re: Wicker Man

[Chris Williams <chrisw@wwa.com>]

> That's REALLY a coincidence!  I never read the book "Castaway", is it
> actually any good? Wasn't it something of a bestseller?

   I enjoyed it quite a bit. The style is very pedestrian - it reads
like the diary it is. But it has great credibility. If you like this
sort of "personal story", it's a good one. And the events on the island
were quite a bit more complex than those in the film.

> I've seen the Wicker Man a few times over the past ten years as it 
> is one of a friend's favourite Halloween Evening Video Scare 
> selections . . . I got a start about the fourth time I saw it 
> when I realized that the Innkeeper was Lindsay Kemp.
  
   It raised worthwhile questions. For instance...if everyone agrees 
on something, is it moral?

> For those who haven't seen it, if you like campy scare movies, 
> it's a good mix of ridiculously funny (those songs!) and creepy, 
> and available on video.

   Back in the bad old days of home video, "The Wicker Man" was
one of the few videos available. Hollywood was afraid to release
any of their films...so only the ones that they didn't consider 
valuable were released. Not too many people had VCRs early on 
either, and I was constantly dragging it to different people's 
houses. One time I showed "The Wicker Man" to a group of "Wiccans"
who *loved* the songs.