THE WICKER TREE. (2011) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ROBIN HARDY. BASED ON THE NOVEL 'COWBOYS FOR CHRIST' BY ROBIN HARDY. STARRING GRAHAM MCTAVISH, JACQUELINE LEONARD, BRITTANIA NICOL, STEVE GARRETT, CLIVE RUSSELL, HONEYSUCKLE WEEKS AND CHRISTOPHER LEE. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
Robin Hardy passed away earlier this
week at the age of eighty-six. He was the director of what is
commonly viewed as one of the greatest British films of all time, THE
WICKER MAN (1973). If directing
this superlative, practically perfect film was your one achievement
in the whole of your life, then you could consider yourself not to
have wasted your time here on Earth. It's just that good.
For
those who don't know, THE WICKER MAN is
the story of Sergeant Howie, a rather straight-laced 'Christian
copper' who travels to the
Scottish island of Summerisle in search of a missing child. He can
hardly believes what he finds there. The islanders to a man are
amoral, sex-mad pagans, who worship 'the old gods' while
shunning everything Howie considers decent, right and proper.
The film
gradually builds up the tension and sense of impending doom before
culminating in possibly the most shocking and spine-chilling climax
in cinema ever. There's an American re-make of this marvellous film
starring Nicolas Cage, but I understand that fans of the original
movie prefer not to acknowledge its existence...!
Personally
speaking, I feel that the re-make would have been an 'okay'
stand-alone film if it hadn't been purporting to have any connection
with the original. It's the fact that it claims to be a re-make of
the best British film ever made that has the die-hard fans up in arms
and spitting feathers of outrage and hatred. I'll probably be burnt
alive (ahem!) for
saying anything at all in favour of the re-make so, if you don't hear
from me for a while, you'll know the reason why.
THE WICKER MAN, the
original one, has a superb musical score and some immensely memorable
dialogue and scenes. It has a trio of sexy blonde beauties (Diane
Cilento, Ingrid Pitt and Britt Ekland) disporting
themselves rather charmingly about the place and the most
aristocratically-voiced English actor who ever lived, Christopher
Lee, as the joint lead male with Edward Woodward.
THE WICKER TREE is
seemingly neither a re-make of the original nor a sequel to it. Based
on a novel by the great director himself, it was intended to be the
second film in a WICKER MAN trilogy,
the first instalment being of course THE WICKER MAN itself.
The
third one, THE WRATH OF THE GODS, is
as yet unmade. It was to have been the story of a theme park based on
Norse legends and, with the sad death of the director, I suppose its
future is uncertain now.
Now to
THE WICKER TREE. I've
been dilly-dallying about, putting off writing about it because I'm
going to say awful things about it. It feels a bit like I'm marking
the passing of dear old Robin Hardy by totally decimating one of his
life's works. That makes me feel as guilty as a person who's just
been found guilty of being guilty and who's going to have to live
with that for all eternity.
I pray
that he forgives me and won't hold a grudge. If there's a place for
the humble fan in that great WICKER MAN reunion
in the sky, I hope that this bad review won't blot my copybook and
ruin my chances of gatecrashing it somehow. I really want to meet the
snails who were copulating outside Willow's bedroom window while Lord
Summerisle pontificated in his deep handsome voice and ask them what
their motivation was for that crucially saucy scene...!
Well,
here we go. Firstly, I was horrified to observe that THE
WICKER TREE has Americans in it.
Actual Americans...! I'm not being racist against Americans, haha.
It's just that the original film is as British (and
Scottish) as it's possible to
be. Then the action moves from America to Scotland, which is good,
but the Americans go too, which is bad...! (I'm still not
being racist, I swear!)
Two smugly, publicly chaste Born-Again-Christian singers from the good old US of A travel to
Scotland. Their mission is to preach Christianity to the unconverted heathens who live there who've
never accepted Jesus Christ as their personal whatsit.
Beth
and Steve have the most irritating Texan accents and they actually
say y'all. Y'all...!
I'm very much afraid to say that I hated both of them on sight,
especially Steve who looked like he should be chewing on a straw and
saying 'Aw, shucks, ma'am!' every
time he was addressed by anyone. He
wears his cowboy hat to bed, for gosh-darn's-sake!
They are both taken under the wing of the laird of Tressock, a village in the
Scottish Lowlands. I didn't like the laird and his missus either, I'm
afraid. Sir Lachlan Morrison, the owner of the local nuclear plant,
looks like a cross between Patrick Stewart and Ben Kingsley.
I'm
certainly not holding that against
him, as those are both attractive, charismatic men. As the local
toff, however, Sir Lachlan couldn't hold a candle to Lord Summerisle
for menacing glamour and sensuality, and his wife Delia, though she
attempts to be a bitch, is pretty forgettable really.
The pair of
yodelling Yanks are just in time for the Mayday celebrations, at
which they're intended by the locals to be the guests of honour. If
you remember the way in which poor dear Sergeant Howie was the guest
of honour at the Mayday celebrations of the inhabitants of
Summerisle, then you'll know exactly how big a deal it is and how it
will all pan out.
The
acting and dialogue is almost uniformly poor. The attempt at comic
writing is painful and cringeworthy. There's zero atmosphere and none of
the natural sexiness of the original film. Every time I hear the
haunting, primeval strains of 'Gently, Johnny' from
THE WICKER MAN, I want
to grab the nearest guy and start working my way through the Kama
Sutra. Nothing in THE WICKER TREE made
me want to have sex, not even the sex scenes.
There's
a bizarre sex scene in it featuring the position commonly known (I
believe!) as 'reverse
cowgirl.' It's not remotely
sexy, even though you see tits. The naked bathing scene focuses on a
man's bare butt for quite a long time, which was fine by me but I
imagine it put a lot of guys off their chips.
A lot of the
film doesn't make sense. There weren't any characters in it I felt
like rooting for either. I disliked most of them. The character of Beame,
the chauffeur and general factotum, could have been played quite
successfully by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, as they're both
dead ringers for each other. I'm sure Billy Connolly wouldn't at all
have minded making his testicles the butt of one of the film's
jokes...! Christopher Lee's cameo was sad and baffling, though it was
lovely to see him.
There
were some nice shots of the beautiful countryside and the scenes in
the ruined castle were passably interesting. I also liked seeing what
had become of previous Queens Of The May. It
reminded me of Vincent Price when he was the deranged owner of a
popular wax museum in one of his films. I think that's about all that
I liked about the film, or could tolerate
about it, heh-heh-heh.
I
normally like to see the positive side of every film I review but I'm afraid I
just really hated this. I didn't want to, because of Robin Hardy's
connection to the original WICKER MAN, but
it couldn't be helped. It's a chaotic mess which doesn't seem to know
whether it's coming or going.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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