#Ritual david pinner movie
#Ritual david pinner skin

What I love is that he creates a purely organic way for us to discover this Summerisle religion alongside Howie. If you know a book called The Golden Bough by James Frazer then you can see how much Shaffer drew from when writing this script. It is also very poignant for that scene, too. The song is a terrifying sound to hear when it’s sung. Haskell) that you’ll find comes at a crucial moment. Shaffer uses all kinds of things, such as the Middle English folk tune “Sumer Is Icumen In” (you can find a proper copy of this in A Middle English Anthology edited by Ann S. I love that there’s a great deal of attention paid to the Celtic traditions, paganism, as well as drops of history here and there. You want to know more, and as Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) discovers more then you sort of want to know less – in the best, mystery-horror hybrid kind of way. Forget the simple fact all that folk music thrown in is so unique and fun, Shaffer makes this paganism-styled religion out on the fictional Scottish island Summerisle partly unnerving and also an equal part intriguing. There’s of course the inclusion of David Pinner’s novel Ritual, but his work together with Hardy made for some terribly interesting story and characters. Shaffer has done some good work other than this film, mainly Frenzy, Sleuth, Murder on the Orient Express come to mind. One thing’s for sure: imitators be damned, there is NOTHING like this one.

#Ritual david pinner skin

Rather, The Wicker Man pries up your skin and slithers beneath it, both disturbing you and even making you smile (or laugh) from time to time.

#Ritual david pinner movie

This is a successful horror movie that does not rely on an entirely physical element to make things scary. To me it is the epitome of folk horror, including the gradual build up to those moments. Second off all, Hardy’s finale is one of the single most horrific sequences of all time. The religious elements at play in this film were incredibly interesting to me.

It was before that choice of mine to stop going to church and taking communion, all that. I saw this movie around age eleven, maybe twelve at most. First, it wasn’t until about age thirteen that I finally shed the influence of my Roman Catholic upbringing, after my parents were smart enough to give me a choice – church or not. There are a few reasons for Hardy’s influential touch. So as an early teen Hardy influenced me greatly with a single hour and a half of film. I remember how strange and dreamy the whole thing was, and the way in which its songs mixed into the creepy story to make something altogether different from anything else I’d ever seen at the time. When I was young I remember catching this movie on some channel, whether it was Show Case here in Canada I can’t be sure likely, but not positive. It’s the influence of his mysterious folk horror The Wicker Man that endeared me to him permanently. Honestly there’s nothing else he’s done that I’ve particularly been interested in. Upon hearing Robin Hardy passed today, I was torn up.

If you head on through expect for that to get talked of openly. This review is going to talk about the ending later.

British Lion Film Corporation.ĭISCLAIMER: as of this writing it’s been 43 years since the release of this classic, so if you haven’t see it I really don’t even need to tell you about any possible SPOILERS! Yet I do so anyway. Starring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt, Lindsay Kemp, Russell Water, Aubrey Morris, Irene Sunters, Walter Carr, Ian Campbell, & Roy Boyd. Screenplay by Anthony Shaffer based on the novel Ritual by David Pinner.