ABSTRACT
In his book British Trash Cinema, I.Q. Hunter notes that “British Cinema is now as closely identified with its cult films … as with its literary, realist and heritage traditions” (2013: 8). One of the key aims of this chapter is to consider how and why this has come to pass. How, for instance, did Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973), a putative horror film largely ignored on its original release in the UK, take its place at “the very centre of the new canon of British cinema” (Hunter 2013: 12)?
