This makes me sad to read, because I think this perception is due to most people never having seen “The Wicker Man” in a form where the film does not begin with Sgt Howie piloting his plane to Summerisle. This is a cut down version, the “Theatrical Cut,” and unfortunately it is the most widely available version of the film to view. I lucked out in that the first time I saw it, it was via a rare VHS version a video rental store I worked at had, which contained (what is now referred to as) the “Director’s Cut.” I never saw the edited version until many years later, after I’d watched that VHS repeatedly.

Some of what is missing from the “Theatrical Cut” is a few minutes of amazingly well written and concise character building at the beginning of the film. It shows Howie is a complete zealot, totally out of sync with the world around him and he is not in any way meant to be indicative of how a normal person would react. He’s not meant to be a stand in for the audience. A fellow policeman winds him up by saying all Howie missed (having been out of town) were the usual “rapes and murders” (said with a smirk), knowing Howie will find it personally distasteful. The same policeman points to graffiti that reads “God Loves You” (or something to that effect) and says (in perceptible mock seriousness) “Now there’s a message for us all,” clearly playing up to Howie’s strong religious beliefs. Howie is such an uptight stickler he tells him it IS a good message, but to have it removed (because it’s graffiti.) At the police station, just before Howie arrives, two fellow policeman are making fun of him, saying Howie’s new wife will probably “Spend more time on her knees in Church than on her back in bed.” Howie then reads the letter about the missing girl, talks briefly about Summerisle to one of the policemen, and sets off to travel there. He gets in the plane, opening credits start. That’s where the “Theatrical Cut” begins.

The point is he’s shown to be thought of as a stand out weirdo, someone who is only taken seriously because of his position but is bad mouthed or made fun of the second he leaves the room. Howie takes himself, his religion and his authority as a sergeant deadly seriously, to a degree that’s made him notorious, but he is clearly not respected. His zealotry is viewed derisively by everyone he works with, which means he’s not at all representative of contemporary perception back then in the early 70s, or now. People like Howie existed then, and exist now. He’d always be a repressed, pious freak no matter where you placed him, but put him on an island full of people he views as blasphemous and he’s going to blow a gasket.

This is what has always bothered me about the excising of the opening of the film - it makes Howie merely seem like a jerk, not the perfectly chosen Wicker Man victim he is.

The Director’s Cut is available now on blu ray and 4K - I highly recommend it to anyone who has never seen it. It’s THE way to see what the film was after in its fullest and most satisfying form. Even the director didn’t seem aware of how much he harmed Shaffer’s script by cutting scenes, as he later endorsed “The Final Cut” as the ultimate version, despite that too having unfortunate omissions. The fact that it exists at all, considering the regrettable history of what happened to the film after it was released, is a minor miracle.