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'and we went in search of the Wicker Man's legs...' a true story
From my ever-fading memory, it was all executed in a bit of a rush. Summerisle
went ahead with the arrangements, the planning and the strategy. I was oblivious
to all of it. "We're going to find the legs of the
Wicker Man" he told me. No reply came from my end.
With a military-like precision, Summerisle produced documents, tickets
and brochures from his inside pocket and ran through his planned exercise
with an automated delivery. The man had a plan, and I was to be his second
in command in this special task force of two. We were
going to find the giant legs of the wooden figure used in the 1973 'horror'
movie 'The Wicker Man'. The bases of both legs were allegedly still in-situ,
cemented into some Scottish hillside for all eternity. I was now getting
worried.
Had our many times of watching the Wicker man with only beer and Chinese
food to keep us alive, together as fellow nerds, finally drove him to obsession?
God! Maybe he's developing some kind of sexual fetish about the film I thought.
Or maybe he has plans to sacrifice me at the site where the end scene
of the movie was shot, when Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) is burnt alive
inside the colossal figure of the Wicker Man.
Either way, it was going to be a fun weekend in Scotland.
And
we went in search of the Wicker Man's legs. A plane from Belfast to Liverpool,
a hired car and a drive to rural Scotland. Creetown was the destination.
Before leaving Liverpool, we visited 251 Menlove Avenue, the childhood home
of John Lennon. It stood as a pre-war monument to an England long since
passed. John Boorman's 'Hope and Glory' could have been shot here.
Strawberry Field was the next stop. We both paid silent homage to this symbol
of a disappearing England.
Once we headed out of Liverpool, Summerisle had to admit that his plan had
a flaw.. His road map printed from the Internet didn't give any indication
of how to get from Stranraer to Creetown. In a pompus English fashion the
map showed every nook and cranny of England, but only showed main parts
of Scotland, as if the nooks and crannies of this country were irrelevant.
I mean, who would want to visit Creetown?
Summerisle was miffed. Someone's chucked a spanner in the works sort of
miffed. I still hadn't got passed him originally telling me about the project,
six days previous, so I sat like the husband at the birth of a child, useless
with not a shred of anything positive to suggest to better the situation.
We arrived at The Ellangowan Hotel in Creetown following a long drive and
about six roadside cafe stops, and with the help of a proper map, bought
from one of these postwar, modern-esque kitchens designed in the big, big
factory of really bad taste ideas. High rise flats without the high rise.
Images of the comedian Steve Coogan's alter-ego, Alan Partridge flashed
continually through my brain. Reggie Perrin. England. Vauxhall Vivas. Abigail's
Party. Top of the Pops album covers. Brown. Beige. Cigarettes. Ashtrays
on stands.
The Ellangowan, known in the film as 'The Green Man' was the location for
some of the main scenes of the movie. It was untouched since 1973. The same
decor, the same bar. The tune of 'The Landlord's Daughter' veiled across
my brain. Immediately Summerisle and I were taken back. It really was
the same.
We walked in with dread that we should be seen by the locals as either lunatics,
obsessed with a failed British Horror film, or the worse alternative, a
couple of married men sneaking away for a rampant homosexual weekend together.
But no, they entertain nerds exactly like us regularly. People come from
all over the globe to visit the 'Green Man'. They even hold an annual Wicker
Man convention which the previous year had Edward Woodward (Sergeant Howie)
himself in attendance..
Summerisle
and I were not alone. There were others who did this. It was okay now. We
could be ourselves. We could ask the local people questions about the shooting
of the film without expecting to be chased away.
A couple of pints later in the bar, the landlord and a few locals were shooting
forth story after story....Brit Ekland was a stuck-up cow....Lindsay Kemp
drinking with the locals dressed in an orange kaftan and carrying a ladies
handbag. They spoke so well of Kemp, even though he must have looked, let's
say, rather different.....Edward Woodward, nice chap. The Wicker Man flavour
was coming to the fore now.
A night's sleep then day two. The school house at Anwoth. The scene of the
now famous maypole dance to the birth/death/rebirth song...."In the
woods there grew a tree, and a fine, fine tree was he...." Across the
road was the church used for the almost psychedelic graveyard scenes. We
were both excited about this. Any Wicker Man anorak-nerd would be.
With Summerisle at the wheel, we approached the site with an air of reverence.
This was the real deal! It looked like, as with the 'Green Man', untouched
since the making of the film. Frozen. Did someone know that one day people
would be visiting here to pay homage? Bonkers.
I
walked reverently around the old Church yard, looking for recognisable gravestones
from the film.....the one with the text about the serpent.
It was then Summerisle informed me that the main featured stones
were in fact props. Is there anything he doesn't know about this
bloody film?
He made a find. It was a twelve inch by three inch piece of wood
with the letter 'L' painted on it. Perhaps from the wooden crates used in
the film for Summerisle Apples? Perhaps the one that Sergeant Howie (Edward
Woodward) tore apart with his bare hands to make a Cross, which he put on
one of the 'pagan' graves? It looked very much like it!
Summerisle kept it. We never pursued the piece of wood any further. If it
wasn't from the days of the filming, we didn't want to know. Best
left to romance, but maybe the answer lies in the following
excerpt from Edward Woodward's foreword to the "Inside The Wicker Man"
book which Summerisle discovered upon our return ........."at the graveyard
at which Howie fashioned a wooden cross to ward off the Summerisle voodoo,
I raked through the grass and found the same sodden crucifix: it had lain
there untouched since I had discarded it at the end of the scene 25 years
before." (Edward Woodward, October 1999)
From the still silence of Anwoth to the wild, blustery hillsides
of rural Scotland. To Burrow Head, where the cave and beach scenes were
filmed near St Ninians Cave. It was also the location for the famous climax
to the film where the giant effigy of the Wicker Man was burnt.
This was the part of the journey that Summerisle was most excited about.
This is the location where the essence of what the Wicker Man was about,
would be found....at the final resting place of the the figurehead of the
movie.
Burrow Head was a cliff at the South West corner of Scotland, in Kirkcudbrightshire.
It is wild, the Irish Sea roaring in over the grey rocks. The paganism of
the Wicker Man could be felt. The ode to Nuada, Goddess of The Sun. The
Chaos of Nature seemed as true order.
Now all we had to do was search a vast expanse of marshland and rocks to
find two wooden stumps standing erect and proud. Why? Because it was Summerisle's
plan and it was going to be executed. That's why.
I became stuck in a bog, right up to my knees, much to the mirth of Summerisle.
He was in his element here. If there was anyone who could find thirty-odd
year old tree-trunks, used in 1970's low-budget, British-made horror films,
it was Summerisle. My stumbling about Scottish hillsides made my partner
look kind of rugged and not at all like the clichéd buffoon character
from a 'Carry-On' film. He was the straight guy and I was the very unintentional
idiot.
We climbed and scrambled our way, and there they were. The legs, or rather
two wooden 'telegraph' poles. Wooden telegraph poles cemented into the ground.
Across land and sea to find two wooden telegraph poles cemented into the
ground.
'WM-72' was engraved in the cement. This little engraving was confirmation
for us. 'Wicker Man, 1972'. An ancient hieroglyph, all the way from 1972.
We
stood for about half and hour imagining all sorts of twisted Wicker Man
things. Summerisle was home. Mission complete, well almost. He informed
me that there were another set of legs from another Wicker
Man built for the film.
This site was further along the coast at a caravan site. The caravan site
from Hell. Butlin's holiday camp of Death. Grey caravans, uniform and shackled.
It was an overcast day which made the site one of the most depressing sights
I have ever seen.
An hour's searching proved no results for us. It was cold and the thought
of a few pints of alcohol back at the Green Man easily paved a way to the
notion of the abandonment of the last stage of the mission. It was a deal.
Into the car as quickly as possible and away from the 1960's caravan site,
set in the heart of the 21st century, to the Ellangowan back in Creetown.
A night with the locals in the Green Man was our plan. That would've been
the reality had they all not gone to the next town to play a darts match
against a rival pub. Great. Summerisle and I sitting in a completely empty
pub, left unattended. Some would say that would be a form of heaven, but
to us it was a comical finale to the excursion to Scotland.
It does not really matter what this expedition was about, for it is yet
another one of life's surreal episodes, that are now accumulating in our
own little life stories.
Summerisle and I found ourselves in locations which were both very beautiful
and an integral aspect of a film which we both love.
Nerds to the par of ten, driven by Summerisle's orchestrated plan.
The funniest things happen to you when you actually get off your rump and
go and do something......
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2004 livingstonemusic.net.
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