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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Dalya Alberge

‘An unkind film’: letters reveal rift between director and writer of The Wicker Man

Robin Hardy Christopher Lee Justin Dominic Edward Woodward United States
Anthony Shaffer and Robin Hardy on the set of The Wicker Man
Anthony Shaffer and Robin Hardy on the set of The Wicker Man. At one point Hardy wrote to Shaffer: ‘How dare you treat me like this?’ Photograph: Studio Canal/Shutterstock

A screenplay by one of the UK’s foremost writers, Anthony Shaffer, and a cast headed by Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward should have been the stuff of dreams for the director Robin Hardy in filming The Wicker Man more than half a century ago.

Although it is today revered as a cult horror masterpiece, the extent of the misery that it brought the film-makers has now been revealed in previously unpublished letters and script drafts.

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