“Come, it is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man,” says Christopher Lee’s Lord Summerisle in the infamous penultimate scene right before the detective meets his burning fate. At this point in the film, it is easy to view the residents of Summerisle, as the villains of this story, capturing an innocent man and sacrificing him for the good of their crops and their overall survival. But with time comes change, and as 50 whole years have passed since the release of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man, we can look at the film as an example of how being ignorant of cultures other than your own can have terrible consequences. Who was really at fault here?
