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A screenplay penned by Anthony Shaffer and featuring a horror icon and Edward Woodward was expected to be a dream project for filmmaker Robin Hardy during the filming of The Wicker Man over half a century ago.

Although today it is celebrated as an iconic horror film, the degree of misery it caused the film-makers has now been revealed in newly discovered letters and early versions of the script.

The Storyline of The Wicker Man

This 1973 movie centers on a devout policeman, portrayed by the actor, who travels on a remote Scottish island looking for a lost child, but finds mysterious pagan residents who claim she ever existed. the actress was cast as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who tempts the religious policeman, with Christopher Lee as the pagan aristocrat.

Creative Conflict Revealed

However, the working environment was tense and fractious, the documents show. In a letter to Shaffer, the director stated: “How could you treat me like this?”

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

Heavy edits include Summerisle’s lines in the ending, which would have begun: “The child was only a small part – the visible element. Do not reproach yourself, it was impossible you could have known.”

Beyond Writer and Director

Conflict escalated outside the main pair. One of the producers wrote: “Shaffer’s talent was marred by excessive indulgence that drove him to show he was too clever by half.”

In a letter to the producers, the director complained about the editor, Eric Boyd-Perkins: “I don’t think he appreciates the subject or style of the film … and thinks that he has had enough of it.”

In one letter, Lee described the film as “appealing and mysterious”, despite “having to cope with a garrulous producer, a stressed screenwriter and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Lost Documents Found

A large collection of letters relating to the film was part of multiple bags of documents forgotten in the loft of the old house of the director’s spouse, his wife. There were also previously unseen scripts, visual plans, production photos and budget records, many of which reflect the challenges experienced by the film-makers.

Hardy’s sons his two sons, currently in their sixties, have drawn on the material for an upcoming publication, titled Children of The Wicker Man. The book uncovers the intense stress on the director throughout the production of the movie – including a health crisis to financial ruin.

Personal Consequences

Initially, the movie was a box office flop and, in the aftermath of its failure, the director left his wife and his family for a new life in America. Legal letters show his wife as an unacknowledged producer and that he was indebted to her up to £1m in today’s money. She had to give up the family home and passed away in the 1980s, aged 51, suffering from addiction, unaware that her film eventually became a global hit.

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

When someone reached out by a resident who had moved into his mother’s old house, asking whether he wished to collect the documents, his initial reaction was to propose burning “the bloody things”.

But afterward he and his stepbrother Dominic examined the bags and realised the significance of what they held.

Insights from the Documents

His brother, a scholar, commented: “All the big players are in there. We discovered the first draft by the writer, but with his father’s notes as director, ‘controlling’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Due to his legal background, he did a lot of overexplaining and dad just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They loved each other and hated each other.”

Writing the book has brought some “closure”, the son said.

Monetary Struggles

The family did not profit financially from the production, he explained: “This movie earned a fortune for other people. It’s beyond a joke. Dad agreed to take a small fee. So he never received any of the upside. The actor also did not get payment from it either, although he performed the film for no pay, to get out of Hammer [Horror films]. Therefore, it’s been a very unkind film.”