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A screenplay written by Anthony Shaffer and starring a horror icon and Edward Woodward could have been an ideal venture for director Robin Hardy during the production of The Wicker Man over 50 years ago.

Although today it is revered as an iconic horror film, the extent of turmoil it brought the film-makers is now uncovered in previously unpublished correspondence and script drafts.

The Plot of The Wicker Man

The 1973 film centers on a devout policeman, played by the actor, who travels on a remote Scottish island looking for a lost child, only to encounter mysterious pagan residents who claim she ever existed. the actress appeared as an innkeeper’s sexually liberated daughter, who tempts the religious policeman, with Lee as Lord Summerisle.

Creative Conflict Uncovered

However, the working environment was tense and fractious, the documents show. In a message to the writer, the director wrote: “How dare you handle me this way?”

The screenwriter was already famous with masterpieces like Sleuth, but his typed draft of The Wicker Man reveals Hardy’s brutal cuts to his work.

Heavy edits include the aristocrat’s dialogue in the final scene, originally starting: “The child was only a small part – the visible element. Don’t blame yourself, it was impossible you could have known.”

Apart from the Creative Duo

Tensions boiled over beyond the main pair. One of the producers commented: “Shaffer’s talent has been offset by excessive indulgence that drove him to prove himself overly smart.”

In a letter to the production team, Hardy complained about the editor, the editing specialist: “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 referred to the film as “appealing and mysterious”, even with “having to cope with a garrulous producer, an underpaid and harassed writer and a well-paid but difficult director”.

Forgotten Papers Uncovered

An extensive correspondence relating to the film was part of multiple bags of papers left in the attic of the old house of Hardy’s third wife, his wife. There were also previously unseen scripts, visual plans, on-set photographs and financial accounts, many of which show the struggles experienced by the film-makers.

The director’s children Justin and Dominic, currently in their sixties, used the material for a forthcoming book, called Children of The Wicker Man. The book uncovers the intense stress faced by the director throughout the production of the film – including a health crisis to bankruptcy.

Personal Fallout

At first, the film was a box office flop and, following of its failure, the director abandoned his spouse and their children for a new life in the US. Legal letters reveal his wife as the film’s uncredited executive producer and that he was indebted to her up to £1m in today’s money. She was forced to sell their house and passed away in the 1980s, in her fifties, battling addiction, never knowing that the project eventually became a global hit.

His son, an acclaimed documentary maker, described The Wicker Man as “the film that messed up my family”.

When he was contacted by a woman living in the former family home, inquiring if he wished to retrieve the documents, his first thought was to propose destroying “all of it”.

But then he and his brother opened up the bags and realised the significance of what they held.

Revelations from the Documents

His brother, a scholar, commented: “All the big players is represented. We discovered the first draft by the writer, but with dad’s annotations as filmmaker, ‘controlling’ the writer’s excess. Due to his legal background, he tended to overwrite and his father just went ‘cut, cut, cut’. They sort of respected each other and hated each other.”

Writing the book has brought some “resolution”, the son stated.

Monetary Struggles

His family never benefited financially from the production, he explained: “The bloody film has gone on to make so much money for other people. It’s beyond a joke. Dad accepted five grand. So he never received any of the upside. The actor also did not get any money from it either, although that he did the film for zero, to leave Hammer [Horror films]. Therefore, it was a harsh experience.”