Day 39 : The Wicker Man

Remember my last post? How I was wishing and/or praying for less hours in office. Apparently that was something the universe’s still not ready to grant me. Half my weekend was spent in office! As would be for anyone who's had to work on weekends, I did not enjoy it one bit.

So, me having only the Sunday at my disposal, did what any (lazy) genius would do watching movies on laptop all day. And anyone who knows me and my relationship would've already guessed how that goes. Me spending a day with movies usually is like watching a dozen of them back to back, cocooned in my bed, potato chips all around me, with the speakers on high volume.

And since I am on a horror fix of late, the loud volume jumps that these movies have is not at all appreciated by my folks. But well, what can I do. Jump scares are the only way James Wan knows how to scare people. That, and new houses, and creepy looking dummies.

The gem of this specific spree was undoubtedly The Wicker Man. A really, really, twisted story of Celtic paganism versus Christianity. Coupled with  some grand storytelling!

It stars Christopher Lee, the British white haired villain you've seen a lot of movies but never really noticed enough to learn his name. And that's about it. Every other actor in the movie was largely unknown to me. But their performance was so good that I've now goggled up most of them. And have even checked up on some scenes from a cult TV show that hero starred in. I especially liked Woodward and Britt. Don't worry; they are not names you'd recognize right away either.

The movie plot seemed a lot like a routine B-movie story line. A guy comes to a new place, there is someone missing, a whole town gives him a cold shoulder, he sees weird things happening all around him, in the end he solves the big mystery behind the smallfolk’s behavior, and inevitably the unexpected twist during climax.

All that was pretty ordinary, but the way it was all detailed out for the audience was quite extraordinary. The whole thing flows on without a single dull moment. Every frame is utilized to give you more idea of what the Summerisle Island stands for and of crazy people living there. Some of the harbor-folk’s dialogues were pretty incomprehensible for me. But other than that I have no complains about anything in the movie.

I even liked the songs in the movie. And that is rare. The only musical I last appreciated was the Sound of Music and that only because it had the Plummer and Andrews’s combination in it. I despised the high school cheerleader musical fad that happened a few years back. (Yuck).

The end of the movie has a song as well. It is an actual hymn of the sea-faring folks sung by the islanders and also has the hero/policeman saying a psalm. This scene has live animals put to fire. Human being put ablaze. Crazed pagan worshippers yelling, and the hero yelling back threatening words from the Bible. And it has end shot with the setting sun seen shining through the pyre and flames roasting all of those within the wicker man. You cannot hope for a better end for a classic horror movie.

Love it!

Today, I am starting my first horror story.