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Amphibians in Movies |
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The Wicker Man (1973) |
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Spoiler Alert !
Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
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This is the original version of The Wicker Man, a great occult thriller. (A sequel made in 2006 is hated by most critics. I thought it was worth a look but nowhere as good as the original.)
The setting is an isolated island in Scotland where the people practice strange pagan rituals, including phallic topiary, half-naked girls running through fire around stone monuments, and women nursing babies in the cemetary where tombstones have strange messages such as "protected by the ejaculation of serpents." And then there's the Wicker Man festival to insure a bountiful crop, with strange animal costumes and a parade that culminates in the burning of a giant figure of a man made of wicker, full of animals, including a human sacrifice.
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The local chemist's shop (drugstore) is full of jars of bizarre items - snake oil, rat brains, dried lizards, and foreskins. |
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The chemist herself practices an ancient pagan treatment for sore throat. A little girl with a sore throat comes into the shop with her mother. The chemist puts a small toad in the girl's mouth for a few seconds then pulls it out, telling her that the toad has taken her sore throat, which she can tell because of its croaking.
(She calls it a frog, but actually it's a toad, but since technially toads are a kind of frog, she's not wrong.)
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