The Wicker Man - Final Cut 40th Anniversary 197... -

Have you seen the 2013 Final Cut? Or are you still recovering from the bees? Let me know in the comments below.

1973 (Filmed) – 2013 (Final Cut Release) The Wicker Man - Final Cut 40th Anniversary 197...

There are cult classics, and then there is The Wicker Man . Have you seen the 2013 Final Cut

Sergeant Howie is a devout Christian policeman searching for a missing girl. Lord Summerisle is a pagan leader who has replaced guilt with joy. As Howie digs deeper, he doesn't find a monster. He finds a functioning, happy, eco-pagan society. The horror is not the ritual—it is the realization that the entire island is in on it , and you are the punchline. 1973 (Filmed) – 2013 (Final Cut Release) There

Forty years after it first flickered onto screens (and was subsequently butchered by distributors who didn’t know what they had), the Final Cut arrived in 2013 to remind the world why Robin Hardy’s folk horror masterpiece remains terrifying, beautiful, and utterly timeless.

Christopher Lee, who called this his best performance (yes, even above Saruman and Dracula), plays Summerisle with such charming intellectual menace that you almost root for him. "Do sit down, Sergeant. Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent." By 2013, the landscape had changed. The 2006 remake had become a punchline (BEES!). But that failure only polished the original’s legacy. In 2013, critics hailed the Final Cut as a revelation. Roger Ebert called it "one of the great films of the 1970s."

Forty years after its final form was released, The Wicker Man remains a prophecy about the horrors lurking just beneath the green, pleasant land. It is not a film you watch. It is a ritual you survive.