In 1973, a modestly-budgeted motion picture about human sacrifice and unfamiliar Pagan customs hit the big screen, reluctantly released by a studio who would have preferred the world to have disregarded its existence entirely. This year, that very film, Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man, celebrates its 50th anniversary, and remains not only unforgotten, but widely regarded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time.
Described by Cinefantastique magazine’s David Bartholomew as “the Citizen Kane of horror films”, The Wicker Man is pedestalled within British cinema as a pioneering blueprint within the genre of folk horror, its momentous impact parenting a trail of future projects, from Sky Atlantic’s pre-Christian series The Third Day and Ari Aster’s critically-acclaimed cult-centred horror Midsommar, to the 2006 box-office-flopping Wicker Man reimagining starring Nicolas Cage. Alton Towers even homes its own tribute, a ride named after the film’s title, crafted wholly out of wood.
