Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Sequel

The Wicker Man is a classic, a film I watch several times a year and one that I get something new out of with each viewing. There’s a reason why I’ve never seen the sequel, but I finally powered my way through it and somehow, it’s even worse but strangely better than I thought it would be. Then again, in Ecclesiastes 7:15, the very idea of such conundrums is brought to light: “All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.”

Directed and written by Robin Hardy — yes, the very same man who made the original — this is about “Cowboys for Christ” Betty Boothy (Brittania Nicol) and her boyfriend Steve Thompson (Henry Garrett) bringing their born-again evangelical Christian music to the godless in first Glasgow and then Tressock, where a nuclear power plant has made everyone infertile.

The couple are barely there for a moment when Steve neglects their promise rings and swims nude, then makes love to Lolly (Honeysuckle Weeks), a village girl who reveals that most of the town worships the ancient god Sulis.

As the town prepares for May Day, a detective named Orlando (Alessandro Conetta) is investigating the cult, which is run by town elder Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham McTavish). Our protagonists agree to be the Lady and Laddie of the May Day Parade, which means that Steve is chased by the entire village and torn apart by naked men while the music sounds like a remix of “Can You Read My Mind” from Superman while Beth attempts to escape. She ends up stuffed in a case, Lolly has Steve’s child and the village is saved.

While Christopher Lee was to play Morrison, he was injured on a film set. He does, however, appear in a flashback to a mentor of Morrison, who Hardy said was Lord Summerisle. Lee disagrees with this and said that the characters are unrelated. Joan Collins was to play his wife, which is dream casting, but when the younger McTavish was cast, so was Jacqueline Leonard as Delia Morrison. The cook Daisy, however, is the same Daisy from the first movie, also played by Lesley Mackie.

The title was changed several times — The Riding of the Laddie, May Day, and Cowboys for Christ, which is the name of the book that it came from — but ended up with The Wicker Tree, hoping viewers would connect the two movies. Before he died, Hardy was still trying to make one more movie in this cycle, The Wrath of the Gods.

It’s almost like this movie was trying to be a sequel to the Nicholas Cage film instead of Hardy’s own film, with a bombastic score, near digital direct to video looking cinematography and characters that are more stupid than misguided. I really can’t believe I watched this the whole way through. I’d say that it felt like an Italian ripoff of the first, like the Patrick Still Lives to Patrick, but then it would be a good movie. This is anything but.