#25: Witchfinder General
Surprisingly high-concept thriller is a highlight of Vincent Price’s later career
This review was originally posted to Twitter on January 4, 2019
Initial release: 1968
Director: Michael Reeves
The notion of a “classic” film can be kind of ephemeral. You can’t guess how a film will be received on release any more than you can guess how it’ll be viewed in fifty years. Few expected Witchfinder General to be a cult classic, but here we are.
Matthew Hopkins was a crackpot who was active during the English civil war, calling himself “Witchfinder General” and claiming sanction from Parliament, who used the war as cover to see to the deaths of between 100 and 300 people. As such, the film features plenty of what you might expect: hangings, torture, burnings, and of course the raging misogyny that’s colored witch panics for centuries. For these themes and others, the film was derided as exploitatively violent and heavily censored. In the US, in an attempt to tie it in with Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe cycle of B movies, the film was retitled The conquerer Worm and Price recited the Poe poem of the same name over the opening credits, but it otherwise has even less connection to Poe than Corman’s films, which often barely had any at all.
The film on its surface certainly seems to lend credence to the accusations of exploitation; the film doesn’t shy away too much from scenes of torture, and there’s plenty of blood. And to be fair, the female lead seems to exist only to be tormented by Hopkins. And indeed, the plot follows a lot of the standard “rape and revenge” pattern, as the niece of an accused priest attempts to trade sexual favors with Hopkins to spare her uncle, only for him to betray her after his minion rapes her, and her soldier boyfriend vows revenge.
But where the film manages to set itself apart is how it uses the chaos and violence of the English civil war as a compelling backdrop; Hopkins, played menacingly by Vincent Price himself, is shown not just as a religious fanatic, but as a symptom of the anarchy that gripped England. Price and Reeves famously did not get along. Reeves never successfully got across what he wanted from Price (who was not his first choice for the lead role.) In spite of this, Price hands in a subtler performance than usual for him, grim and cruel, but not so overbearing that the rest of the cast can’t keep up.
The royalists have little presence in the film; save for a single skirmish early on, the actual war looms in the background. But the collapse of social order is on full display, as soldiers and witchfinders alike take what they need from the citizenry. The war, and its soldiers, stand in stark contrast with Hopkins’ private war on the occult. Mostly young men, they wage war with blood and fury, not cynical accusations and cold torture. In the end though, there’s still a hefty body count, and everyone suffers. If there’s a “theme” to this film, it’s how ordinary people can be pushed to violence with only a little encouragement and the absence of order, which is fertile ground for men like Hopkins. The only real order is the army, impatient with the male lead’s desire for revenge.
Unlike many films of the era (including Corman’s) there’s a stark cinematographic imprint on this film that speaks to Reeves’ skill as a director. He knows when to shoot simply and when to be more elaborate. Hopkins is shown as tall and imposing, the camera often beneath Price. The film makes good use of color, a carefully muted palette allowing for the stark contrast of a beautiful green countryside with the drab, dull villages that Hopkins menaces. Hopkins lurks about in black and rides on a white horse. A scene by the sea is done up in blues.
This is an unusual, grim film; at first glance it’s the same kind of schlock you’d expect from late 60s Hammer or American International Pictures, but it stands apart as something more of an auteur film. The violence itself is a message from Reeves; it was grotesque for its day, and he knew it. Looking at this film now, 50 years later, it’s easy to see why Reeves made the film the way he did. Like Night of the Living Dead (also 1968), it was a brick thrown against the mores of the time, and a call to rethink how violence is depicted and considered in art. The few early critics who found merit in this film are certainly vindicated in their stance; they saw the film for what it is, a study of man and anarchy amidst the beautiful tapestry of the English countryside. Later examination by contemporary critics would bear that out.
Reeves died of an OD at only 25 shortly after the film’s release; it’s a shame, because he deserved to see how his film, once thought forgettable schlock, is now seen as one of the more important early films on the nature of violence. And a damn good film besides.
