Further images
Bearing the tagline 'An island lost to unspeakable terrors of pagan rituals!' this scarce Australian one sheet displays by far the best poster artwork produced for the 1970 cult British folk horror 'The Wicker Man', in which a devout Scottish policeman finds himself summoned to a remote Scottish island in search of a missing girl and discovers that the inhabitants have abandoned Christianity in favour of a bizarre form of Celtic paganism led by the sinister Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). Printed in stunning stone lithography, the design depicts a flaming orange fire simultaneously illuminating and engulfing the titular wicker man at sunset, while a nude Britt Ekland writhes in the foreground.
The concept of the wicker man, which gave the filmmakers their title, was taken from the description of the practice of human sacrifice by the Gauls in Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War: "Others have figures of vast size, the limbs of which formed of osiers they fill with living men, which being set on fire, the men perish enveloped in the flames." Written by Anthony Shaffer and directed by Robin Hardy, the film was critically acclaimed on initial release, despite a botched distribution when studio executives, unsure how to market it, demanded 20 minutes of cuts for UK release as part of a double bill in early 1974. After American film magazine Cinefantastique devoted a commemorative issue to the film in 1977 asserting that the film is "the Citizen Kane of horror movies", the film's growing cult status saw Hardy release a 96-minute restoration in 1979. A Director's Cut followed in 2001 and a Final Cut was released in 2013. Christopher Lee considered The Wicker Man his best film and championed it throughout his life. "It's one of the most remarkable films ever made," he said in a 1998 BBC documentary. "It's not only amusing, it's romantic, erotic, very disturbing and very frightening."