The Wicker Man full HD movie download free with screenpaly story, dialogue LYRICS and STAR Cast

Police Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) journeys to the remote Hebridean island Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, Rowan Morrison (Gerry Cowper), about whom he has received an anonymous letter. Howie, a devout Christian, is disturbed to find the islanders paying homage to the pagan Celtic gods of their ancestors. They copulate openly in the fields, include children as part of the May Day celebrations, teach children of the phallic association of the maypole, and place toads in their mouths to cure sore throats. The Islanders, including Rowan's own mother (Irene Sunters), appear to be attempting to thwart his investigation by claiming that Rowan never existed.

While staying at the Green Man Inn, Howie notices a series of photographs celebrating the annual harvest, each featuring a young girl as the May Queen. The photograph of the most recent celebration is suspiciously missing; the landlord (Lindsay Kemp) tells him it was broken. The landlord's beautiful daughter, Willow (Britt Ekland), attempts to seduce Howie, so that he would no longer remain a virgin, but he refuses her advances. Howie enters the local school and enquires about Rowan among the students, but all deny about existence of Rowan. He checks the school register and finds Rowan's name in it. He questions the school teacher and she tells him about her burial plot.

After seeing Rowan's burial plot, Howie meets the island's leader, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), grandson of a Victorian agronomist, to obtain permission for an exhumation. Lord Summerisle explains that his grandfather developed strains of fruit trees that would prosper in Scotland's climate, and encouraged the belief that old gods would use the new strains to bring prosperity to the island. Over the next several generations, the island's inhabitants fully embraced pagan religion.

Howie finds the missing harvest photograph, showing Rowan standing amidst empty boxes. His research reveals that when there is a poor harvest, the islanders make a human sacrifice to ensure that the next will be bountiful. He comes to the conclusion that Rowan is alive and has been chosen for sacrifice. During the May Day celebration, Howie knocks out and ties up the innkeeper so he can steal his costume and mask (that of Punch, the fool) and infiltrates the parade. When it seems the villagers are about to sacrifice Rowan, he cuts her free and flees with her into a cave. On exiting it, they are intercepted by the islanders, to whom Rowan happily returns.

Lord Summerisle tells Howie that Rowan was never the intended sacrifice – Howie himself is. He fits their gods' four requirements: he came of his own free will, with "the power of a king" (by representing the Law), is a virgin, and is a fool. Defiant, Howie loudly warns Lord Summerisle and the islanders that the fruit-tree strains are failing permanently and that the villagers will turn on him (Lord Summerisle) and sacrifice him next summer when the next harvest fails as well; Summerisle angrily insists that the sacrifice of the "willing, king-like, virgin fool" will be accepted and that the next harvest will not fail. The villagers force Howie inside a giant wicker man statue, set it ablaze and surround it, singing the Middle English folk song "Sumer Is Icumen In." Inside the wicker man, a terrified Howie recites Psalm 23, and prays to Christ. He curses the islanders as he burns to death. The wicker man collapses in flames, revealing the setting sun.

Background

In the early 1970s, the actor Christopher Lee was a Hammer Horror regular, best known for his roles in a series of successful films, beginning with The Curse of Frankenstein (as the monster, 1957). Lee wanted to break free of this image and take on more interesting acting roles. He met with screenwriter Anthony Shaffer, and they agreed to work together. Film director Robin Hardy and British Lion head Peter Snell became involved in the project. Shaffer had a series of conversations with Hardy, and the two decided that it would be fun to make a horror film centering on "old religion", in sharp contrast to the Hammer films they had both seen as horror film fans.

Shaffer read the David Pinner novel Ritual, in which a devout Christian policeman is called to investigate what appears to be the ritual murder of a young girl in a rural village, and decided that it would serve well as the source material for the project. Pinner originally wrote Ritual as a film treatment for director Michael Winner, who had John Hurt in mind as a possible star. Winner eventually declined the project, so Pinner's agent convinced him to write Ritual as a novel instead. Shaffer and Lee paid Pinner £15,000 for the rights to the novel, and Shaffer set to work on the screenplay. He soon decided that a direct adaptation would not work well and drafted a new story based only loosely on the story of the novel.

Shaffer wanted the film to be "a little more literate" than the average horror picture. He specifically wanted a film with a minimum of violence and gore. He was tired of seeing horror films that relied almost entirely on viscera to be scary. The focus of the film was crystallised when he "finally hit upon the abstract concept of sacrifice." The image of the wicker man, which gave the filmmakers their title, was taken from one sentence in Julius Caesar's account of his wars in what is now France. Caesar claimed that the local tribes there had executed their most serious criminals by burning them alive in a huge man-shaped sculpture of woven twigs. For Shaffer, this was "the most alarming and imposing image that I had ever seen." The idea of a confrontation between a modern Christian and a remote, pagan community continued to intrigue Shaffer, who performed painstaking research on paganism. Brainstorming with Hardy, they conceived the film as presenting the pagan elements objectively and accurately, accompanied by authentic music and a believable, contemporary setting. One of their main resources was The Golden Bough, a study of mythology and religion written by Scottish anthropologist James Frazer.

Casting

Television actor Edward Woodward was cast in the role of Sergeant Neil Howie after the part was declined by both Michael York and David Hemmings. In Britain, Woodward was best known for the role of Callan, which he played from 1967 to 1972. After The Wicker Man, Woodward went on to receive international attention for his roles in the 1980 film Breaker Morant and the 1980s TV series The Equalizer.

After Shaffer saw her on the stage, he lured Diane Cilento out of semi-retirement to play the town's schoolmistress. (They lived together in Queensland from 1975, and married in 1985.) Ingrid Pitt, another British horror film veteran, was cast as the town librarian and registrar. The Swedish actress Britt Ekland was cast as the innkeeper's lascivious daughter, although two body doubles were used for her naked scenes below the waist. Ekland found out that she was three months pregnant with her son Nic, to Lou Adler two weeks into filming. Stuart Hopps (the film's choreographer) called upon Lorraine Peters who gyrated at the doorway, whilst local 18-year-old extra Jane Jackson was filmed in the wall scenes (although in reality, the bedrooms of Willow and Sergeant Howie were not "through the wall" from each other: Willow's was upstairs in the Cally Estates offices in Gatehouse of Fleet whilst Howie's was 35 miles (56 kilometres) away in a family home in the Main Street of Whithorn). Her speaking and singing voices were dubbed by Annie Ross and Rachel Verney respectively.

Filming

The film was produced at a time of crisis for the British film industry. The studio in charge of production, British Lion Films, was in financial trouble and was bought by wealthy businessman John Bentley. To convince the unions that he was not about to asset-strip the company, Bentley needed to get a film into production quickly. This meant that The Wicker Man, a film set during spring, actually began filming in October 1972: artificial leaves and blossoms had to be glued to trees in many scenes. The production was kept on a small budget. Christopher Lee was extremely keen to get the film made; he and others worked on the production without pay. While filming took place, British Lion was bought by EMI Films.

The film was shot almost entirely in the small Scottish towns of Gatehouse of Fleet, Newton Stewart, Kirkcudbright, and Creetown in Dumfries and Galloway, as well as Plockton in Ross-shire. Some scenes were filmed in and around the Isle of Whithorn, where the owners of the castle, Elizabeth McAdam McLaughland and David Wheatley, plus several other local people, fea