Help please with movie id...

[Eirik]

I have a very vague recollection of a movie from probably late 1960s-early 1970s about some commune or something with young people who enjoy free love and dancing in flower gardens and being "groovey" and eveything.  Of course there's a darkside.  A stuffy old guy enters their world (I forget how/why) and winds up getting trapped inside a giant wooden statue and burned alive while the flower children dance around the fire.  The last scene is him singing church hymns as he burns.

Anyone?

[Dubal]

Ahh the movie your thinking of  is The Wicker Man.  Not a bad movie at all.  :)

[daveblackeye15]

I had a feeling it was the Wicker Man...even though I've never seen it before.

[peter johnson]

I'd try again -- what the description sounds like is a knock-off of The Wicker Man, not the film itself.
The Wicker Man had ne'er a hippie in sight that I recall, nor did the Police Constable sing hymns as Christopher Lee, as Lord SummerIsle -- far too old and dignified to be mistaken for a hippie --, condemned him to burn within the effigy, did he?
There was a Morris Dance procession before the burning, but I don't see how anyone's memory could turn that into hippies, as it was a highly ritualised sequence, with a Bearded Lady, a Hobbie Horse, etc. etc.
I don't know the actual film in question, but I don't think it is The Wicker Man.
peter johnson/denny crane

[Menard]

No, but I believe he did pray when the Wicker Man was set ablaze. As for the allusion to flower children, many of them were dressed in robes and even wearing flowers and dancing about while some were playing instruments. I believe (correct me if I am wrong) that Christopher Lee's character was dressed in a female role during the fertility festival.

Aside from that, I found THE WICKER MAN to be absolutely hilarious.

[Gerry]

Definitely THE WICKER MAN.

[Eirik]

I think you guys nailed it.  Don't worry about my recollections being too precise - I must have seen this on TV in 1977 or 1978 (which would have made me 6 or 7 years old), so who knows where I was getting the hippies from?  Just another one I want to track down as my son approaches the age I was when I saw it (insert malevolent laughter).

[peter johnson]

Yes, Christopher Lee was The Bearded Lady, in a dress,  evocative of some old Celtic deity, as are all the members of the full Morris procession.
I suppose you could get "flower children" out of the memory of that, but it's a stretch.  I suppose we have to go for Wicker Man, then, given the dearth of films of folk being roasted in wooden effigies.
The only part I found corny in that was the "fertility dance" where the girl is trying to evoke Sex Majick through the walls of the pub where our cop (Richard Widmark?) is staying.  Otherwise, a creepy good time.  I recall him taking Lee/Lord SummerIsle to task while starting to burn, about what will he do next if the spell doesn't work?  Isn't he, Lee, the next likely candidate?  Lee looks upset, but I'd spaced the hymn singing or praying.
Really need to see it again.
I suppose Eirik's memory could be creating the part about the "commune" and "hippies" & he could be mistaking the Wiccan villagers for "flower children", but there were vein-shot old grannie ladies and wheezy grey granddads in there as well -- typical Scottish village, really -- which makes the memory seem either wrong or very highly selective if we still want to call it Wicker Man.  
I'd like to hear back from Eirik on this after he's seen it & if this really is what he's remembering.
peter johnson/denny crane

[Eirik]

Haven't found a copy yet, but I just read an on-line review that talks about a scene where two people look out a window and see children jumping naked through a fire.  One is shocked that they are naed and the other responds that of course they are because it would be too dangerous to jump through a fire with clothes on.

That exchange is definitely from the movie I was remembering - I almost wrote about it in my initial question.

When you're 6 years old and it's 1977 and your dad is in the army, EVERYBODY on TV looks like a hippie!

:)

[Menard]

Since he said he had seen it on TV around 1977, I would like to know what TV station played it. It seems as though it would have to be cut quite a bit to have been shown on TV, especially in 1977. Imagine having to explain the significance of the Maypole to a six year old, let alone anything else in the movie. I sure would have been one happy six year old if my parents had let me watch something like THE WICKER MAN.

The policeman was played by Edward Woodward (THE EQUALIZER).

[peter johnson]

Well, I'm blowed, as me mither used to say --
O-O-kay!, then . . . someone can have a memory like that of an old film, and someone else can recognize it immediately, and others of us (me) are left in the lurch, going:  "Oh, no . . . Never that film, then . . . I mean, it were never that'un . . . ", etc.
I've got a wacky idea:  Why don't all of us here go & rewatch The Wicker Man at some point in the near future & then get back on the board here & talk about it?  I can tell by my own vague posts that it's been awhile for me, and I remember this at the time as being a quite GOOD example of the Hammer lexicon.
I remember vividly seeing the palm trees of SummerIsle & thinking:  "What!?  In Scotland!?  Never!!"  & then discovering later that, yes, because of the Gulf Stream, some species of palm trees are quite successful in the Outer Hebrides Islands of Scotland, so this part, at least, is quite factual.
In later years, I became friends with any number of people who pursue Wicca and Morris Dancing as avocations & ways of Being, and was always assured that, for its time, The Wicker Man got a lot of the ritual stuff quite correct.
And, of course, anything at all with Christopher Lee is to be admired, if for no other reason than that The Thing In Question contains him.
Humbly Yours
peter johnson/denny crane

[peter johnson]

And Oh:
I did forget to thank Eirik for following the correspondence & actually bothering to answer, per request.
Really, thankyou very much.  A number of threads here that were interesting have died in the past because some folk never bothered to follow up on initial input.
And Menard:  Really?  Edward "Morse" Woodard was the detective?  Sheebozh, but I DO have to watch that again -- okay, I guess my memory must be of Richard Widmark in To The Devil a Daugher --
or maybe I just need my pills . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

[Mr_Vindictive]

Although it seems to be well established on this thread, yes the movie is Wicker Man.

This is one of those films that I too saw many years ago and keep meaning to pick it up on DVD.  I finally had a chance at a local video store that was selling the Wooden Box set for 35.00 and I passed it up at the time.  Now I'm kicking myself for not throwing down the cash.

[peter johnson]

Yeah, I need my pills --
The Wicker Man is huge over in England, much like Dawn of the Dead or Evil Dead over here -- eg.  It has a rabid cult following.  
The release of the new "golden" edition of the film on DVD was cause for much rejoicing -- and then they ate Robin's minstrels . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

[Eirik]

"I sure would have been one happy six year old if my parents had let me watch something like THE WICKER MAN."

Yeah, my folks were extremely lenient about what I watched on TV.  They never made a big deal about it, I took it as make believe, and grew up fairly well adjusted.  Want to increase a kid's unholy enfatuation with violence?  Just forbid it and get all wrapped around the axle about it.  I had one friend whose parents forbid him to have "war toys" and scolded him when he mad a gun out of his finger.  He was the kid who ripped the wings off butterflies and threw rocks at dogs.

Of course some things scarred me.  They took me to see Jaws in the theater  (1975? 76?) and I still have problems in water deeper than my knees.  They also took me to see Deadly Spawn when I was 11 or so.  That kept me up for a few nights.  Looking back, I must have not noticed the looks they got from people bringing me and my younger siblings into the theater for Deadly Spawn...