REVISITING WEIRD WORLD OF `THE WICKER MAN'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

When you're remaking a semi-classic horror movie these days, you don't usually go to an acclaimed playwright and serious independent filmmaker to get the job done.

But that's exactly what star Nicolas Cage and his producing partners did for their Americanized version of the 1973 British cult favorite ``The Wicker Man.''

Neil LaBute -- whose corrosive battles of the sexes ``In the Company of Men,'' ``Your Friends & Neighbors'' and ``The Shape of Things'' are pretty scary pieces in their own way -- took on the daunting task of rewriting and directing the new version, which opens today. A wiry-haired, Mormon-raised 43-year-old with an impressive list of academic credentials, LaBute is no stranger to controversy. His plays and movies present men and women at their manipulative, foulmouthed worst and have polarized audiences and critics as a result.

Moving into the degraded genre of scary movies could prove just as disturbing for LaBute's defenders and foes alike. On the one hand, complaints from members of the first film's small but avid fan base have been constant since word got out that LaBute was changing the remake's location (from a remote Scottish island to one in Washington state's Puget Sound) and the gender of its primary antagonist (from Christopher Lee's pagan shaman to a kind of primal priestess, played by Ellen Burstyn).

On the other hand, in an era when cheap, incoherent scares in narratives that don't tax 13-year-old attention spans are the most bankable kinds of horror movies, an intellectual, realistic craftsman such as LaBute seems out of place in the genre.

``I think the movie is often misplaced,'' the filmmaker counters, referring to the original, scripted by the late playwright Anthony Shaffer (``Sleuth'') and directed by Robin Hardy.

``It's not particularly horrifying, though it builds to a horrific conclusion. Throughout, though, the picture relies more on being creepy than it does on being actually scary.''

LaBute has been a ``Wicker'' fan since he first saw it in 1980. The film starred Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento and Britt Ekland.

He hasn't changed the basics of the story much: A straight-arrow cop searching for a missing girl comes to the island and finds a mysterious, agrarian culture with pre-Christian roots. He gets his mind messed with by the locals.

Both films climax with the title ceremony, which involves the burning of a giant wooden effigy.

But in order to infuse the remake with that desired artistic integrity, LaBute had to turn its themes into his own.

``Where I've decided to take the world and make it a little more `me' was in the makeup of the island itself. I ultimately changed the industry from apples to honey. Not just to break away from the original, (but) because we're set off the coast of Washington.

``But my interest is in the kind of community of honey, how a bee colony works. I liked the idea of a queen bee, changing the patriarchy of the original film to a matriarchy.

``Rather than the original's very firm ideas about religious fanaticism, my ideas were more about things that I have written about in films and the theater, which is gender politics and the dynamics of power,'' LaBute adds.

LaBute has also subtly Americanized the backstory, replacing the Celtic underpinnings of the original's community with references to our own colonial and pioneer past.

``We make a nod to the original's pagan culture,'' LaBute admits.

``Ellen Burstyn's character talks about how, all the way back to her Celtic roots, her ancestors had been against the suppression of the feminine. They ultimately had migrated to the New World -- but, unfortunately, they settled in Salem! So you get some idea of it as a Wiccan community with a goddess belief. They then migrated west and settled where they are now, which people tended to do when faced with persecution. I mean, I was a Mormon for a number of years, and that's the same story. It's the natural movement of smaller communities.''

Some Brits, inevitably, are not taking this well. Hardy has been complaining quite publicly about various perceived sins the new movie commits (an inaccurate remake writing credit attributed to Hardy was removed from the Internet at his attorney's request), and Lee has dismissed the concept of a woman playing his old part in interviews.

Fans of the original, who are far more numerous in the U.K. than here, have, of course, been burning up the Web with their opinions.

``I try and steer relatively clear of that because it's an easy thing to get lost in, as is the Internet itself,'' LaBute admits.

``You can spend many, many hours just searching out stuff, reading it and responding.

``But you can find the entire gamut, which I'm happy to say. Those people who like the original but are excited to see how it can be done differently, those who are very much on the fence and those who are such adamant detractors that they say, `I don't even care if it's good, I hate the fact that they're doing it.' For me, it's better just to steer clear of it and go, I understand how people are very territorial about what they like.

``And I understand how the original actors and director can think, `God, how can they touch this movie?' '' LaBute concedes. ``For me, coming from the world of theater, I'm used to there being other productions of things I've done or classic plays that I want to try this or that with. So I don't think about it in those terms. And it's not something that I want people to judge whether they like one better than the other.''

The question now is, will LaBute's ``Wicker Man'' find a big audience?

Especially after word gets out that it has -- horrors! -- some of those nasty things called ideas in it.

``The genre has certain requirements,'' LaBute acknowledges. ``You have to kind of scare people now and then. But again, it was about the imagery for us, and getting under the skin of people rather than trying to constantly shake them by the lapels.''

But he also notes that, stated enthusiasm for ``artistic integrity'' notwithstanding, producers and studio suits did exert certain pressures.

``Whatever it is that you make ... producers, marketers, distribution, they tend to want more of what you've given them,'' LaBute says. ``If it's a horror movie, they want more scares. If it's a comedy, they want more laughs -- it's a kind of voracious hunger.''

So distributor Warner Bros. isn't showing ``Wicker Man'' to critics -- a first for a LaBute film -- because they think it's too smart and not scary enough? In all previous cases, movies not prescreened were just bad films.

Don't jump to conclusions, the director says.

``I was involved in that decision, actually. There's been a lot of talk about that as a whole this last year. But I think that, at the end of the day, if you make that choice, it's still early enough in the transition to that to be thought of as, there must be something wrong with the movie.

``But for us I think the gamble was, people don't really know this movie that well in the States, and I've made changes to it that people who know it won't expect, hopefully.

``So I would rather keep those as quiet as possible for as long as possible. So let's roll the dice and see if we can let it ride that way. We'll see what comes of it.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Fear factor

Neil LaBute's remake of `Wicker Man' scares up controversy

(2) A sheriff (Nicolas Cage) investigating the disappearance of a young girl from a small island discovers there's a larger mystery to solve among the island's secretive, neo-pagan community in ``The Wicker Man.''

(3) ``Rather than the original's very firm ideas about religious fanaticism, my ideas were more about ... gender politics and the dynamics of power,'' says director Neil LaBute, right, with Nicolas Cage on the set of ``The Wicker Man.''