Welcome back to “What Makes Bad Movies Good,”  in which I present to you terrible films that are hilarious in their ineptitude. This week’s subject is a gem that I only discovered mere months ago. I’m quite glad I did, as any fan of bad cinema is sure to love it. I’m talking about the 2006 thriller “The Wicker Man,” based on the British cult classic.

Nicolas Cage plays Edward Malus, a California State Trooper who receives a letter from his estranged fiance requesting his help in finding her lost daughter. Willow, the fiancee, now lives on the island of Summersisle (not a typo), a mysterious farming community near Puget Sound. Malus travels to the island to investigate, and quickly deduces that there’s something strange about this island. He becomes determined (but not that determined, as I’ll soon explain) to find out what’s going on.

Malus’s isn’t a very good detective. It’s clear from the get-go that the town’s denizens are conspiring against him, but Malus never pursues any of his leads with as much vigor as he should. For example, his first encounter on the island is with several stoic men carrying a blood-soaked, squirming satchel. Rather than, you know, asking what’s in the satchel, he simply expresses a look of concerned bewilderment and goes along his merry way. 

This is, more or less, the manner in which Malus conducts all his investigations: He angrily asks a few questions, the witness gives a series of cryptic non-answers and Malus backs away with a confused expression on his face. He then finds another townie and repeats the process. He seems to subscribes to the “if you fall off the horse, run away from the horse” approach to police interrogation.

Much of the film consists of Malus wandering the island, tracking down suspects. Never before have I seen a film so bad at showing characters going from place to place. I didn’t think that was a particularly difficult aspect of filmmaking, but every time Malus walks from a village to a shack, or a house to a gazebo or a field to a cottage, we’re treated to over-grandiose, “Lord of the Rings”-style aerial shots and a swelling, inappropriately epic score. Every one of these montages is about twice as long as it should be, and there are about four of them throughout the film.

“The Wicker Man” has an interesting structure. It’s monumentally boring for the first two acts, then quickly becomes batshit insane in the third. I’m not positive when this switch occurs; I think it’s when Malus yells “You little liars!” at a room full of schoolgirls, but it could be when he discovers the room full of jarred fetuses (and then, rather than investigating further, just shrugs and walks away). The fetuses, by the way, are never explained.

The last act contains perhaps the worst overacting of Nicolas Cage’s career. An audacious claim, yes, but listen to him scream “Oh no, not the bees!! Not the bees! Agghh! My eyes!” as the bee-filled helmet is placed over his head, and I predict you’ll be convinced. I wish I could truly communicate in print how silly he sounds while yelling “How’d it get burned?!” four times (in a row) at his ex-fiance while angrily thrusting a burnt doll in her face, but I cannot.

This movie breaks a cardinal rule of film in that it actually shows the male protagonist hitting a woman. This happens three times, in fact, and while I must admit I never expected to see Nicolas Cage karate-kicking Leelee Sobieski into a wall, the violence itself isn’t that offensive. What’s offensive is that, for his last attack, Malus is wearing a bear costume. Let me repeat that: In “The Wicker Man,” Nicolas Cage punches a woman in the face while wearing a bear costume. Yes. He does. There is no way around this fact.

Cliff’s Notes Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6i2WRreARo