{"id":166,"date":"2003-09-05T22:49:45","date_gmt":"2003-09-06T02:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=166"},"modified":"2003-09-05T22:49:45","modified_gmt":"2003-09-06T02:49:45","slug":"the-wicker-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=166","title":{"rendered":"The Wicker Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I finally got to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B00005KHJM\/dhalgrenstevensh\"><em>The Wicker Man<\/em><\/a>, a British cult film from 1973 with a checkered release history, which was quite difficult to see until it was finally released (in cut form) on video and DVD in 2001. It&#8217;s a clever and effective ultra-low-budget horror thriller about a Scottish island where the inhabitants observe the old pagan customs, up to and including human sacrifice to propitiate the gods after a poor harvest. The protagonist is an uptight cop from the mainland, a devout Christian, who comes to investigate the alleged disappearance of a young girl, and is shocked and scandalized by the islanders&#8217; sinful ways. The mood could be described as low-key delirious, with scenes ranging from hilariously kitschy (especially Biritt Eklund&#8217;s nude dance scene!) to genuinely creepy, to&#8230;. I&#8217;m not quite sure what to call Christopher Lee&#8217;s amazingly weird performance as Laird of the island and leader of the pagan cult: it&#8217;s sort of low-key demented and blandly cheerful at once. There are lots of other eccentric performances, and though the culminating Mayday pagan ceremony is a bit lethargic, the final plot twist is well staged and delightfully perverse.  All in all, I was glad to finally see this film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finally got to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B00005KHJM\/dhalgrenstevensh\"><em>The Wicker Man<\/em><\/a>, a British cult film from 1973 with a checkered release history, which was quite difficult to see until it was finally released (in cut form) on video and DVD in 2001. It&#8217;s a clever and effective ultra-low-budget horror thriller about a Scottish island where the inhabitants observe the old pagan customs, up to and including human sacrifice to propitiate the gods after a poor harvest. The protagonist is an uptight cop from the mainland, a devout Christian, who comes to investigate the alleged disappearance of a young girl, and is shocked and scandalized by the islanders&#8217; sinful ways. The mood could be described as low-key delirious, with scenes ranging from hilariously kitschy (especially Biritt Eklund&#8217;s nude dance scene!) to genuinely creepy, to&#8230;. I&#8217;m not quite sure what to call Christopher Lee&#8217;s amazingly weird performance as Laird of the island and leader of the pagan cult: it&#8217;s sort of low-key demented and blandly cheerful at once. There are lots of other eccentric performances, and though the culminating Mayday pagan ceremony is a bit lethargic, the final plot twist is well staged and delightfully perverse. All in all, I was glad to finally see this film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}