Reality and fiction sometimes sympathize.
At the cinema The mimbre man (1973), a modest and funny police officer arrives by seaplane on a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. In Summerisle you will find a community of eccentric vecinos present all over the world and operating as a pagan sect (throughout the 70s), led by a stylish lord, who likes to cross-dress to celebrate the spring harvest. There are animal costumes, dances toplessvarious witches, false clue games… The final round culminates with the gigantic man of the title as a llama.
In reality, the functioning of The mimbre man I had a place on the Scottish coast, but in the autumn of 1972 – half-naked actresses with cold walls and flowers hanging from fruit trees – where landed a diverse crew, from London, led by an exuberant and irascible publicist, Robin Hardy (Wimbledon, 1929-2016), who was seeking artistic credibility by making his first film in 43 years. It was written with his partner at the agency, Toni Schaffer, who triumphed with the work The Huella and the scenario FrenzyHitchcock’s film. They were intimate, thinking about the movie while drinking bottles of whiskey one afternoon on a family vacation, but after the movie they stopped talking forever.
Throughout the project, there were acts of adultery, a heart attack and a broken marriage, lots of reprimands, a bankruptcy… There were also great anecdotes, like that of Swedish actress Britt Ekland, a Bond girl who played a voluptuous poseur, dissatisfied with her double behind (she was one of the stripper who went to Glasgow), that the director’s film was accidentally destroyed to open a road, which Christopher Lee, who had bought the rights to the book on which the screenplay was based, always said Lord Summerisle was his best interpretation. The final turning point: after going unnoticed and failing immediately after its debut, The mimbre man was later named “el Citizen Kane of horror cinema.
The film, which can be released in Spain on Filmin (described as “Tim Burton’s favorite horror title”), continues to be the liberating claim of a “radical thinker”: “The sum of a detective story, a white porn film and a musical, with a horror ending (…) the film lasted 50 years”. Meals are part of the book Children of the Wicker Man, recently published in English put History Press (Hijos de El hombre de mimbre, with the subtitle The true story behind one of the most exceptional films ever made). It was written by Dominic and Justin Hardy (65 and 61), two of his own children who were directors with six different women.
Dominic is a university professor in Montreal, specializing in History of graphic satire; His younger brother Justin makes historical documentaries for the BBC and ARTE. By video call, Dominic confirmed that the validity of the wickermania It is because of this that the film contains more valid messages about Christianity and spirituality, about human intervention in the environment, about sexuality and themes weird… “It’s a film of ideas, but it’s also a lot of fun,” he says.
The origin of the new book adds a new onion cover to the incredible story of this cult work. Such empathy: in 2021, the señora who bought one of the houses in the seventies where Caroline Hardy (Justin’s mother) peregrinó, after being abandoned by the director, decided to take advantage of the confinement and clean the bottom of the attic. In a corner, I found six bags of documents.
Inside were letters between Robin Hardy and Tony Schaffer, and both with Christopher Lee; scripts with corrections, filming photos, bank statements, the (disastrous) advertising agency accounts they shared, minutes of meetings with the film’s producers… A “documentation”, the Hardy brothers explain in the book, “which sheds light on what, in short, can only be described as self-inflicted chaos, a chaos through which an important creative project managed to open itself up to all odds”.
All thanks to the kindness of a stranger who, instead of taking out the bags, sent a letter about his Halloween to Justin, who, out of nowhere, called his second brother Dominic. The resulting book (which follows a documentary released in 2023) is a conversation between them and their “dad-shared visions.”
Dominic says via video call: “I could be resentful because I abandoned my mother when I was a year old, but I always saw her as a golden light and sought to have an existential divide, it was only after her death that I saw her darkness… Justin, however, was more openly antagonistic.” Justin explains it this way in the book: “(My father) and the film occupy the same space in my mind: both played with my family.”
Caroline, Justin’s mother, married to the director in the early 70s, suffered his heart attack during pre-production, the bankruptcy of his advertising agency, the “problematic” operation and the “nightmare editing”. All this time, in addition to moral support (it was she who told Schaffer that she had told her convalescing husband “something to do”), Caroline, who had family money, covered the expenses. The book claims his role as executive producer Actually of the film, who ruined herself by financing her husband. “In looking for our priest, we find our mothers,” said Dominic, “those women who sacrificed themselves at the altar of The mimbre man.”
When the film, boycotted, without promotion by its own producer, British Lion, failed loudly, Hardy abandoned Caroline, with two young children, a daughter and a serious alcoholism problem. She sold the family home; el, who had given up 10% of them royalty Your money to fund the race, should it succeed in New York. Family legend has it that he left him to sleep on a bench in Central Park.
The film’s success lasted five years. Poorly sold to American distributors, it circulated in the home cinema circuits in the USA. Christopher Lee and Hardy explored every possible forum and managed to project themselves into San Francisco’s gay rooms and university circles. Only then, according to the old men, did it begin to be understood as something more than an extravagant horror film. “Explaining the historical context that led to its failure and subsequent success” was also one of the motivations for writing the book, Dominic explains.
The mimbre man It thus acquired the cult status it enjoys today: in the 90s, it was broadcast every New Year on British Channel 4, it continues to be considered a pioneer of folk horror and it is a classic of genre festivals; inspired successes such as Midday (2019) and yours remake (unque no el mejor) in 2006 directed by Neil LaBute and with Nicolas Cage (the original director never tasted anything).
Hardy, who had renounced his rights, never struggled with this late success, even though he lived with its echoes for 86 years. I wrote a novel based on Schaffer’s screenplay, which proved a success in the genre and with some sequels to the story, later. The mimbre man giving lectures around the world until his death… But he never raised his head.
“I couldn’t make something like this film,” Dominic says, recalling that other British directors who started then (Mike Leigh, Ken Loach) relied on stable teams and departments with those always rehearsing. “My father fought with everyone, even though he had managed to bring the new team together… But he was obsessed with his own success, he was very proud… And the relationship with Schaffer… was one of enormous, fiercely individualistic egos, who had gone their separate ways ever since… The mimbre man It was their first film, but they had been partners and friends for years, in reality it was their last collaboration, their farewell. “Creativity opens up, even in the most adverse circumstances.”
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