COUNT SUMMERISLE?

Christopher lee’s lord Summerisle isn’t unlike his Count Dracula – a charming aristo ensconced in a baronial hall removed from the village, which Howie reaches by means of pony and trap. (there are further suggestions of vampire lore elsewhere in the movie: Howie fashions a makeshift crucifix in a graveyard, for example, and later participates in a lamplit exhumation.) Casting lee, insisted Hardy, was all part of the game: “He is there to anchor the audience’s hope that this is a horror film, [so] it’s going to have some recognisable landmark in it. and the fact that there’s jolly music in it and the people are all smiling and nice and have actual characters, and that there’s all this other stuff going on – nevertheless, there’s Christopher, it’s going to be all right! He’s either going to show fangs, or something is going to happen which is going to be familiar. and so when the wicker man happens… it’s okay, because there is that reward if you’re waiting to have a frisson of shock at the end of the picture.”