My father’s obsession with filming The Wicker Man utterly destroyed our family
It’s the cult folk horror classic that has thrilled film fans for 50 years. But as the director’s son reveals, it came with terrifying real-life consequences...
HIS father was responsible for one of the most terrifying films ever made with one of the most visually arresting denouements in movie history. And yet, ask Justin Hardy what he thinks about The Wicker Man, his father Robin’s directorial masterpiece, and his answer may be as unexpected as the film’s shock ending of a burning human sacrifice.
The sharply observed tale, which features Edward Woodward as a buttoned-up, devoutly Christian policeman who travels to a Hebridean island of Summerisle to investigate the alleged disappearance of a schoolgirl and finds himself confronted by a population in thrall to a pagan cult, would go on to garner its own cult following.
And yet, despite a cast that included Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland and Hammer Horror queen Ingrid Pitt, the film was panned by baffled critics at the time of its release in 1973 and so loathed by executives at British Lion – the studio behind it – that they tried to bury it.
Robin Hardy fought hard to rescue from obscurity a work that would later be hailed as ‘the Citizen Kane of horror films’, a byword for cultural weirdness, and a tourist bonanza for South-West Scotland, but there are times his son wished the film had never been made.
Just nine years old when the film came out 50 years ago, Justin had a child’s view of the ‘chaos, crisis, and cruelty’ which engulfed his family as his father’s growing financial woes dragged them towards disaster.
‘My mother had done a lot to support The Wicker Man financially,’ he explained. ‘When it went down in 1973/4, she suffered enormously and we had to sell our house; we had to move out. So when people ask me about Wicker Man, I say, “Well I don’t really like Wicker Man; it’s s***, it’s been horrible to my family and me”. And they say, “Oh, that wasn’t what I was expecting.” And I sort of feel, well if you don’t want to know, don’t ask.
‘But this is what happens – independent films go down and they take whole families with them and then later on they reinflate, and that family never makes any money out of it and so one’s response to its subsequent success is a bit muted.’
What rankles with Justin is not so much the financial debts but the emotional baggage his father saddled his family with, in order to keep his beloved project on track.
Having run out of money, the much-married Robin Hardy would also soon run out on his family, abandoning them for a new life – and a fifth wife – in the US.
Growing up, Justin thought he had a clear picture in his head of the villain in the family. That is, until an extraordinary twist of fate recently caused him to re-evaluate his complex relationship with his father. Hidden in the attic of the very house Justin was forced to leave as a boy were six sacks of material relating to the filming of The Wicker Man. They were uncovered when the house was recently put up for sale by the owner.
The contents included letters, scripts and an early test pressings of Paul Giovanni’s haunting music; they offer a remarkable new insight into the unbearable pressures Robin Hardy found himself under as he tried to finish the film in the face of considerable adversity.
Now a successful filmmaker in his own right, specialising in historical dramas, Justin Hardy is using the material for a new feature-length documentary, Wickermania!, exploring the enduring appeal of the movie, which is set for special Midsummer screenings in a new 4K format next month.
Just as the movie’s plot revolves around strait-laced Sergeant Howie’s doomed efforts to find Rowan Morrison, so the documentary – due next year – attempts to pin down the elusive character of the errant father Justin never really knew.
‘This woman bought our house from my mother who had left anything to do with my father where it belonged, which was in the attic gathering dust,’ said Justin. And there it remained for decades, until he received a letter. ‘She wrote to me saying, “Do you want any of this – or shall I just burn it?”’
Those, he said, were her exact words. Given the fiery ending to the film, it might have seemed an apt finale. Instead, Justin took possession and promptly put them in his own attic, ‘because, frankly, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to go there’. His dad finally left when he was ten. ‘I don’t know much about it. He did come to see me to say goodbye and I didn’t see him for five years.’
JUSTIN’S mother did not paint a pretty picture of Hardy in those missing years and by the time he reappeared, The Wicker Man was starting to enjoy a renaissance. ‘Dad slightly swanned back in going, “Well, everything seems OK now”, and I was going, “Well, you know, is it? I thought you were dead”. I mean my mother had to divorce him on the grounds of desertion, believing that he might be dead, because he wouldn’t even make contact to divorce her.
‘To walk away not offering any divorce settlement or anything, essentially having spent all my mother’s money – you may well ask how do we get an uplift on him at all in this film? Well, we’re working on it.’
Such dark manipulation sounds worthy of Lord Summerisle himself? ‘Well, there you go. I think that’s probably a good way to put it, because there’s charm in Lord Summerisle and there’s no question our father had enormous charm.’
One of eight children (‘Dad spawned all over the place’), Justin called his Canadian-based halfbrother Dominic to ask him if he wanted to embark on this perilous voyage round their father, who died in 2016 aged 86.
‘He said, “OK”; we had pretty strained relations towards our dad so I must say it has been pretty horrific looking at these papers and going, “Oh I see, so you borrowed even more money off my mother? And here’s your bank