later.
Speaker 3: Now Here, Lord Somerrel begins to explain the backstory of
Speaker 3: the island a Sergeant Howie. Now, of course we could
Speaker 3: wonder if he is being honest with Sergeant Howie about everything.
Speaker 3: But I take it that everything he says here is true.
Speaker 3: I don't think he's trying to trick Howie at all.
Speaker 3: This seems to me is just like, this is the
Speaker 3: actual backstory of the island.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think up Lord Sumerle really lies at all.
Speaker 2: There's well, there's one kind of big Ville, but everything
Speaker 2: else he seems like he's being very truthful about.
Speaker 3: So I'm just going to read from a transcription of
Speaker 3: the dialogue here, because this part's important. This is Lord
Speaker 3: Somerle's story. He says, in the last century the islanders
Speaker 3: were starving like our neighbors today. They were scratching a
Speaker 3: bear subsistence from sheep and sea. Then in eighteen sixty eight,
Speaker 3: my grandfather bought this baron island and began to change.
Speaker 3: A distinguished Victorian scientist, agronomist, free thinker, how formidably benevolent,
Speaker 3: he seems essentially the face of a man incredulous of
Speaker 3: all human good, And Sergeant Howie says, very cynical. My
Speaker 3: Lord Samril says, what attracted my grandfather to the island,
Speaker 3: apart from the profuse source of wiry labor that it promised,
Speaker 3: was the unique combination of volcanic soil and the warm
Speaker 3: gulf stream that surrounded it. You see, his experiments had
Speaker 3: led him to believe that it was possible to induce
Speaker 3: here the successful growth of certain new strains of fruit
Speaker 3: that he had developed. So, with typical mid Victorian zeal,
Speaker 3: he set to work. The best way of accomplishing this,
Speaker 3: so it seemed to him, was to rouse the people
Speaker 3: from their apathy by giving them back their joyous old gods.
Speaker 3: And it is as a result of this worship the
Speaker 3: barren island would burgeon and bring forth fruit in great abundance.
Speaker 3: What he did, of course, was to develop new cultivars
Speaker 3: of hardy fruits suited to local conditions. But of course,
Speaker 3: to begin with, they worked for him because he fed
Speaker 3: them and clothed them. But then later, when the trees
Speaker 3: started fruiting, it became a very different matter, and the
Speaker 3: ministers fled the island, never to return. What my grandfather
Speaker 3: had started out of expediency, my father continued out of love.
Speaker 3: He brought me up the same way, to reverence the
Speaker 3: music and the drama and the rituals of the old gods,
Speaker 3: to love nature, and to fear it, and to rely
Speaker 3: on it, and to appease it where necessary. He brought
Speaker 3: me up. And how he interrupts him, says, he brought
Speaker 3: you up to be a pagan. And somemr Ale says,
Speaker 3: with a soft smile, he says, a heathen conceivably, but not,
Speaker 3: I hope an unenlightened one now here. Rob. I think
Speaker 3: you already answered your take on this question, but I
Speaker 3: was going to ask after this monologue one might wonder
Speaker 3: if the present Lord Somemrrele of Christopher Lee is in
Speaker 3: reality more like what he accuses his grandfather of, Like
Speaker 3: if the paganism of Summerle is something that he cynically
Speaker 3: impresses upon the ignorant locals but does not believe himself.
Speaker 3: That seems to be Howie's interpretation, and you can certainly
Speaker 3: see that when you hear kind of the material motivation
Speaker 3: of the original Lord Samrle, and how the same motivations
Speaker 3: would be present for the current Lord Samerle. But also
Speaker 3: is that really the case? I mean, when he says
Speaker 3: that it was continued out of love, he seems to
Speaker 3: be claiming that he now believes the pagan myth or
Speaker 3: at least he I don't know. He says he at
Speaker 3: least reverences them. Whether that means he believes the Celtic
Speaker 3: pagan gods literally exist and have power over his fate
Speaker 3: or not. I guess it's hard to see how to
Speaker 3: translate that, but it feels like maybe he does.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, that is the vibe I've always gotten,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of it comes from the
Speaker 2: nature of Lee's performance here and even what we see
Speaker 2: from him much later on in the picture. I feel
Speaker 2: like it's it's ultimately even though there's a shift that
Speaker 2: takes place, I think it's consistent. I think that he
Speaker 2: truly believes in this faith. But as he's already alluded to,
Speaker 2: like there there is of course this dark side, you know,
Speaker 2: there is the fear of nature, there's the terror of nature,
Speaker 2: and there's already like this, this realization that that to
Speaker 2: be a worshiper of a god like this is to
Speaker 2: also engage in a certain amount of uncertainty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Another thing from
Speaker 3: this monologue that really strikes me is the way it
Speaker 3: just assumes that the people, the locals, the you know,
Speaker 3: the wiry labor of the island, in the words of
Speaker 3: his grandfather, that the locals are always just going to
Speaker 3: be ready for paganism again, and that you know, even
Speaker 3: though they had been Christian for many hundreds of years
Speaker 3: at the point when his grandfather came along, somehow his
Speaker 3: grandfather knew that you could just give them back the
Speaker 3: pagan gods that they themselves had never worshiped, and probably
Speaker 3: their parents and grandparents had never worshiped for many generations
Speaker 3: going back. But at any point, it was like it
Speaker 3: was in their blood. You could just give them the
Speaker 3: pagan gods back and they would immediately take them up
Speaker 3: without any coercion, Isn't it strange? But that does appear
Speaker 3: to be sort of the belief that's present in the
Speaker 3: movie here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I don't know that it's ultimately
Speaker 2: that disconnected from the reality of places where Christianity was
Speaker 2: introduced and ended up replacing traditional beliefs to at least
Speaker 2: some extent, because if we've as we've seen from various examples,
Speaker 2: the old ways never or rarely completely go away. Some
Speaker 2: aspects of them are folded into this new alien faith asumed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so the old gods take on new you know, slightly
Speaker 2: new roles, or you know, the or something continues to
Speaker 2: exist at like the folk belief and folk lore level
Speaker 2: of things, and therefore, yeah, nothing completely goes away, and
Speaker 2: therefore it would be possible perhaps for someone to come
Speaker 2: free you from these newer ideas and allow those older
Speaker 2: ideas to grow fresh.
Speaker 3: Again, even if the quote newer ideas have been around
Speaker 3: for hundreds of years at this point and you've never
Speaker 3: known anything else.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And I think you know summer. I would
Speaker 2: would argue that it's it's in their DNA like it,
Speaker 2: and it is. It is. It's a way of it's
Speaker 2: a it's a worldview that is more in keeping with
Speaker 2: the natural order of the human organism. And therefore, like
Speaker 2: we take to it like we take to breath and
Speaker 2: to water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that they believe that they are in fact
Speaker 3: the reincarnations of pagans from years past. Yeah, as laundered
Speaker 3: through many stages of nature. You know, they have been
Speaker 3: the bird and the and its feather and the tree
Speaker 3: and everything else, but at some point also they were
Speaker 3: they're pagan ancestor.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, how he tries to he tries to burn
Speaker 3: Lord somerl He's like, well, whatever you believe personally, you
Speaker 3: are the subject of a Christian country. And he demands
Speaker 3: to be given permission to exum Rowan Morrison's body, and
Speaker 3: then Lord Somerrel reminds him that he already gave him
Speaker 3: permission at the beginning of their conversation. And I love
Speaker 3: this moment. It's so good. It's like how he he
Speaker 3: is somehow mentally manufacturing more friction in his investigation than
Speaker 3: actually exists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, because he told him yes right away. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I just kept arguing with him.
Speaker 3: Somerle says, as he's leaving, he's like, it's been a
Speaker 3: great pleasure meeting a Christian copper. Okay, I'm looking at
Speaker 3: the time now, so I'm realizing, I think we need
Speaker 3: to be a little more summary as as we go
Speaker 3: on with the rest of the plot.
Speaker 2: We got a speed onto the main event.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So how He goes and exhumes the what
Speaker 3: he believes to be the body of Rowan Morrison, but
Speaker 3: uh oh, nobody in there. Well, there is a body,
Speaker 3: it's not a human body, it's a dead hair inside
Speaker 3: the coffin. So Howie is very, once again, very annoyed.
Speaker 3: He goes back to the mansion of Lord Somerle, and
Speaker 3: when he goes there, inside Lord Somerle is hanging out
Speaker 3: with Miss Rose by the way. They're like drinking wine
Speaker 3: from a golden gomblet. She's laying on a big fur
Speaker 3: pelt on the floor and they're singing and playing the piano.
Speaker 3: He's singing in his big, booming bass voice, and how
Speaker 3: He interrupts them by throwing the dead hair from Rowan's
Speaker 3: grave on the floor. He demands to know once again,
Speaker 3: where is Rowan Morrison, and they're still giving him more
Speaker 3: run around. Miss Rose is like, oh, you know, Rowan
Speaker 3: always did loves the march hares. I think it's a
Speaker 3: very fitting transmutation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, what did you expect to find it in
Speaker 2: her grave? But a hair? We already told you, children
Speaker 2: have been telling you that she's a hare now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, why didn't you just listen to
Speaker 3: us the first time? But so Sergeant how he starts
Speaker 3: giving them all these threats. He's like, I suspect that
Speaker 3: Rowan Morrison has been murdered under circumstances of pagan barbarity
Speaker 3: which I can scarcely bring myself to believe, or taking
Speaker 3: place in the twentieth century. So he says, look, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna go to the mainland, I'm gonna get a bunch
Speaker 3: more cops and we're gonna come back here and do
Speaker 3: a full inquiry. And Lord Somerle's like, great, okay, oh,
Speaker 3: and he also says at the end of day, He's like,
Speaker 3: it's just as well that you won't be here tomorrow
Speaker 3: to be offended by the sight of our May Day celebrations.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't you probably wouldn't like what you're gonna see tomorrow,
Speaker 3: with like a big smile and a twinkle in his eye. Now,
Speaker 3: later that night, how He breaks into the chemist's shop
Speaker 3: to like kind of write, like search through his photos,
Speaker 3: the one that the chemist said he didn't have, and
Speaker 3: he does, in fact find the picture of the harvest
Speaker 3: festival from the year previous, and he confirms his suspicions.
Speaker 3: It is what he believed. The harvest queen from the
Speaker 3: year before was Rowan Morrison. And where there is normally
Speaker 3: a huge pile of fruit next to the harvest queen,
Speaker 3: instead in this photo there are only a few meager
Speaker 3: boxes of produce, and he puts it all together. He
Speaker 3: says it's Rowan and the crops failed. So this is
Speaker 3: his theory. It was Rowan. Rowan was the harvest queen.
Speaker 3: The crops last year were bad, and so they killed
Speaker 3: Rowan as a sacrifice. All right, So we're almost to
Speaker 3: May Day, but first we got to have a scene
Speaker 3: of a wretchedly horny Mayday eve where Sergeant Howie goes
Speaker 3: back to the inn and there is a musical number
Speaker 3: where Willow again that's britt Ecklund. She gets naked and
Speaker 3: then sings a song to him through the wall of
Speaker 3: the inn, being like, hey, how about it, and he's
Speaker 3: he's just in there, being like.
Speaker 2: That's that's true. That's that's essentially what happens. But the
Speaker 2: music is great. Yeah, song is Willow's song, and I
Speaker 2: would argue it's among the best in the picture. It's great, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, and then like the physical performances on both
Speaker 2: sides of the wall are amazing. It's just a great
Speaker 2: musical sequence of juxtapose temptation and denial on one side
Speaker 2: with Howie and then on Willow's side, just unabashed sexual freedom,
Speaker 2: you know, and this whole sequence charged with eroticism, but
Speaker 2: without either of the chief characters ever occupying the same room.
Speaker 3: And the next morning they have a meetup. Willow comes
Speaker 3: to see him at breakfast and she's like, hey, I
Speaker 3: thought you were gonna come see me last night. I
Speaker 3: invited you and he's like sorry, I'm engaged to be married.
Speaker 3: And she's like, oh, well, you know you're a very
Speaker 3: gallant fellow sergeant, and he says, it's nothing personal. I
Speaker 3: just don't believe in it before marriage. She's like, okay, cool,
Speaker 3: suit yourself. You really should head back, though before we
Speaker 3: get May Day festivities started, you wouldn't like them, not
Speaker 3: with how you feel.
Speaker 2: So there's some important plot stuff going on in this
Speaker 2: dialogue exchange. But I also really love how He's vulnerability
Speaker 2: and honesty here, which I think is a nice touch.
Speaker 2: It's very much one sided because she's still kind of
Speaker 2: like taunting and temptacy. But you might expect Howie to
Speaker 2: have been really gruff here and like call her out
Speaker 2: as a temptress and preach to her on the values
Speaker 2: of saving yourself for marriage and so forth. But instead
Speaker 2: we get this nice scene that you had deliver some
Speaker 2: important plot points, but also deepens our understanding of how
Speaker 2: He's character.
Speaker 3: I think Howie at this point is actually exhausted by
Speaker 3: like being self righteous at everyone. He's literally tired of it.
Speaker 3: He's been self righteous at everyone for like many scenes
Speaker 3: in a row, and he's just worn out.
Speaker 2: And this is very much in keeping with the idea
Speaker 2: that's presented in the film that how at least Howie's
Speaker 2: version of Christianity and enforced morality is exhausting, and if
Speaker 2: he were just to like let go and let this
Speaker 2: fall away from him, he could find another way to.
Speaker 3: Live all right. Well, after this how he tries to
Speaker 3: leave the island. He goes to his seaplane, but oh,
Speaker 3: engine won't start. Classic horror movie problem. I did say
Speaker 3: that this movie it doesn't rely too much on cliches,
Speaker 3: but there are there are some. I mean, you can't
Speaker 3: have a full Corra movie without the vehicle that won't start.
Speaker 2: And this is where the creepy masks starts showing up, right,
Speaker 2: goes up to the plane and there like the villagers
Speaker 2: are peeking over the wall with the bunny masks and
Speaker 2: so forth, and we could start getting some more overtly
Speaker 2: creepy notes from the local folk beliefs.
Speaker 3: It's a mix of whimsical and humorous and creepy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I love that mix.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It never truly goes full creep mode at this point,
Speaker 2: Like a lesser film would, I mean a lesser film,
Speaker 2: much lesser film would have been creep mode the whole time. Yes,
Speaker 2: it continues to play this nice balance.
Speaker 3: But I love the masks. So the villagers start showing
Speaker 3: up in animal masks for the May Day celebration. They're
Speaker 3: dressed as hares, as foxes, as squirrels. One is the
Speaker 3: salmon of knowledge.
Speaker 2: Ooh, we've talked about that fish on the show before. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'd love all the masks, but I love
Speaker 3: that a lot of the masks look so dingy. They
Speaker 3: look like really kind of weathered and like they've been
Speaker 3: used in many May Day festivals and like they smell
Speaker 3: bad now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even crumpled up in a drawer.
Speaker 3: We do get a library research scene where he goes
Speaker 3: to the town library, which it's funny, has books like
Speaker 3: of anthropology. I think he may read from the Golden
Speaker 3: Bough perhaps, Oh, I'm not sure, but he you know,
Speaker 3: he reads from something that's like James Fraser that tells
Speaker 3: about the May Day festivals. In fact, I'll just read
Speaker 3: briefly from what he comes across. So he's reading in
Speaker 3: the library. Primitive man lived and died by his harvest.
Speaker 3: The purpose of his spring ceremonies was to ensure a
Speaker 3: plentiful autumn. Relics of these fertility dramas are to be
Speaker 3: found all over Europe. In Great Britain, for example, one
Speaker 3: can still see harmless versions of them danced in obscure
Speaker 3: villages on May Day. Their cast includes many alarming characters,
Speaker 3: a man, animal or hobby horse who canter is at
Speaker 3: the head of the procession, charging at the earls a
Speaker 3: man woman, the sinister teaser played by the community leader
Speaker 3: or a priest, and the man fool punch. Most complex
Speaker 3: of all, the symbolic figures, the privileged, simpleton and king
Speaker 3: for a day. Six swordsmen follow these figures, and at
Speaker 3: the climax of the ceremony lock their swords together in
Speaker 3: a clear symbol of the sun. In pagan times, however,
Speaker 3: these dances were not simply picturesque jigs. They were frenzied rights,
Speaker 3: ending in a sacrifice by which the dancers hoped desperately
Speaker 3: to win over the Goddess of the fields. In good times,
Speaker 3: they offered produce to the gods and slaughtered animals, But
Speaker 3: in bad years, when the harvest had been poor, the
Speaker 3: sacrifice was a human being.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: Sometimes the victim would be drowned in the sea, or
Speaker 3: burnt to death in a huge sacrificial bonfire. Sometimes the
Speaker 3: six swordsmen ritually beheaded the virgin, and he says, Dear
Speaker 3: God in Heaven, even these people can't be that mad.
Speaker 3: But he puts it all together. It's the picture of
Speaker 3: Rowan from last year's harvest. And he he knows, he
Speaker 3: knows it's Rowan, she's the sacrifice, but now he realizes
Speaker 3: something's different. He doesn't think they killed her last year.
Speaker 3: He thinks she's still alive and they're going to kill
Speaker 3: her today and so it's up to him to save her.
Speaker 3: So this turns into the frantic hunt. We get sort
Speaker 3: of a montage of how we popping around to all
Speaker 3: the different locations on the island trying to find Rowan Morrison.
Speaker 3: He thinks she's alive and being held somewhere for the sacrifice.
Speaker 3: For example, he tries to go to May Morrison, her mother,
Speaker 3: and he's like, don't you realize what they're doing? And
Speaker 3: May is not any help. She's just like, oh, sergeant,
Speaker 3: you'll simply never understand the true nature of sacrifice. Eventually,
Speaker 3: after he's checked a bunch of places and come up
Speaker 3: empty handed. But by the way, it's also very funny
Speaker 3: while he's checking things, because the locals are all kind
Speaker 3: of peeping around, taunting him and like running around in
Speaker 3: masks playing little pranks on him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and we see the hobby horse guy.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and the children who are like pretending to
Speaker 3: be dead, and he's like what And then they pop
Speaker 3: up and laugh at him, so like the whole town
Speaker 3: has started just treating Howie as if he is a joke.
Speaker 3: Now the here we get the hand of Glory scene
Speaker 3: coming up, because how he comes back to the inn
Speaker 3: and he's like, I'm so tired, I've got to take
Speaker 3: a nap. He lays down in his bed. I think
Speaker 3: he has a dram of whiskey and then lays in
Speaker 3: his bed for an hour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you know he's he's laying there and
Speaker 2: he hears a Willow and Willow's dad plotting and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you don't don't don't want to don't want to make
Speaker 2: him sleep too long, do you? And there we don't
Speaker 2: want him getting in the way and so forth. And
Speaker 2: then when those voices subside, he comes to and they've
Speaker 2: lit a hand of glory in his room. This is
Speaker 2: the scene that always stuck with me because this is
Speaker 2: like a really this may be Is this the first
Speaker 2: like more overt horror note in the picture? Really?
Speaker 3: I think it could be. Yeah, it's the first bit
Speaker 3: of anything that's like gore because he does in the
Speaker 3: in the the Undertaker's house, he comes across a body
Speaker 3: that has the hand removed. Yeah, and then later this happens, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Hand of Glory, where this version of it is
Speaker 2: a disembodied hand that's set up on this candlestick and
Speaker 2: each finger is a lit candle, and they're different versions
Speaker 2: of what the Hand of Glory means. But basically it's
Speaker 2: tied to different stories where a thief would use it
Speaker 2: as a magical item to subdue a household and force
Speaker 2: them to sleep. We actually just reran the Artifact episode
Speaker 2: about the Hand of Glory. But yeah, in short, we
Speaker 2: have an occult European item here tied to these different stories,
Speaker 2: and it may ultimately be linked to ideas concerning the
Speaker 2: mandrake root, which was attributed with similar powers and was
Speaker 2: sometimes described as being handlike in form like a clod hand.
Speaker 2: Whatever the case, it doesn't work, and he's just like ah,
Speaker 2: and he like knocks it over, puts it out, and
Speaker 2: he's back on the case and oh yeah. Then he
Speaker 2: goes and finds the landlord. The landlord's putting on his
Speaker 2: food costume for the big parade, and so heck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, beats him over the head and takes his costume
Speaker 3: and then goes down to join the parade, and oh boy,
Speaker 3: the parade is one of my favorite parts of the movie.
Speaker 3: We have Christopher Lee wearing a long wig and a dress.
Speaker 3: It's like a purple and blue kind of outfit, but
Speaker 3: with sneakers he's wearing like looks like Converse sneakers.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't notice the sneakers.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they're great. And then there is one of
Speaker 3: the guys that we frequently see at the bar as
Speaker 3: the man horse, the hobby horse. It's like bumping up
Speaker 3: and down. And then this is supposed to be McGregor,
Speaker 3: the innkeeper as the Fool, but instead behind the costume
Speaker 3: it is in fact Sergeant Howie. He's following. He's going
Speaker 3: along with the parade to try to get there and
Speaker 3: save Rowan. But this is the part where when they're
Speaker 3: they're walking down the way. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 3: all the other townspeople. We've got some guys in kilts
Speaker 3: with their swords to be the swordsman that he read
Speaker 3: about in the library. And then everybody else is wearing
Speaker 3: animal masks. Christopher Lee is just dancing heroically. I love
Speaker 3: his capering about. And then also this is the scene
Speaker 3: where he yells at Edward Woodward he's thinking, he's McGregor.
Speaker 3: He's like, cut some capers, man, I told you.
Speaker 2: And then eventually they do the deal that the reading
Speaker 2: prepared is for, with the swords aligned in a pentagram
Speaker 2: in the shape of the sun, and there's even a
Speaker 2: mock beheading. He thinks, oh, my goodness, they've done it.
Speaker 2: They've cut a kid's head off, but it was a
Speaker 2: mock beheading. And then you realize, oh, it's just part
Speaker 2: of this, right, And it's also this kind of like
Speaker 2: moment of relief for us as the viewer, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe this isn't a big human sacrifice thing he's attending.
Speaker 2: Maybe it is all just some you know, muted folkloric
Speaker 2: version of some ancient right, right.
Speaker 3: But then from there they proceed down to the shore,
Speaker 3: where first Christopher Lee gets out an axe and he
Speaker 3: chops open some barrels of ale, which they roll into
Speaker 3: the sea as a gift to the god of the sea.
Speaker 3: And then from there he says it's time to move
Speaker 3: on to our more dreadful sacrifice, and there we see
Speaker 3: Rowan Morrison standing flanked by some people with torches at
Speaker 3: the mouth of a cave. And what happens, well, it's
Speaker 3: just Howie in his fool costume just breaks out in
Speaker 3: a run in front of everybody. Everybody's gathered there, and
Speaker 3: he runs up to her and he's like, Rowan, come on,
Speaker 3: and so they run off together through the cave. Through
Speaker 3: the cave.
Speaker 2: Describe this music here, Joe, Oh.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I forget what the music is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, someone like some bass going on. It's it's a.
Speaker 3: Little more electric rock and roll than anything else in
Speaker 3: the movie. Yeah, chase music. And so they run around
Speaker 3: through the cave while they're being pursued by people from
Speaker 3: the island, and eventually Rowan shows him here, here's where
Speaker 3: we can go, and they crawl out through an opening
Speaker 3: where they come out through the top of the cave
Speaker 3: onto a big meadow that's on these cliffs overlooking the
Speaker 3: rocky shoreline below. And when they come out above, everyone's
Speaker 3: waiting for them. Lord Somerrile's up there, and May Morrison,
Speaker 3: Rowan's mother is standing there. And Rowan runs directly to
Speaker 3: Lord Somerrile and she says, did I do it right?
Speaker 3: And he says, you did beautifully, my dear, And so
Speaker 3: now we're left wondering what Rowan does not seem to
Speaker 3: be afraid at all. It's like she knows that she
Speaker 3: is not, in fact, in any danger, and instead everyone's
Speaker 3: attention turns to Howie in his fool costume. Lord Somerile
Speaker 3: tells him, welcome, fool. You have come of your own
Speaker 3: free will to the appointed place. The game is over,
Speaker 3: the game of the hunted leading the hunter. You came
Speaker 3: here to find Rowan Morrison. But it is we who
Speaker 3: have found you and brought you here and controlled your
Speaker 3: every thought and action since you arrived. Principally, we persuaded
Speaker 3: you to think that Rowan Morrison was being held as
Speaker 3: a sacrifice because our crops failed last year. And how
Speaker 3: He says, but I know your crops failed. I saw
Speaker 3: the harvest photograph, and summer Ale says, oh, yes, they failed,
Speaker 3: all right, disastrously. So for the first time since my
Speaker 3: grandfather came here, the blossom came, but the fruit withered
Speaker 3: and died on the bow. That must not happen again
Speaker 3: this year. It is our most earnest belief that the
Speaker 3: best way of presenting this is to offer to our
Speaker 3: God of the Sun and to the Goddess of our orchards,
Speaker 3: the most acceptable sacrifice that lies in our power. Animals
Speaker 3: are fine, but their acceptability is limited. A little child
Speaker 3: is even better, but not nearly as effective as the
Speaker 3: right kind of adult.
Speaker 2: Now, it was worth noting that at this point, Lord
Speaker 2: Summrle has now subtly changed in demeanor and appearance for starters.
Speaker 2: Here we get more of the signature of Christopher Lee grimness,
Speaker 2: you know. And also they're on the coast that they're
Speaker 2: wind swept, and so his hair is wilder and the
Speaker 2: gray hair is more apparent, and I don't know, the
Speaker 2: way it's set against the sun, the setting sun, it
Speaker 2: feels it feels even more like a halo. But also
Speaker 2: he looks more gray. He doesn't look maybe as full
Speaker 2: of life as he was, not that he looks like
Speaker 2: a vampire or anything, but he looks like a little
Speaker 2: older and you know, he feels like the embodiment of
Speaker 2: approaching winter. Now at this point, and it's worth noting
Speaker 2: that this film is supposed to take place at the
Speaker 2: beginning of summer. They're supposed to take place May first,
Speaker 2: but it was filmed in November and December, So all
Speaker 2: these scenes where you see like fruiting trees, they had
Speaker 2: to bring those in or dress up other trees. You know,
Speaker 2: they had to fake it. And it feels fitting at
Speaker 2: this point in the picture that we have been living
Speaker 2: in a fake summer, you know, because here, especially as
Speaker 2: manifested the idea that the world is growing colder, the
Speaker 2: sun is leaving our world, and are and what are
Speaker 2: we going to have to do to ensure Nuada's blessings
Speaker 2: and the blessed of all the other gods and goddesses
Speaker 2: and they're pantheon.
Speaker 3: I think that's beautifully said, exactly right. What are you
Speaker 3: going to have to do to get Nuauda's blessings? You'll
Speaker 3: have to give him a man. And they say, and
Speaker 3: hear the women from the town come in the willow,
Speaker 3: and the librarian and miss Rose, they come in to
Speaker 3: explain what kind of man they were looking for. A
Speaker 3: man who woud come here of his own free will,
Speaker 3: a man who had come here with the power of
Speaker 3: a king by representing the law, a man who had
Speaker 3: come here as a virgin, and a man who would
Speaker 3: come here as a fool. How he is all these things?
Speaker 2: Now, that's right, And I'd say we'll ignore the overly
Speaker 2: complex nature of this trap, just given how splendidly the
Speaker 2: trap has been sprung here and the drama and ideas
Speaker 2: surrounding it, like what if they'd sent a different cop though,
Speaker 2: what if they sent the cop played by like Oliver Reed.
Speaker 2: He shows up, He's like, he's been married. This is
Speaker 2: the CoP's been married three times. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: go lord, this guy's not going to do Nuada is
Speaker 2: not going to accept this guy.
Speaker 3: This cop is not a virgin. I think it's interesting
Speaker 3: also that Howie is like also not like super young,
Speaker 3: that he's like, you know, he's like a forty something man,
Speaker 3: but he's now engaged to be married, but is still
Speaker 3: a virgin. And that seems like that is exactly what
Speaker 3: they wanted. They must have somehow engineered they found out,
Speaker 3: like how he is the one we need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they pulled it off. They pulled it off.
Speaker 3: So he tries to argue with them about the principle
Speaker 3: behind their sacrifice. There will be a lot of exchange here.
Speaker 3: He tries to argue that he has hope for the resurrection,
Speaker 3: and he says, even if you kill me now, it
Speaker 3: is I who will live again in the resurrection of Christ,
Speaker 3: not your damned apples. And he Also, there's a wonderful
Speaker 3: moment where he says to Lord Somemrrel. He says, I
Speaker 3: believe in the life eternal has promised to us by
Speaker 3: our Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord Somerrel says, that is
Speaker 3: good for believing what you do, we confer upon you
Speaker 3: a rare gift these days, a martyr's death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the line that always stood out to me
Speaker 2: because it's it's not completely mocking, like there's grim comfort
Speaker 2: in what Summerle is saying to him, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also in this exchange, there's an interesting moment where
Speaker 3: Lord Somerle seems to almost through the entire movie, have
Speaker 3: complete mastery of every situation he's in. He never really
Speaker 3: seems bothered. There's only one moment where maybe he does.
Speaker 3: I wonder what you think. There's a part where Sergeant
Speaker 3: how He is saying, you know, kill He says, killing
Speaker 3: me will not bring back your apples, that these pagan
Speaker 3: gods they're not real, you're all making this up. This
Speaker 3: is insanity. And then he says he says, Lord Somerle,
Speaker 3: your crops may may fail again. And he says, if
Speaker 3: the crops fail next year, Somemerrile next year, the people
Speaker 3: will kill you on May Day, and Christopher Lee it's
Speaker 3: kind of hard to read his expression in response, but
Speaker 3: all he says is they will not fail. He doesn't
Speaker 3: really argue with how he and everybody's standing around there
Speaker 3: so everybody can hear. It's like how he's giving them
Speaker 3: the idea if they didn't have it themselves, that they're
Speaker 3: going to have to do that next year. But but
Speaker 3: Somerl doesn't argue with him that the people will do that.
Speaker 3: He just argues that this will work killing you or
Speaker 3: will will not fail.
Speaker 2: I think I think summer Isle is shaken here by this.
Speaker 2: I think the mask not that it's a matter. I
Speaker 2: do believe that Somerle believes in all of this, but
Speaker 2: I think dowt enters in here because you know, the
Speaker 2: crops have failed once and it's they're trying to appease
Speaker 2: these gods and it might not work. And this is
Speaker 2: also the moment where I think the conflict in the
Speaker 2: movie reaches its peak, because it's clear that well, maybe
Speaker 2: we're just in a position as humans that neither faith
Speaker 2: can protect us anymore.
Speaker 3: What if we are.
Speaker 2: Truly on our own against the approaching darkness, you know,
Speaker 2: the darkness of a winter beyond which spring may not
Speaker 2: save us, the darkness of our continual fall from the
Speaker 2: optimism of the nineteen sixties into the grim realities of
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, Like, what if we don't have these
Speaker 2: answers and we don't have these powers we can reach
Speaker 2: out to at all, what are we going to do? Well?
Speaker 3: I think this movie does have a sort of answer
Speaker 3: to that, And the answer is what we will do
Speaker 3: is every year more desperately increase the violent intensity of
Speaker 3: our rituals. Yeah, anyway, Lord summer El says, come, it
Speaker 3: is time to keep your appointment with the wicker Man.
Speaker 3: And here we get the final revelation, which is just
Speaker 3: blood chilling. They bring Sergeant Howie up above the top
Speaker 3: of the hill and he sees out in the field
Speaker 3: above the cliffs, and you can hear the waves crashing
Speaker 3: on the rocks down below at the sea. There's this
Speaker 3: big field, and he sees the wicker Man itself of
Speaker 3: the title, a giant man made out of wood, a
Speaker 3: man shaped figure with sacrificial animals loaded inside in the
Speaker 3: arms and legs, and an open chamber, a cell in
Speaker 3: its chest, with the door hanging open, and then the
Speaker 3: ladder leading up to it, and bonfires lit and ready
Speaker 3: all around, and Sergeant how He begins to scream. It's
Speaker 3: it's amazing the way he completely loses his composure and
Speaker 3: he just begins to shriek. Oh God, oh Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it becomes obvious that you know, there
Speaker 2: wasn't any fruit to harvest. This is all everyone's.
Speaker 3: Been working on.
Speaker 2: Yes, on this island. This is it.
Speaker 3: This is the product of their labor. Now they've been
Speaker 3: planning this and building the Wickerman and yeah, and this
Speaker 3: is it. So they load Sergeant how He inside the Wickerman,
Speaker 3: and they light the fires to make him a burnt
Speaker 3: offering and to their gods. And meanwhile, so like how
Speaker 3: He inside, he begins to scream and scream and protest.
Speaker 3: He also tries to sing the hymn from the church
Speaker 3: service at the beginning. He sings, the Lord's my shepherd.
Speaker 3: I'll not want he leadeth me, He leadeth me the
Speaker 3: quiet waters by, But eventually it leads to him just
Speaker 3: shrieking out into the sky as the fires climb up
Speaker 3: higher and higher into the cage. And meanwhile, Lord summerle
Speaker 3: and the people of the island are singing a jolly song.
Speaker 3: They are out there. They're out there like holding hands
Speaker 3: and swinging their hands back and forth and singing. Summer
Speaker 3: is a coming in loudly sing cuckoo. There's so many
Speaker 3: things I could say about the scene, but it's it
Speaker 3: is something you just kind of need to see for itself.
Speaker 3: We alluded in the last episode to how it is
Speaker 3: one of the bleakest and most terrifying endings of any
Speaker 3: movie I can think of, but also it is shot
Speaker 3: with a real beauty. Like we see the sun setting
Speaker 3: and there's a kind of bleariness in the sky as
Speaker 3: it's all and we see the as the the Wickerman
Speaker 3: burns up and we see it kind of beginning to
Speaker 3: collapse and come down, and as the people are singing
Speaker 3: and they're singing with real joy and hope, and I
Speaker 3: don't even know how to put it. It's it's it's
Speaker 3: just such a powerful effect.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're on the we're on the shore, we're
Speaker 2: on the coast of this island. It's like we're on
Speaker 2: the edge of the world, We're on the edge of time.
Speaker 2: And yeah, this this final closing shot, I think is
Speaker 2: probably It's one of, if not the finest closing shots
Speaker 2: I've ever seen in a film, where they're singing and
Speaker 2: we were viewing it from behind, and we see the
Speaker 2: head of the burning Wickerman collapse in on itself with
Speaker 2: kind of a roar and a crackle as we reveal
Speaker 2: the setting sun behind it, and then you know, we
Speaker 2: close out, we close out the credits, and we get
Speaker 2: one last look at that that image, that kind of
Speaker 2: wooden icon of the sublime face of Nuada, the sun
Speaker 2: god of these people, and we're just left to ponder
Speaker 2: what it all means.
Speaker 3: Do you think it works or do you think that
Speaker 3: they're going to put Christopher Lee in the Wickerman next year?
Speaker 2: Oh? I don't know. I mean, I've honestly, I've honestly
Speaker 2: never really thought about what actually comes after this. Like,
Speaker 2: I feel like the movie does such a great job
Speaker 2: of nicely tying up the narrative and then like handing
Speaker 2: it to us to think about our own self and
Speaker 2: our own world. You know, I mean not to say
Speaker 2: you can't think about that. I was actually reading just
Speaker 2: the other day that Robin Hardy wrote a novelization of
Speaker 2: the film that came out years later, and there's like
Speaker 2: a little bit at the end where they find how
Speaker 2: he's airplane and it's like implied maybe he got away
Speaker 2: and lived. It's like, oh my god, what a horrible
Speaker 2: way to actually tack ending, to tack onto all of this,
Speaker 2: Like that's I mean, maybe it works within the context
Speaker 2: of the written form. I haven't read it, so I
Speaker 2: can't actually speak to it, but in summary, it sounds
Speaker 2: like a terrible idea.
Speaker 3: Was it you who was telling me that the producers
Speaker 3: had the idea because they hated the ending? Obviously, the
Speaker 3: producers had the idea that, like, what if a rainstorm
Speaker 3: breaks out and it puts out the fire in the
Speaker 3: Wickerman and saves him, you know, it's a miracle.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that would have been terrible. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: it's just such a it's a it's a very bleak ending,
Speaker 2: but such a perfect ending like this. I think the
Speaker 2: film would still have its following, obviously, and it would
Speaker 2: still be great in its own way. But yeah, if
Speaker 2: you've gone with a different ending here, it just wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been punctuated quite the same way. It wouldn't. It
Speaker 2: would have robbed it of part of its power.
Speaker 3: Okay, we've been going a long time. I think we've
Speaker 3: got to call it on The Wickerman all.
Speaker 2: Right, Yep, we've loaded it all up in the effigy
Speaker 2: and we're going to set it alight now. So we
Speaker 2: would obviously love to hear from everyone out there if
Speaker 2: you have even more thoughts as we did about The
Speaker 2: Wickerman from seventy three or any other version of the
Speaker 2: Wickerman sequels, remakes and so forth, novelizations. If you have
Speaker 2: read the novelization right in and give me more information
Speaker 2: about what we were talking about here, all of that
Speaker 2: is fair game. Other full car films you'd like us
Speaker 2: to cover, just right in, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. If you want to follow Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema online, you can go to Stbim podcast on Instagram,
Speaker 2: but also on letterboxed. We are weird House. That's our
Speaker 2: user name there, and you can follow our list of
Speaker 2: all the films we've covered so far, and sometimes a
Speaker 2: peek ahead at what comes next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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