20 Years Ago Today: One Of The Worst Horror Remakes Ever Made Was Released

The early 2000s saw a boom in horror remakes. Nothing was off limits, not even certified classics. Some of these remakes weren't half bad (while it can't hold a human skin-covered candle to the original, I think Marcus Nispel's 2003 "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is surprisingly good and surprisingly nasty for a studio horror pic), others were pretty dire and lazy. It was a bit of a low point for the genre.

And then you have perhaps one of the strangest horror remakes of all time. Some might even call it one of the worst. We're talking about Neil LaBute's utterly bonkers "The Wicker Man," featuring Nicolas Cage as an unhinged cop running around a creepy island and yelling at everyone. At one point, Cage puts on a bear costume and drop-kicks Leelee Sobieski. That's cinema, baby.

The 2006 "Wicker Man," which was released 20 years ago today on September 1, 2006, is a remake of Robin Hardy's eerie classic from 1973, which had a bit of a legendary production. A pinnacle of folk horror, Hardy's movie has endured over the years thanks to its unsettling atmosphere and shocking final scene. LaBute's remake, in sharp contrast, is known to this day for the bee-filled memes it inspired.

In the 1973 "Wicker Man," prudish Sgt. Neil Howie (Edward Woodward), a devout Christian, heads to the mysterious island of Summerisle to find a missing girl. Once there, he's immediately put off by the pagan rituals embraced by the island inhabitants. Howie eventually learns there is no missing girl, and he's been lured to the island so he can become a human sacrifice. The islanders, led by Christopher Lee's Lord Summerisle, lock Howie up in a giant wicker effigy and set it ablaze. Everyone sings merrily as Howie burns to death. Fun!

The 2006 film relocates the story from the UK to the US. Cage's character, a cop named Edward, is lured to the island by his ex-girlfriend Willow (Kate Beahan), who asks Edward to help find her missing daughter. Once on the island, Edward seems annoyed by literally everyone he comes across, and is prone to shouting and harassing the islanders (at one point, he shakes a burned baby doll and shouts "HOW'D IT GET BURNED?! HOW'D IT GET BURNED?!" over and over again).

Edward eventually meets the same fate as Sgt. Howie in the original: He gets burned alive in a giant wicker man. But first, cult leader Sister Summersisle (Ellen Burstyn) puts a wicker basket mask over Edward's head and fills it with bees ("NOT THE BEES! THEY'RE IN MY EYES!!" Cage's Edward shrieks as the bees sting his face). The islanders worship bees and honey (or something like that) and they believe that sacrificing Edward will restore their honey production. "KILLING ME WON'T BRING BACK YOUR G**DAMN HONEY!!!" Edward cries, to which Sister Summersisle simply replies, "But it will!" Oh, okay then.

I won't sit here and tell you "The Wicker Man" remake is secretly good. Critics tore it apart (the film actually wasn't even screened for critics in advance, so those who bothered to review it had to go seek it out on their own) and audiences didn't like it either (it earned a dreaded "F" CinemaScore).

And yet ... there's something delightfully wacky about the whole thing. While no one would ever put this on a list of his best films, Nicolas Cage is at his Nicolas Cage-iest here, turning in a wonderfully weird performance that seems completely at odds with the rest of the movie. He also wasn't shy about admitting how goofy the entire endeavor turned out.

"There is a mischievous mind at work on 'The Wicker Man,' you know?" the actor said in a 2010 interview (now archived here). "You know what I mean? And I finally kind of said, 'I might have known that the movie was meant to be absurd.' But saying that now after the fact is OK, but to say it before the fact is not, because you have to let the movie have its own life." You said it, Nic Cage.