#RITUAL DAVID PINNER MOVIE#

So the story has several elements that were carried on to The Wicker Man, but at the same time you can see why Hardy/Shaffer picked up the story and ran off in their own direction, tweaking it considerably into something else more cinematic and satisfying. They also feature a naked woman cavorting against a wall with the Inspector clutching desperately on the other side, and both at one point have the locals wearing animal masks. Both share a sexually repressed and puritanical Inspector investigating the murder/disappearance of a local girl, and the local communities both run circles around the Inspector (in Ritual his inability to see what is going on around him is served by his medical need to wear sunglasses at all times). Instead of being set in Scotland, Ritual is set in Cornwall, and the relatively remote locations for the two are used as a convincing and no doubt authentic backdrop for pagan activity. 'Originally the plan was to film the book that the rights had been bought for, only for director Robin Hardy to change his mind and make something altogether different (and more serious) under the name of The Wicker Man, though both book and film share some similarities.

Finders Keepers debut print run sees Ritual painstakingly reproduced fromt he authors own personal copy, including its original striking wood-cut cover artwork and a new forward by The Guardian / The Times journalist and pop composer Bob Stanley.' Original copies of Ritual's short print run have been known to command price tags as high as £600, rendering reading copies, in any form, to be virtually untraceable.

#RITUAL DAVID PINNER MOVIE#

Pinner's poetic and hallucinatory sequences were transformed into the rural celluloid folk story for Robin Hardy's 1973 film, The Wicker Man, which has enthralled and inspired generations of British movie patrons andfolk-pop enthusiasts throughout the world. All these fantastical ingredients were used for the cinematic rewrite by Anthony Schaffer who, along with Christopher Lee, obtained the film rights to Ritual six years after the novel's publication. During the protagonist's short stay, he is slowly subjected to a spectacle of psychological trickery, sexual seduction, ancient religious practices and nightmarish sacrificial rituals. Set against an enclosed rural Cornish landscape, Ritual follows the trail of English police officer, David Hanlin, who is requested to investigate the murder of a local child. Four decades since it first hit the bookshelves, rediscover this true modern rarity and historical keystone in the well-trodden bridge between occult fiction and cinematic pop culture. 'Shrouded in the same brand of mystery and contradiction that forms its tangled plot, Ritual, the 1967 debut by RADA-trained playwright David Pinner is commonly recognised by cult cinema fanatics as the original seed that grew into the towering movie enigma The Wicker Man. But, be warned, like The Wicker Man, it is quite likely to test your dreams of leaving the city for a shady nook by a babbling brook.' - Bob Stanley

'Ritual's opulent dialogue, with the sickly richness of its countryside, and Pinner's decaying village, can stand alone from the book's illustrious successor. The original seed from which grew the towering movie enigma The Wicker Man. David Pinner, Ritual, Finders Keepers, 2011.

Ritual david pinner