RITTEN by playwright Anthony Shaffer and helmed by first-time director Robin Hardy, is a tale of a priggish, puritanical policeman named Neil Howie, who is lured to a remote Hebridean island, having been anonymously tipped off that a young girl called Rowan Morrison has gone missing. When he arrives by seaplane, he discovers the locals, although appearing to have perfectly normal daily lives, are actually members of a practising druid cult that worships pagan pre-Christian gods. During his investigations, he comes across a schoolroom of children being taught the phallic roots of the maypole and couples engaged in what he considers blasphemous fertility rites. In one memorable scene, a girl’s sore throat is treated by having a frog placed in her mouth, all
