Fanning the flames

Tucked away in the line-up for this year's FilmFour FrightFest at the Empire Leicester Square, August 24-29, is a new British film with an terrifyingly familiar ring.

Nearly 40 years after Robin Hardy's cult horror classic The Wicker Man comes The Wicker Tree, with the same director, now 81, back behind the camera for what has been described variously, as, "a re-imagining" or "companion piece" to his much-lauded Highlands chiller.

Freely adapted by Hardy from his novel, Cowboys for Christ, his belated follow-up, shot on location in Texas and Scotland, co-stars Foyle's War's buttoned-up Honeysuckle Weeks in raunchier mode, Graham McTavish, Brittania Nicol (pictured below, centre) and Clive Russell.

Also in the cast is, like Hardy, another reminder of that 1973 treat: none other than Christopher Lee, now knighted, who is credited as "Old Man". Fans will recall him as the original's Lord Summerisle who danced Edward Woodward to an horrific fiery death on a remote clifftop. Is the "Old Man" none other than the good Lord re-visited?