The Wicker Man - Final Cut 40th Anniversary 197... May 2026

1973 (Filmed) – 2013 (Final Cut Release)

Forty years after its final form was released, The Wicker Man remains a prophecy about the horrors lurking just beneath the green, pleasant land. It is not a film you watch. It is a ritual you survive.

Christopher Lee, who called this his best performance (yes, even above Saruman and Dracula), plays Summerisle with such charming intellectual menace that you almost root for him. "Do sit down, Sergeant. Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent." By 2013, the landscape had changed. The 2006 remake had become a punchline (BEES!). But that failure only polished the original’s legacy. In 2013, critics hailed the Final Cut as a revelation. Roger Ebert called it "one of the great films of the 1970s."

There are cult classics, and then there is The Wicker Man .

Sergeant Howie is a devout Christian policeman searching for a missing girl. Lord Summerisle is a pagan leader who has replaced guilt with joy. As Howie digs deeper, he doesn't find a monster. He finds a functioning, happy, eco-pagan society. The horror is not the ritual—it is the realization that the entire island is in on it , and you are the punchline.

If you have only seen the theatrical cut—or worse, the infamous 2006 Nicolas Cage remake—you have not truly visited Summerisle. The Final Cut , approved by director Robin Hardy just before his death in 2016, represents the closest we will ever get to his original vision. And on this 40th anniversary, it is worth asking: Why does this film still burn so brightly? Let’s rewind. In 1973, British Lion Films had no idea what to do with The Wicker Man . It wasn't a horror film in the Hammer sense (no vampires, no castles). It was a musical. It was a detective story. It was a pagan fever dream.

Forty years after it first flickered onto screens (and was subsequently butchered by distributors who didn’t know what they had), the Final Cut arrived in 2013 to remind the world why Robin Hardy’s folk horror masterpiece remains terrifying, beautiful, and utterly timeless.

Have you seen the 2013 Final Cut? Or are you still recovering from the bees? Let me know in the comments below.