The Wicker Man 50th Anniversary (Vintage Classics) [2023] [Region A & B & C]

Product Information

All three versions of the film; The Final Cut, The Director’s Cut and The Theatrical Cut, have been painstakingly restored and will be released in an exclusive 5-disc Collector’s Edition as well as a 4-disc Steelbook version. The Final Cut will also be available on Digital the same day. Christopher Lee co-stars as cult leader Lord Summerisle. Having made a career out of bringing his signature gravitas to everything from Dracula and James Bond to Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, the more obvious choice may have been to cast him as Howie. Broadening his horizons with a more nuanced character following his Hammer Horror run, his Summerisle proves to be the perfect counterpart to Woodward’s Howie. Both characters have the same conviction in their respective faiths, but their resolve manifests in opposing ways. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Studiocanal are proud to release a newly restored 4K version of the 2011 Final Cut of the film. The film tells the chilling story of a puritan Police Sergeant who arrives on a remote Scottish Island in search of a missing girl only to find the Pagan locals claiming she never existed. I was finally told, when I was working in a play in Glasgow that it was a Glaswegian stripper,” she says now. “And I would say that if you look at the movements, it’s not a normal girl who’s just moving like that. She is working that wall and swinging that thing everywhere. So it was a stripper, I am pretty certain. I like my bottom better, but I didn’t want you to see it, so therefore, we went with her bottom.”

A letter brings self-righteous police sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward, Breaker Morant) to a remote Scottish island looking for Rowan Morrison (Geraldine Cowper), a beautiful young girl who has disappeared without a trace. Howie promptly meets May Morrison (Irene Sunters, A Sense of Freedom), a local post office worker who mailed the letter to the mainland, but is told that Rowan never lived on the island and that her only daughter is Myrtle (Jennifer Martin).

The Wicker Man 4K Extras

Lionsgate’s 4K disc presents the restoration of the film’s “final cut” as approved by Rob Hardy in 2013, and a pre-film disclaimer notes that the restoration had to rely on 35mm positives for the material excised from the original theatrical release. The discrepancy in image quality between these scenes and those restored straight from the negative are noticeable, but the overall image is warm and filmic, with even grain distribution and stable color balance across all footage. The original 2.0 audio ably creates an enveloping mix of ambient nature sounds, folk melodies, and dialogue with no discernible issues and a clear presentation of each element. Extras

Director Robin Hardy and writer Anthony Shaffer ( Frenzy) waste little time trying to fool the viewer into believing that nothing is amiss in the remote community, instead utilizing the time to build tension and intrigue. Howie is immediately ostracized as an outsider and the divide widens as the film progresses, but the us-vs.-them mentality goes both ways. Blood sacrifices notwithstanding, the free-spirited islanders often come across as more sympathetic than the close-minded Howie.Killer Animatronics– Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy transform from cute and cuddly into creepy and killer through a combination of costumed performers and cutting-edge puppetry. The cast is great. Woodward is very convincing as the perplexed sergeant who comes to realize that no one on the island can be trusted. Lee looks and sounds appropriately authoritative. Britt Ekland and Ingrid Pitt, two classic European beauties, also have small but memorable roles in the film. Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. StudioCanal handled the 4K restoration, presented with Dolby Vision/HDR and LPCM mono audio. The majority of the film was sourced from the original 35mm negative, while other footage was scanned from a second-generation 35mm intermediate positive, due to irreparable damage to the negative, and 35mm prints, the only known sources for select sequences. Over 500 hours was dedicated to the color grading and restoration. Discrepancies in quality among the sources are perceivable but not distracting. Shattering all-time records at the box-office, Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, the haunting new horror film based on the video game series created by Scott Cawthon, will be available with never-before-seen bonus content on Digital November 28, 2023, and 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on December 12, 2023, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.