Home movie footage

Who knows how many home movies were shot during the filming. If you know of any, please let us know. You can leave comments at the bottom of the page.

## Olive Mcdonald's

Olive Mcdonald, a seamstress who worked on-set at Lochinch took some. You can see it on YouTube here.The link talks all about it. You can also read up on her memories of the filming here.

## Plockton

### Backstory

I talked with several people who know about this footage. It was shot by X (name?) Mackenzie (the grandfather of the Malcolm mentioned below. I am not sure of the relationships of all these people. Some just have the same last name but are not directly related...) Calum Mackenzie transferred the film to VHS. There was a showing at the Plockton Town Hall (unknown date). Allan Brown saw it and asked to borrow it. The family allowed it. (Calum gave it to Allan.) Allan kept it for several years and unceremoniously dropped it off at Calum's shop without saying a word years later.

A fan, Declan McCafferty, had borrowed it from Allan, digitized it and put it up on the wicker-man.com site mentioned above. More recently, Kenneth Macrae (probably a relative) put a version up on YouTube. Malcolm Mackenzie, X's grandson, wrote to me about this on Sept 9, 2015:

"Thank you for your email regarding the unauthorised use and copy of my grandparents cinema footage.

The issue is my father (Calum?), in his ever trusting and always kind capacity, let the cine film my grandpa took to a Wicker Man "fan"

Subsequently this person and footage disappeared for a several years despite repeated requests from both My mum and dad for its return. The cine reel also had family moments and celebrations on it.

Anyway it eventually made its way back to Plockton with no note apology or explanation. It was just put through the front door.

During the cine reels absence it has clearly been copied and distributed and now appears online.

This is not in the spirit my dad leant out my mother's parents home footage and shows a huge lack of respect for my father who didn't ever believe it would be copied and distributed.

Regards

Malcolm Mackenzie"

I have more recently met some of the man's children have talked about this with them. I will add some more details about all this once I can get it worded correctly. Calum has both the original footage and the VHS but hasn't found them yet.

### The footage

Footage taken in Plockton has been around in various forms for 20 years. I have seen three segments of them. All are presumably from the same source. The first two listed here are from the version that appears on Kenneth MacRae’s YouTube page. The third is only available on the Internet Archive’s copy of the now defunct Wicker-Man.com site as its owner has requested that it be taken down from YouTube. There is additional footage that are not in these clips. See below.

### The current YouTube version

What: Howie asking the girls to remove their masks during the house search. They fall back away from the window (probably laughing.)

When: exact date unknown, probably between Oct 9-11, 1972.

Where: outside of the Sannachan cottage in Plockton

Who: Howie, the two girls in the window who he asks to remove their masks. An old woman.

What: cast and crew drinking in a pub

When: October 22, 1972 and other dates.

Where: Plockton Hotel back bar and cocktail lounge and other locations

Who: cast and crew

There are also some brief shots that don’t appear to be related to the filming:

- breif shot of some people standing on the street by a building. The building nor anyone is recognizable.- Home movie footage…

- three men in  a motorboat. Can’t tell much more than that.

 In the next pub scene after the motorboat shot, is this the same as the previous scenes? The windows look different.

There are 2 dogs… (definitely two different breeds)

### The wicker-man.com version

From who: Malcolm Mackenzie

What: Plockton Hotel back bar and cocktail lounge and other locations

When: October 22, 1972 and other dates.

Where: Plockton Hotel pub

Who: cast and crew

\*\*\*

Various people have seen more and that is described below as well.

### Details of the current YouTube version

Here’s what happens on the footage up on YouTube now:

\* by people who are seen in TWM. Most of this info was provided by Mary Gollan of the Plockton Hotel, the best place to stay when you’re in Plockton…

Wicker Man being shot

0-:22 Howie asking the girls to take their masks off, cam goes up to window then back down to door. This is the house called Sannachan.

:22 - :28 The old woman (outside Sannachan?) is Shenac Mackenzie, the mother of Kenny John Mackenzie who is in the next scene.

bar footage

:28 - 1:24  Inside the back bar at the Plockton Hotel where all these bar scenes were shot.

:28 (briefly) man on left in white sweater - Ali Williams

:30 - :51  men at table: (L-R) Andrew Matheson, (We don’t know his name but the man with the glasses is among the villagers who meet Howie when he lands\*.), Russell Waters\* and Kenny John Mackenzie\*.

:52 - 1:01 Sitting to our right of them are an unknown man and Kevin Collins\*, in the foreground, Dick Macrae.

1:06  - 1:18 Standing to the right of them: Johnny Macrae\* (nicknamed Bogles) and Charlie Macrae.

1:26 - 1:40 c/u of man in white sweater with protruding teeth is Ali WIlliams.

1:40 - 2:59, men at table

1:59 Angus Murchison (nicknamed The Paul) in jacket standing by men at table.

2:59 - 3:22, cut back to table, pans to bar. The lady behind the bar is Lillian Peacock. She was the wife of the man taking the cine film and they owned the Plockton Hotel where it was all shot.

3:22 - 3:29, table again

(3:29 - 3:30, people standing on street in front of white building - not related to these scenes.)

(This is the cocktail bar there, probably another night…)

3:30 - 3:45, brown-walled pub, darker lighting

EW in uniform with a man drinking on his left in a light jacket, a man behind them in black jacket andwhite sweater, a woman in blue sweater (probably Lilian). Pans to bar and man in blue sweater further to the right looks down. (A woman with glasses is seen seated to the left of them all and a man to the right.)

3:45 - 3:46, 1 second, “, c/u Russel Waters

3:46 - 3:59, 13 seconds, “, “Johnny” and woman in blue (Lilian) sweater walk behind partition, RW kisses woman in blue sweater

3:59 - 3:59, “, EW seated, in leather jacket w/ drink. (In the Wicker-Man.com version of this scene, we see that he is talking with Anthony Shaffer!

The rest of this footage is of unknown people and dogs…

3:59, young man with beard and mustache and blond woman in white sweater.

4:02, 3 men in (motorboat?)

4:03 - 4:08, white walls (another bar?), windows directly behind people,

$:06 man with cap is Matheson known as 'The Diver’

4:08 - 4:14, c/u of man in turtleneck is Dick Macrae.

4:14 - 4:17, dog #1

4:17 - 4:26, dog #2, shaggier, Kenny John’s dog Spunky.

A man nick-named Boochan (a/the barman in the hotel) and Bobby Kennedy are also recognized in the cocktail bar segment but I am not sure which ones they are.

### Details of the wicker-man.com version

Here's what happens in this earlier version.

It starts with another shot of EW drinking in the “cocktail bar” as seen in the current YouTube footage. Kenny John Mackenzie in the dark jacket with white sweater, Lillian, the wife of the owner of the Plockton Hotel, wearing the pearls. The rest are unknown.

46:  ecu of Russel Waters, other man in unknown.

1:01 Johnny Macrae (Bogles) and Lilian as seen in the other footage.

1:08 cocktail bar again. Russel Waters kisses Lilian.

1:17 two unknown men then Russel and others.

2:02 young man with side burns from behind cage. Also see blond woman with white sweater and another man with sideburns as well as others.

2:29 Anthony Shaffer talking with Edward Woodward!

2:43 The young man with the sideburns and the blond woman with the white sweater we saw before in the YouTube footage. Others seen in the background. This is a longer version of that scene.

2:59 Russell Waters in white. Others unknown.

### Falkirk showing, 10/21/99

This post describe it.

"To give you an example" , in 1998 "a guy from Plockton was clearing out his recently deceased Father's loft. Whilst he was sorting through the stuff, he found some old Cine film and when he watched it he recognised it as the filming of the Wicker man.

The result of this find was a special showing of the film in Falkirk , with the extra Cine film bit's shown at the end.

Now, I was at this showing (it was sold out), and people had flown in from all over the world (a guy from Australia, and another from Canada!) to see this 45 SECONDS of very grainy film that showed Edward Woodward in a Plockton pub after the filming, and a rear view of the scene where he talks to the two small girls at the upper window."

Allan Brown has/had a copy of the footage with the Edward Woodward laughing with the children. He also had additional footage. See below.

### NFT London showing, 5/3/00

Andy Taylor recalls it:

"The blooper reel was shown at the National Film Theatre in London in April / May 2000. (May 3 - there’s a little on the web about this. Also see earlier FB posts. See below for this site's Timeline info about that.) It was presented by Allan Brown who was doing a special screening of WM at that venue to launch his book. This is the one where Christopher Lee, Ingrid Pitt, Seamus Flannery (and in the audience: Robin Hardy, Shaffer and Eric-Boyd Perkins) and some members of a BBC comedy show called The League Of Gentlemen (Mark Gattis and Steve Pemberton) appeared after the film and did a Q&A with the audience in the VIP area.

Allan Brown announced he had some behind-the scenes cinefilm and they played it to the audience. It was definitely the scene where EW tells the girls to take the masks off. They must have done something funny, as EW suddenly bursts into laughter and we see the camera pan around a bit. It was filmed from a different angle, but definitely that scene. It must have been someone filming the film crew as they filmed that scene. I asked Brown for a copy of this, but he gave me a copy of the other cinefilm instead - the one similiar to this new one. I do remember this quite well, as the audience laughed out when EW laughed - just one of those moments!

Now, this new clip (the current clip on YouTube) starts off with the same scene - the girls looking out the window, but looks like it was done after EW starts laughing. It's a lot shorter than the one I saw. There is definitely more footage of this scene...I know it!!!! Would love to get a copy of that though!! Actually, I think there is someone on the WM list who was also at the National Film Theatre event, as I seem to remember them posting a comment on a post I made about it - possibly on one of the photos of my signed copy of Brown's book by Lee, Hardy, Shaffer, etc and ticket stubs." (The other person he mentions is Giles Kendrick, who posted about it on a Wicker Man Facebook group on March 3, 2014.)

See also (from the production timeline page on this site):

May 3, 2000 - National Film Theatre (NFT), London hosts screening and talk in co-ordination with Allan Brown's book release. Quentin Cooper -film critic, Anthony Shaffer, Christopher Lee, Ingrid Pitt, Seamus Flannery, Allan Brown and Steve Pemberton of the League of Gentlemen appeared. (Robin Hardy and Eric Boyd-Perkins were in the audience.) The Plockton home movie footage was shown. It included the girls removing their masks and pub scenes. (Handouts 1, 2, 3 4, a short glimpse of the event appears in The Wicker Man Enigma. Andy Taylor's autographed book and ticket from the event. See also the Introduction to Brown's ebook. It describes this event as well.