Colin Sheridan: Facing up to my childhood fear of small islands

Irish Examiner

10-05-2025

Many years ago, RTÉ screened a movie on a Friday night that was preceded by a short, introductory lecture from writer and director Gerry Stembridge. It usually followed The Late Late Show, so was a neat and natural segue from Gaybo calling Bernadette in Tullamore to tell her she's just won a Renault Clio.
The late movie was a brilliant concept. The film chosen was always offbeat - Robert Altman's revisionist western McCabe & Mrs Miller, for example — but what made the idea so oddly compelling was Stembridge's preamble.
He had a wonderful ability to de-nerdify whatever director was in the dock that week, while giving guidance on what to watch out for (Hitchcock's cameos, epic needle drops). History of tensions on set between actors on set, and casting what-ifs, that sort of thing.
If memory serves, the intro lasted around ten minutes, so by the time the movie started you felt like Barry Norman, armed with cultural context and a half dozen anecdotes of misbehaving starlets.
Even now, in the time of information ubiquity on the internet, such a brilliant segment would be immensely popular. Especially now, I would argue, as the entire raison-d'etre of immensely popular two-hour long prestige podcasts such as the Rewatchables is what Stembridge did in the time it took to make a late-night sandwich.
If the State broadcaster is looking for ways to encourage discerning taxpayers to keep paying their TV license fees, they could do worse than get Stembridge back in a dimly lit studio and let him riff on Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon again. We would all learn something.
My devotion to the late-night movie did have some unintended consequences, however. After a particularly fraught viewing of the 1973 folk-horror movie The Wicker Man, I developed a rather acute case of Insulaphobia, or a fear of small islands (undiagnosed, of course).
Anybody who has watched the movie might understand why. It tells the story of a righteous police officer who visits the verdant Hebridean island of Summerisle off the coast of Scotland, to investigate the disappearance of a young girl.
There, he is appalled to find lots of funky pagan rituals going down. Christopher Lee is in it as a Lord obsessed with agriculture. A woman with a sexy Scottish accent says stuff like 'you'll simply never understand the true nature of sacrifice,' over and over. Need I say more.
My memory has banished much of The Wicker Man's horror and (if not the gratuitous nudity) from my little mind, but the opening shot has stayed with me for almost three decades.
It begins with overcast aerial shots of the Scottish countryside, particularly the Hebridean islands, filmed from a seaplane. As the camera glides over the misty, rugged terrain, a folk-style ballad titled 'Corn Rigs' plays. The song, with lyrics adapted from a Robert Burns poem, is deceptively cheerful, evoking rural life and sexuality, while subtly hinting at the pagan themes of the film.
The credits appear in simple white text, fading in and out over the natural landscape. It's a beautiful and unsettling sequence, creating a contrast between the serene scenery and the sense of isolation and foreboding that underpins the film.
Ever since I saw it, I've been afraid of small islands, which, when you live on the West of Ireland, can be embarrassing and problematic.
I was forced to face my fears over Easter when I headed west, out to Inishbofin. Of all the islands, Bofin is up there as the most beautiful. On the boat ride over, however, as the imposing Cromwellian fort juxtaposed itself surreally against deserted sandy beaches, I couldn't help feeling like the polite police constable sent over to investigate some shape-shifting shenanigans.
My mood wasn't helped when — just off the boat — I was invited to an islander's party over the other side of the island. It was to begin around 3pm on Saturday and end, I gathered, sometime Tuesday
I stayed in my room peeking through the shutters as my kids cycled the length and breadth of that idyllic piece of rock, stopping only to catch pollock with their new friends. They only came inside to change their saturated socks and go again.
'There's a bonfire on the beach tonight,' my son told me. 'And we're going?'
I did my best Gerry Stembridge impression and tried to summarise the plot of The Wicker Man, but he had no interest, perhaps distracted by why I was suddenly wearing a cravat. Understanding I'd lost him to the cult, I figured it was best to face my fears and at least tip down to the inevitable human sacrifice, if only for journalistic reasons.
There was indeed a bonfire, and food and crates of a locally brewed IPA. There was also an epic game of football on the beach. People of all ages had gathered, and there was no sign of Christopher Lee.
I left with the youngsters, long before midnight. The following morning at breakfast I did a rough headcount, and it appears all islanders were accounted for. Everyone who lived there seemed oddly happy, if a little dismissive of our mainland ways.
I sailed for home, another fear conquered, content the only cult encountered was the simple beauty of island life. Behind me, perhaps gently mocking me, the bonfire on the beach still raged.