The Wicker Man 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray [UK Import]

We’ve covered The Wicker Man many times over at High-Def Digest, Matt Hartman checked out Imprint Films’ Limited Edition hardbox release just last year! I’ll let him give us the rundown on this classic:

"Police Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) is a good man. A righteous man, he upholds the law to the letter and never misses church and aims to be a clean family man abstaining from relations with his bride to be until their wedding night. When a mysterious letter arrives at his station describing the murder of a little girl on a remote island village, Howie immediately flies out to investigate. But upon his arrival, he’s not as shocked by the prospect of Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) and an entire village covering up the murder of a young girl but the discovery they’ve entirely abandoned their Christian heritage for sexually-charged pagan ideology and a darker more sinister purpose.

Loosely based on David Pinner’s novel “The Ritual,” The Wicker Man is a deceptive horror film in that it’s not altogether horrific. With the rise of Hammer and the new wave of ghastly modern horror films, Robin Hardy’s cult classic is an outlier. It works by steadily building tension and suspense without depending on shock, gore, or easy jump scares. In fact, much of the film is a meditation about cultural understanding with the strong sturdy Christian Howie unable to grasp how anyone could abandon the faith for an orgy of paganism. The film even works as a look at The Troubles of Northern Ireland which started in the late 60s about a group of people wishing to worship in their own way but are being imposed upon by the autocratic religious majority. And while this film may feel at times like it’s not really going anywhere, it’s building towards a grand and shocking final act.

It’s the final half-hour that makes this haunting piece of folk horror stick. If Hardy’s direction or Anthony Shaffer’s screenplay hadn’t landed, this film would probably only be remembered as an oddity in Christopher Lee’s extensive catalog of appearances. And while I love his time as Dracula and his time as Captain America’s most diabolical foe, I still look to his time as Lord Summerisle as one of his creepiest roles. Perhaps it’s because I saw this film as an impressionable teenager that I am initially very distrustful of overly friendly and outgoing people. Lee’s Summerisle is charming, debonair, and openly inviting. Why wouldn’t you trust him? Well, what happens during the last act of the film is a pretty damn good reason!

Now for a more recent example of a similar film but not the same would be the excellent Midsommar. Both The Wicker Man and Midsommar are very similar and cover familiar ground about an outsider invited to observe an odd culture whose ways may seem shocking with again a similar ending, but that’s where the similarities end in my opinion. The two films go about their dark deeds with a very different approach with The Wicker Man being far more sinister, dark, and quite frankly shocking. As much as I loved Midsommar my knock against it is that it plays its best shock cards early and frequently so that by the time the end rolls it may be emotionally satisfying but it’s not surprising. Comparatively, you wouldn’t think Christopher Lee leading a merry band of people in a rousing chorus of “Summer Is A-Cumen In” to be a terrifying experience but it in fact very much is."

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD  

Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ! StudioCanal really put in some incredible work with this release, in terms of packaging. All contents are housed in a rigid hardbox with a magnetic lid that folds out into a pop-up rendering of the famous Wicker Man figure. Underneath the pop-up image lies two mini fold-out posters with new and vintage artwork, a collector’s booklet with critical writing, interviews and original press art reproductions, plus a set of art cards. The five discs are house in a three-fold digipack. Both 4K discs are UHD100s, with both standard Blu-rays presented as Region B-locked BD50s. An audio CD is included in the digipack as well.

NOTE: At the moment we don't have 4K-sourced images available. As soon as we can we'll circle back and add some new pics and hopefully a video sample too.

Alright, before we get into the nitty gritty, I want to include all the restoration title cards introduced with each cut.

The Final Cut

“This restoration was scanned in 4K by Silver Salt Restoration UK, from the original 35mm negative. A second generation 35mm intermediate positive, produced in 1973, was used to replace a small section with unrepairable damage in the original negative.

The additional footage is sourced from 35mm prints, which are the only known sources for this material.

Colour grading and restoration were completed by Silver Salt Restoration UK who dedicated over 500 hours to fix physical damage to the 35mm negative, manually clean and remove dirt, sparkle and scratches.

The colour grade used was previously approved by Robin Hardy and replicated here.

This project is brought to you by STUDIOCANAL and supervised by Jahanzeb Hayat.”

The Final Cut was first produced back in 2013 by StudioCanal and under the close supervision of Robin Hardy after a hunt and subsequent discovery of a 92-minute 35mm print at the Harvard Film Archive. Since no print of the original edit of the film exists, this 35mm print was used to complete Hardy’s vision. This time around, StudioCanal has used the original 35mm negative as the basis, plus a second generation intermediate positive for the sections Hardy put back in during the original restoration of The Final Cut.

Down to business. As you may remember, The Final Cut has more than a few spots where visual fidelity drops incredibly because of the various sub-OCN film sources used to produce the restoration. It’s most evident in the short pre-island sequence in the beginning. While that footage looks pretty bad, with blooming and crush abound with a much thicker grain field, it looks considerably better than the 2013 restoration of The Final Cut. Stability has improved for those sections and the Dolby Vision HDR definitely makes them look as best as possible.

As for the sections sourced directly from the 35mm negative, get ready for a gorgeous transfer that’ll inspire you to throw yourself into the fire with Sergeant Howie! Colors look immaculate, with sequences like “The Landlord’s Daughter” sing-a-long looking cleaner than ever before. Awash with a healthy layer of grain, that cliffside finale astounds with the strong blue of the sky, those handmade costumes with worn colors and thick black smoke shooting into the sky like an inevitability. The wider color space and HEVC encoding bring the most out of the nighttime sequences as well. Dolby Vision HDR is applied lightly, avoiding rosy tones and added noise during the sub-OCN sections. This is without a doubt the best the film has ever looked at home. I cannot imagine it getting better given the print materials available.

Director’s Cut

“This restoration was scanned in 4K by Silver Salt Restoration UK, from the original 35mm negative. A second generation 35mm intermediate positive, produced in 1973, was used to replace a small section with unrepairable damage in the original negative.

The additional footage is sourced from a previous video transfer, as no film source, despite extensive searching, can be sourced for these segments.

Colour grading and restoration were completed by Silver Salt Restoration UK who dedicated over 500 hours to fix physical damage to the 35mm negative, manually clean and remove dirt, sparkle and scratches. 

The colour grade used was previously approved by Robin Hardy and replicated here.

This project is brought to you by STUDIOCANAL and supervised by Jahanzeb Hayat.”

Surprise! The Director’s Cut is my preferred cut of The Wicker Man, thus it was the one I actually spent the most time with during this review. I adore the pre-island stuff on the homeland with Sergeant Howie being a stern, devout Catholic who nobody really likes in his department. Everything before the island is sourced from a video transfer and looks really rough, but again looks much more stable than previous transfers of this cut. The extended Britt Ekland dance is sourced from the second generation intermediate and the video transfer, and as such does look more than a bit rough, though I’m more than happy that this cut exists period.

Theatrical Cut

“This restoration was scanned in 4K by Silver Salt Restoration UK, from the original 35mm negative. A second generation 35mm intermediate positive, produced in 1973, was used to replace a small section with unrepairable damage in the original negative. 

Colour grading and restoration were completed by Silver Salt Restoration UK who dedicated over 500 hours to fix physical damage to the 35mm negative, manually clean and remove dirt, sparkle and scratches.

The colour grade used was previously approved by Robin Hardy and replicated here.

This project is brought to you by STUDIOCANAL and supervised by Jahanzeb Hayat.”

Nothing to add here, as all the footage here is featured in The Final Cut.

Each cut gets the same English 2.0 LPCM and it doesn’t sound any different from previous presentations, though it’s worth noting that the audio quality does drop depending on if original audio is available for the sections being shown, such as the pre-island sequences in two of the cuts suffering from a tin-eared source. Overall, however, dialogue and music are well distributed, plus bass is appreciable and deep when it matters. This is a great presentation.

Now, special features, my dear god. StudioCanal really rolled out the red carpet for this new edition, as the newly produced supplements are bound to impress fans of the film. There’s an entire feature with actor Tim Plester reciting the original Lord Summerisle speech from the ending of the film that was cut. The speech was discovered recently by Robin Hardy’s son in his father’s original leather-bound shooting script for the film. The speech itself is a bit unneeded and I’m glad it was cut, but it features Lord Summerisle chewing on some more delicious dialogue as Howie realizes how screwed he is.

Another great new special feature is Robin Hardy’s son revisiting the original shooting locations. You can tell that The Wicker Man was much more than just a movie, but something that has followed Hardy’s son for so much of his life. To reflect on his father’s work is enriching, and I’m glad it was included here. There’s a ton of archival features included from previous releases. You’ll spend hours watching it all.

Disc 1: 4K Blu-ray of The Final Cut

• Revisiting the locations of The Wicker Man (HD 11:50)
• The Wicker Man at 50 (HD 10:46)
• Robin Hardy’s Script – The Lost Ending (HD 10:46)
• Britt Ekland Interview (HD 10:23)
• Stills Gallery (HD 1:04)
• Wicker Man Enigma (SD 34:35)
• Burnt Offering: The Cult of The Wicker Man (SD 49:05)
• Worshipping The Wicker Man (HD 22:40)
• The Music of The Wicker Man (HD 15:28)
• Interview with Robin Hardy (2013) (HD 16:21)
• Interview with Robin Hardy and Christopher Lee (1979) (SD 24:52)
• New restoration trailer (HD 1:51)
• Theatrical trailer (SD 2:11) 

Disc 2: 4K Blu-ray of Director’s Cut and Theatrical Cut

• Audio commentary with Mark Kermode, Robin Hardy, Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee (Director’s Cut only)
• Making of the Commentary (SD 15:51)

Disc 3: Standard Blu-ray of The Final Cut

• Revisiting the locations of The Wicker Man (HD 11:50)
• The Wicker Man at 50 (HD 10:46)
• Robin Hardy’s Script – The Lost Ending (HD 10:46)
• Britt Ekland Interview (HD 10:23)
• Stills Gallery (HD 1:04)
• Wicker Man Enigma (SD 34:35)
• Burnt Offering: The Cult of The Wicker Man (SD 49:05)
• Worshipping The Wicker Man (HD 22:40)
• The Music of The Wicker Man (HD 15:28)
• Interview with Robin Hardy (2013) (HD 16:21)
• Interview with Robin Hardy and Christopher Lee (1979) (SD 24:52)
• New restoration trailer (HD 1:51)
• Theatrical trailer (SD 2:11)

Disc 4: Standard Blu-ray of Director's Cut and Theatrical Cut

• Audio commentary with Mark Kermode, Robin Hardy, Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee (Director’s Cut only)
• Making of the Commentary (SD 15:51)

Disc 5: Audio CD of Katy J Pearson & Friends Present Songs from The Wicker Man

Over 500 hours went into the new restorations of all three cuts of The Wicker Man, and you can tell that immediately upon viewing the gorgeous new 4K transfers presented in StudioCanal’s new five-disc limited edition 4K Ultra HD release of the film. All cuts are included, of course, and there’s a massive supplements package to chew through. Praise Lord Summerisle, this is a Must-Own release!

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