Reception
The Wicker Man had moderate success and won first prize in the 1974 Festival of Fantastic Films in Paris, but largely slipped into obscurity. In 1977 the American film magazine Cinefantastique devoted a commemorative issue to the film, asserting that the film is "the Citizen Kane of horror movies" – an oft-quoted phrase attributed to this issue.
During 2003 the Crichton Campus of the University of Glasgow in Dumfries and Galloway hosted a three-day conference on The Wicker Man. The conference led to two collections of articles about the film.
During 2006, The Wicker Man ranked 45th on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
Wicker Man actress Britt Ekland appeared on the British TV show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on BBC1 on February 1, 2008. Ross described the movie as one of his "all-time favourites", and presented the infamous "wall slapping" scene from the film. Britt explained that she had refused to dance fully nude in the scene because she recently learned she was pregnant; Scottish housewife Jane Jackson appeared as a body double.
Decades after its release, the film still receives positive reviews from critics and is considered one of the best films of 1973. The film currently holds a 89% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. In 2008, The Wicker Man was ranked by Empire Magazine as 485th of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.
In his 2010 BBC documentary series A History of Horror, writer and actor Mark Gatiss referred to the film as a prime example of a short-lived sub-genre he called "folk horror", grouping it with 1968's Witchfinder General and 1971's Blood on Satan's Claw.
Read more about this topic: The Wicker Man (1973 film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
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“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
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