Grandmaster of magic and suspense Christopher Lee portrayed a little planet of characters (including Dracula, Fu Manchu, Jekyll & Hyde, the Mummy, Rasputin, Saruman, and a host of lycanthropes and other curiously seductive creeps) over the course of hundreds (yes, you read right) of films.
He cited a merry jaunt as Lord SummerIsle, pagan king of a Scottish isle of bushy-tailed lasses and randy Scotsmen, as his favorite.
Deliciously coy, sillily fun, and surprisingly tense, 1973’s The Wicker Man follows the ill-fated good intentions of a particularly pompous, gloatingly righteous Christian copper who plunges into the hedonistic din of the island (think Rambo armed with a Bible), in search of a reported missing child.
With Biblical disdain and sexless passion, he troops from one side of the isle to the other, scowling and shaking fists at the salacious, carefree ignorance (coated with just a shimmering hint of malice) of the ever-frolicking heathens.
The more he rants and raves, the gentler the villagers’ condescension becomes, and the scenes he stumbles into become increasingly threatening to his spiritual well-being: children at the local school taught about the phallic tree of Life’s creative force, a spring-hare buried in place of the missing girl, a casual midnight orgy outside local pub ‘The Horned Toad’ – and, as the film unravels ever faster into a dizzyingly pagan crescendo, the good copper finds himself on ever shakier ground, surrounded by carnival masks and leering frenzy.
Wonderfully wicked stuff!
[First published in Muse magazine.]
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