The Wicker Man (1973)

Christopher Lee: Lord Summerisle

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Quotes 

• Lord Summerisle : Do sit down, Sergeant. Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent.

• Sergeant Howie : What religion can they possibly be learning jumping over bonfires?

  Lord Summerisle : Parthenogenesis.

  Sergeant Howie : What?

  Lord Summerisle : Literally, as Miss Rose would doubtless say in her assiduous way, reproduction without sexual union.

  Sergeant Howie : Oh, what is all this? I mean, you've got fake biology, fake religion... Sir, have these children never heard of Jesus?

  Lord Summerisle : Himself the son of a virgin, impregnated, I believe, by a ghost...

• Sergeant Howie : Your lordship seems strangely... unconcerned.

  Lord Summerisle : Well I'm confident your suspicions are wrong, Sergeant. We don't commit murder here. We're a deeply religious people.

  Sergeant Howie : Religious? With ruined churches, no ministers, no priests... and children dancing naked!

  Lord Summerisle : They do love their divinity lessons.

  Sergeant Howie : [outraged]  But they are... are *naked*!

  Lord Summerisle : Naturally! It's much too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on!

• Sergeant Howie : I believe in the life eternal, as promised to us by our Lord, Jesus Christ.

  Lord Summerisle : That is good. For believing what you do, we confer upon you a rare gift, these days - a martyr's death.

• Lord Summerisle : Come. It is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man.

• Sergeant Howie : And what of the TRUE God? Whose glory, churches and monasteries have been built on these islands for generations past? Now sir, what of him?

  Lord Summerisle : He's dead. Can't complain, had his chance and in modern parlance, blew it.

• Lord Summerisle : I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable or unhappy, all over the earth.

• Lord Summerisle : [singing]  Summer is icumen in, loudly sing cuckoo. Grows the seed and blows the mead, and springs the wood anew. Sing, cuckoo! Ewe bleats harshly after lamb, cows after calves make moo.

• Sergeant Howie : If the crops fail, Summerisle, next year your people will kill you on May Day.

  Lord Summerisle : [Shaken]  They will not fail!

• Lord Summerisle : In the last century, the islanders were starving. Like our neighbors today, they were scratching a bare subsistence from sheep and sea. Then in 1868, my grandfather bought this barren island and began to change things. A distinguished Victorian scientist, agronomist, free thinker. How formidably benevolent he seems. Essentially the face of a man incredulous of all human good.

  Sergeant Howie : You're very cynical, my Lord.

  Lord Summerisle : What attracted my grandfather to the island, apart from the profuse source of wiry labor that it promised, was the unique combination of volcanic soil and the warm gulf stream that surrounded it. You see, his experiments had led him to believe that it was possible to induce here the successful growth of certain new strains of fruit that he had developed. So, with typical mid-Victorian zeal, he set to work. The best way of accomplishing this, so it seemed to him, was to rouse the people from their apathy by giving them back their joyous old gods, and it is as a result of this worship the barren island would burgeon and bring forth fruit in great abundance. What he did, of course, was to develop new cultivars of hardy fruits suited to local conditions. But, of course, to begin with, they worked for him because he fed them and clothed them. But then later, when the trees starting fruiting, it became a very different matter, and the ministers fled the island, never to return. What my grandfather had started out of expediency, my father continued out of... love. He brought me up the same way, to reverence the music and the drama and the rituals of the old gods. To love nature and to fear it. And to rely on it and to appease it where necessary. He brought me up...

  Sergeant Howie : He brought you up to be a Pagan!

  Lord Summerisle : A heathen, conceivably, but not, I hope, an unenlightened one.

• Lord Summerisle : [referring to sacrifices]  Animals are fine, but their acceptability is limited. A little child is even better, but not *nearly* as effective as the right kind of adult.

• [outside, several young girls are dancing naked over a fire] 

  Lord Summerisle : Good afternoon, Sergeant Howie. I trust the sight of the young people refreshes you.

  Sergeant Howie : No sir, it does NOT refresh me.

• Lord Summerisle : Welcome, fool. You have come of your own free will to the appointed place. The game is over.

  Sergeant Howie : Game? What game?

  Lord Summerisle : The game of the hunted leading the hunter. You came here to find Rowan Morrison, but it is we who have found you and brought you here and controlled your every thought and action since you arrived. Principally, we persuaded you to think that Rowan Morrison was being held as a sacrifice because our crops failed last year.

  Sergeant Howie : I know your crops failed. I saw the harvest photograph.

  Lord Summerisle : Oh, yes. They failed, all right. Disastrously so. For the first time since my grandfather came here. The blossom came, but the fruit withered and died on the bough. That must not happen again this year. It is our most earnest belief that the best way of preventing this is to offer to our god of the sun and to the goddess of our orchards the most acceptable sacrifice that lies in our power.

• Rowan Morrison : Did I do it right?

  Lord Summerisle : You did it beautifully!

• Lord Summerisle : What's the matter with you, MacGregor? Do you call that dancing? Cut some capers, man! Use your bladder. Play the fool. That's what you're here for. I suppose you've been getting drunk at your own bar.

• Sergeant Howie : Where is Rowan Morrison?

  Lord Summerisle : Sergeant Howie, I think that... you are supposed to be the detective here.

  Sergeant Howie : A child is reported missing on your island. At first, I'm told there is no such child. I-I... I then find that there is, in fact, but she has been killed. I subsequently discover that there is no death certificate. And now I find that there is a grave. There's no body.

  Lord Summerisle : Very perplexing for you. What do you think could have happened?

  Sergeant Howie : I think Rowan Morrison was murdered, under circumstances of Pagan barbarity, which I can scarcely bring myself to believe is taking place in the 20th century. Now, it is my intention tomorrow to return to the mainland and report my suspicions to the chief constable of the West Highland Constabulary. And I will demand a full inquiry takes place into the affairs of this heathen island.

  Lord Summerisle : You must, of course, do as you see fit, Sergeant.

  [ringing a bell] 

  Lord Summerisle : Perhaps it's just as well that you won't be here tomorrow to be offended by the sight of our May Day celebrations here.

• Lord Summerisle : My friends, enough now. We shall all reassemble outside the town hall at 3:00 sharp, and then process through the village and the countryside, down to the beach, below the stones, by the route which has become sacred to our rite. This year, at the procession's end, as has already been proclaimed, a holy sacrifice will be offered up jointly to Nuada, our most sacred god of the sun, and to Avellenau, the beloved goddess to our orchards, in order that we may furnish them with renewed power to quicken the growth of our crops. Hail the queen of the May!

• Lord Summerisle : Always a pleasure to meet a Christian Copper.