On 4K Ultra HD - David Hare is not taken with THE WICKER MAN (Robin Hardy, UK, 1973)

 For reasons that now completely escape me I stupidly bought the new StudioCanal UHD disc of that much touted Brit “cult film' The Wicker Man.

Maybe it’s my current nausea at horrible world events but I have not had a more vacant viewing of something so bad it actually confounded any understanding of why in God’s name (as it were) it was ever made.

For starters the director, Robin Hardy, is a figure whose movie career never took off. After watching this I know why. Lifeless, pointless arranging of poorly lit and ineptly staged shots with not one sequence displaying any dynamic or visual meaning. Direction of actors that through sheer incompetence reduces stalwarts like Edward Woodward and Britt Ekland to distilled parodies of themselves through multiple layers of strained infantile narcissism. 

If you think Woodward’s screwed up face, so tight to express his clenched sphincter so it looks like he hasn’t been able to shit for a month, is great acting, this is your picture.

Even the far too infrequent tits and ass moments are derisorily short. Boobies shake until they’re suddenly overwhelmed by the hideous tat decor that looks like it came out of the crummy antique shop David Hemmings stops to visit in Blow Up.  

But if the general hetero campery of a bunch of faux Gauls/Druids singing and dancing in costume party drag lights your joint, this is probably for you.