I always get excited about seeing a classic movie for the first time. A few years ago I was pumped when me and a friend of mine finally picked up The Godfather to watch for the first time… and I was blown away by it’s pure brilliance and shocked at how much cinema has been influenced by it (you just can’t appreciate that until you’ve seen it for yourself). Lawrence of Arabia was the same sort of thing for me too. Damn, the list goes on and on.
So the other day I finally sat down to watch the original “The Wicker Man“. Man I’ve heard so much about this movie… about how it’s a horror classic, about how brilliant it is… about how eerie it is… yadda yadda yadda. So all excited I put the dvd in… and then proceeded for wait for an hour and a half for anything interesting to happen… then the credits rolled.
I mean holy crap… that was one of the most boring snooze fests I’ve ever seen in my life. Not once did I care about the little girl, not once did I feel a sense of mystery or eeriness, not once did I feel “shocked” or frightened or even nervous. Whheeeee… singing dancing naked ladies. Whoopie freaking do.
And look, please don’t hit me with the “You have to understand in it in the context of it’s time” argument. I understand that. But a great film is a great film and withstands the test of time. Like The Godfather or Citizen Cane or Sparticus or Ben Hur. Great stories transcend time and can overcome cultural and era changes. The Wicker Man didn’t do that… at least not for me. I mean, seeing Christopher Lee with that crazy hair was almost worth watching the movie for… but not quite enough.
The film was just straight up boring. They set up the premise right away (which is something I appreciate) but they never really move on from there. A police officer comes to an isolated island to investigate reports of a missing little girl… only everyone on the island claims to know nothing about such a girl. Good idea to start with… but as I said nothing really transpires after that until the big anti-climactic finish.
So help me out. Am I the only one here who thinks The Wicker Man is horribly overrated? If you’re one of the people who appreciates it, what is it that I missed?
