One of my favourite films just happens to be “The Wicker Man” starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee. The Missus bought me back a great DVD version from the US a couple of years back for a birthday present. Whenever I watch the movie, I always think back to the first time I watched the film as an impressionable youth, who had no idea of what the film was about and the bleak outcome of the protagonist. I remember as the end image of the blistering sunset appeared, the sheer horror and disbelief at what I had witnessed. Surely the hero always wins? That film was the first ever time I’d seen the righteous man defeated – it was a valuable lesson.
Now much as been written about the movie and there’s lots of discussion if you google it, but for me it isn’t so much a film about paganism versus organised religion, but the story of a man who wants so desperately to be right and needs certain rules to make sense of his universe. In this case, it is Christianity, but it could easily be any other religion in the frame. There are a couple of moments in the film that Sgt Howie’s character could have escaped – if he’d have succumbed to Britt Eckland’s seduction, he would no longer been a virgin and been no use to the locals. However, he wanted to do the right thing: he wanted to find the “killer” of Rowan Morrison and be chaste for his impending marriage. Wanting to be right, wanting to bring law and order resulted in his downfall. The lesson is that even if you are right, it doesn’t mean you are going to end up in the right, as it were. It is almost a moral for these immoral times.
When the studio execs saw the intiial edit of the film, they suggested that a rain shower put out the flames and save Woodward’s character. In other missing edit of the film, the last few scenes show that the sacrifice has been successful and that the fruit has returned to Summerisle.
Anyway, why I am bleating on about this film? Well, the soundtrack recently appeared on the eternally fantastic eMusic website (the only music download site worth signing up for, IMHO) and I was thrilled to download it. Part of the magic of the film is the faux folk songs that accompany it. The band Magnet (especially brought together to create the soundtrack) manage to create songs that give the belief system on the island a greater depth. The most memorable song of the collection is “Willow’s Song” – the song that accompanies Britt Eckland’s saucy dance as she bangs on the bedroom walls in an attempt to deflower Sgt Howie. After listening to the album, I did a check on the Internet and discovered that quite a few other bands have covered the song too – it is indeed a very popular track. So I thought it would be a jolly wheeze if I recorded my own version as a tribute to the movie I like so much. OK – it’s not exactly the same and I fluffed some of the chords up and it’s really a song for a woman’s voice, but there you go. I did have this on the site, but I removed it because it was a steaming pile of old socks.
But if you want to hear the instrumental version of the original track used in the film, you can download it direct from the record label website here.

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