Inside The Wicker Man


Book Description

Inside The Wicker Man is a treat for all cinemagoers, exhaustively researched and achieving a near-perfect balance between history, trivia and serious analysis. Allan Brown describes the filming and distribution of the cult masterpiece as a 'textbook example of How Things Should Never Be Done'. The omens were bad from the start, and proceeded to get much, much worse, with fake blossom on trees to simulate spring, actors chomping on ice-cubes to prevent their breath showing on film, and verbal and physical confrontations involving both cast and crew. The studio hated it and hardly bothered to distribute it, but today it finds favour with critics and fans alike, as a serious - if flawed - piece of cinema. Brown expertly guides readers through the film's convoluted history, attempting along the way to explain its enduring fascination, and providing interviews with the key figures - many of whom still have an axe to grind, and some of whom still harbour plans for a sequel.




Constructing The Wicker Man


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Ritual


Book Description

75 years since its first release, a true modern rarity and historical keystone in occult fiction and cinematic pop culture returns. Shrouded in the same brand of mystery and contradiction that forms its tangled plot, Ritual is commonly recognised by cult cinema fanatics as the original seed that spawned the towering movie enigma, The Wicker Man. A police officer is requested to investigate the presumed murder of a child in an obscure rural village. During his short stay, he is subjected to a spectacle of psychological trickery, sexual seduction and ancient practices and rituals.




Inside the Wicker Man


Book Description




The Wicker Man


Book Description

Many fans of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) may know that this classic is considered a fine sample of folk horror. Few will consider that it’s also a prime example of holiday horror. Holiday horror draws its energy from the featured festive day, here May Day. Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward), a “Christian copper,” is lured to the remote Scottish island Summerisle where, hidden from the eyes of all, a thriving Celtic, pagan religion holds sway. His arrival at the start of the May Day celebration is no accident. The clash between religions, fought on the landscape of the holiday, drives the story to its famous conclusion. In this Devil’s Advocate, Steve A. Wiggins delineates what holiday horror is and surveys various aspects of “the Citizen Kane of horror movies” that utilize the holiday. Beginning with a brief overview of Beltane and how May Day has been celebrated, this study considers the role of sexuality and fertility in the film. Conflicting with Howie’s Christian principles, this leads to an exploration of his theology as contrasted with that of Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) and his tenants. Such differences in belief make the fiery ending practically inevitable.




Folk Horror


Book Description

Interest in the ancient, the occult, and the "wyrd" is on the rise. The furrows of Robin Hardy (The Wicker Man), Piers Haggard (Blood on Satan's Claw), and Michael Reeves (Witchfinder General) have arisen again, most notably in the films of Ben Wheatley (Kill List), as has the Spirit of Dark of Lonely Water, Juganets, cursed Saxon crowns, spaceships hidden under ancient barrows, owls and flowers, time-warping stone circles, wicker men, the goat of Mendes, and malicious stone tapes. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful And Things Strange charts the summoning of these esoteric arts within the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, using theories of psychogeography, hauntology, and topography to delve into the genre's output in film, television, and multimedia as its "sacred demon of ungovernableness" rises yet again in the twenty-first century.




I Am An Artist


Book Description

Meet the boy who can't stop creating art! He loves colours, shapes, textures and EVERYTHING inspires him: his socks, the contents of the fridge, even his cat gets a new coat (of paint!). But there's just one problem: his mum isn't quite so enthusiastic. In fact, she seems a little cross! But this boy has a plan to make his mum smile. He's about to create his finest piece yet and on a very grand scale . . . Funny, irreverent and perfect for creative children and adults, I Am An Artist by Marta Altés is a sharp, silly, fabulous book which shows that art is EVERYWHERE!




Cinematic countrysides


Book Description

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the 'spatialities of cinema' across the social sciences and humanities, yet to date critical inquiry has tended to explore this issue as a question of the 'city' and the 'urban'. For the first time, leading scholars in geography, film and cultural studies have been drawn together to explore the multiple ways in ideas of cinema and countryside are co-produced: how 'film makes rural' and 'rural makes film'. From the expanse of the American great west to the mountainous landscapes of North Korea, Cinematic Countrysides draws on a range of popular and alternative film genres to demonstrate how film texts come to prefigure expectations of rural social space, and how these representations come to shape, and be shaped by, the material and embodied circumstances of 'lived' rural experience. At the heart of this volume's varied apprehensions of the 'cinematic countryside' is a concern to argue that ideas of rurality in film are central to wider questions of 'modernity' and 'tradition', 'self' and 'other', 'nationhood' and 'globalisation', and crucially, ones that are central to an account of the 'cinematic city'.




The Twisted Ones


Book Description

When a young woman clears out her deceased grandmother’s home in rural North Carolina, she finds long-hidden secrets about a strange colony of beings in the woods in this chilling novel that reads like The Blair Witch Project meets The Andy Griffith Show. When Mouse’s dad asks her to clean out her dead grandmother's house, she says yes. After all, how bad could it be? Answer: pretty bad. Grandma was a hoarder, and her house is stuffed with useless rubbish. That would be horrific enough, but there’s more—Mouse stumbles across her step-grandfather’s journal, which at first seems to be filled with nonsensical rants…until Mouse encounters some of the terrifying things he described for herself. Alone in the woods with her dog, Mouse finds herself face to face with a series of impossible terrors—because sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real, and they’re looking for you. And if she doesn’t face them head on, she might not survive to tell the tale. From Hugo Award–winning author Ursula Vernon, writing as T. Kingfisher, The Twisted Ones is a gripping, terrifying tale bound to keep you up all night—from both fear and anticipation of what happens next.




The Organic Artist


Book Description

This is an art book which highlights the possibility of using natural, organic materials as art supplies and inspiration.