A Catholic police officer (Woodward) ventures to the openly Pagan island of Summerisle in search of a missing child. Being a conservative, self-assumed Man Of God, the inspector is appalled by the community’s open sexuality and their worship of nature elements and old gods. His religious devotion borders on the fascistic as he explores, argues and debates, slowly beginning to suspect that the child was slaughtered as a human May Day sacrifice. But that’s not all. One of the heaviest films of the 70s — PERIOD. A strange cross breed of detective thriller and horror film that ventures into full-on ideological discourses on religious intolerance and the powers, strangeness and terrors of faith. No horror film in recent history has had the courage to go where this one does. It is also one of the few films about Paganism that knows exactly what it’s talking about. At the time of its production, certain distributors and exhibitors considered the film to be Satanic and others simply had no idea how to market such a unique beast. Consequently, it was barely released outside of the UK. Since that time, its original negative has been destroyed and at one point, THE WICKER MAN was considered to be a lost film. Thankfully some prints still circulate, and we’ve managed to track one down. The film has gone on to amass a huge cult following while critics and cinema historians across the world champion it as a masterpiece of the genre. It is a riveting, poetic nightmare, brilliantly scripted, with pitch-black humour and enough bizarre imagery to fill a discarded bible. Its final reel will haunt you forever. Blessed be. (MD)

Un mélange étrange d'horreur et de suspense, le film aborde les thèmes de l'intolérance religieuse , du pouvoir, de l'occulte et la peur de générée par la foi. Reconnu par les critiques et les amateurs comme un chef d'oeuvre.