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A script crafted by Anthony Shaffer and featuring Christopher Lee and the lead actor could have been an ideal venture for director Robin Hardy during the filming of The Wicker Man more than 50 years ago.

Even though it is now revered as a cult horror masterpiece, the extent of misery it caused the film-makers has now been revealed in newly discovered letters and script drafts.

The Storyline of This Classic Film

The 1973 film revolves around a puritan police officer, played by the actor, who travels on a remote Scottish island in search of a missing girl, but finds sinister local pagans who claim the girl was real. the actress was cast as the daughter of a local innkeeper, who seduces the religious policeman, with Lee as the pagan aristocrat.

Production Conflict Revealed

However, the working environment was frayed and contentious, the documents show. In a message to the writer, the director wrote: “How could you treat me like this?”

The screenwriter was already famous with masterpieces like Sleuth, but his typed draft of The Wicker Man shows the director’s harsh edits to his work.

Extensive crossings-out feature Summerisle’s lines in the final scene, originally starting: “The girl was but the tip of the iceberg – the part that showed. Do not reproach yourself, there was no way for you to know.”

Apart from Writer and Director

Tensions boiled over beyond the main pair. A producer commented: “Shaffer’s talent was marred by a self-indulgence that drove him to prove himself overly smart.”

In a note to the producers, Hardy complained about the editor, the editing specialist: “I believe he appreciates the theme or style of the film … and feels that he is tired of it.”

In one letter, Christopher Lee referred to the movie as “appealing and mysterious”, even with “dealing with a talkative producer, a stressed screenwriter and an overpaid and hostile director”.

Forgotten Documents Found

An extensive correspondence relating to the production was among six sack-loads of papers left in the loft of the old house of the director’s spouse, his wife. Included were previously unseen scripts, storyboards, production photos and financial accounts, many of which show the challenges experienced by the team.

Hardy’s sons Justin and Dominic, currently in their sixties, have drawn on the material for a forthcoming book, called Children of The Wicker Man. The book uncovers the intense stress on Hardy throughout the making of the film – including a health crisis to bankruptcy.

Personal Fallout

Initially, the movie was a box office flop and, in the aftermath the disappointment, the director left his spouse and their children for a fresh start in the US. Legal letters reveal Caroline as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that he owed her up to £1m in today’s money. She was forced to sell the family home and died in 1984, in her fifties, suffering from addiction, unaware that the project eventually became an international success.

Justin, a Bafta-nominated historian film-maker, described The Wicker Man as “the film that ruined our family”.

When someone reached out by a woman who had moved into his mother’s old house, asking whether he wished to retrieve the documents, his initial reaction was to suggest destroying “all of it”.

But then he and his brother opened up the bags and understood the significance of their contents.

Revelations from the Papers

His brother, an art historian, commented: “All the big players are in there. We found the first draft by Shaffer, but with his father’s notes as director, ‘containing’ Shaffer’s overexuberance. Due to his legal background, Shaffer did a lot of overexplaining and dad just went ‘edit, edit, edit’. They loved each other and clashed frequently.”

Writing the book provided some “resolution”, Justin stated.

Financial Hardships

His family never benefited monetarily from the film, he added: “The bloody film earned a fortune for other people. It’s unfair. His father accepted five grand. Thus, he missed out on any of the upside. The actor also did not get any money from it either, despite the fact he performed his role for zero, to leave Hammer [Horror films]. So, in many ways, it’s been a very unkind film.”