There are some new still photos available for Robin Hardy‘s upcoming horror pic The Wicker Tree, a re-imagining of the original 1973 cult classic The Wicker Man. British Lion Film Corporation’s The Wicker Tree will premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival next month in Montreal, with Anchor Bay as its distributor.
Hardy directed the original The Wicker Man, which has a cult following and certainly qualifies as one of those bizarre ’70s hallucinogenic orgy horror pics. Plenty of nudity and strange dancing, mask-wearing revelers. Most of you probably remember The Wicker Man remake that came out a few years ago and starred Nicholas Cage as a cop who visits a remote island of nature worshipers to investigate a disappearance. The remake, as eerie and strange as it was, still was a good deal less weird than the original.
Hardy hasn’t been able to get the bizarre ideas and concepts of The Wicker Man out of his head, as he wrote a novel in 2006 called “Cowboys for Christ”, and The Wicker Tree is based on his book from a screenplay he penned. The new story has many of the same elements of the original The Wicker Man, hence this pic is literally a re-imagining and not a sequel/prequel.
The story surrounds a Christian pop singer and her cowboy boyfriend from Texas, who go to Scotland to spread the good word. They are met with general hostility until they stumble upon a small, remote village that is about to celebrate May Day. Unbeknownst to the missionaries, the villagers are part of a pagan cult that worship a Celtic goddess, and being part of their May Day celebration isn’t as innocent as it sounds.
Iconic funereal-voiced horror actor Christopher Lee was in the original The Wicker Man, and has returned for The Wicker Tree. It also stars Brittania Nicol and Henry Garrett.
I’ve attached the trailer below. Check it out and decide for yourselves if this is going to be another cult classic, or just a bizarro low-budget film excuse for gratuitous nudity, pagan shenanigans, and general weirdness.
Sorry, the video is currently unavailable.