Director: Michael Reeves
Screenplay: Tom Baker and Michael Reeves
Starring: Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, Hilary Heath, Robert Russell
Release Date: 1968
The year is 1645, and as the English Civil War wages an opportunistic lawyer named Matthew Hopkins (Price) roams the countryside, taking advantage of the anarchy and general lawlessness of the times by going village to village with his assistant, John Stearne (Russell), brutally torturing suspected witches into false confessions before hanging them and charging the local magistrates a fee for his services. Amidst this turmoil steps Richard Marshall (Ogilvy), a young trooper in General Cromwell’s army who rides to his home of Brandeston, Suffolk to visit Sara (Heath), the niece of the village priest and the woman he intends to marry. The priest, John Lowes, confides in Marshall that he wishes him to marry his niece and take her from Brandeston soon, fearing for her safety on account of false accusations of witchcraft and deviltry levied against him by the superstitious and hypocritical townsfolk. Marshall agrees, but can do nothing until the war has ended, and must return to the front lines the next day.
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Vincent Price is going to fuck you up.
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These early scenes work to lull the viewer into a false sense of security. I’ve seen enough Vincent Price movies to know what to expect, and the stiff accents, slightly comic tone and lush photography of the British countryside, while not drenched in the usual Gothic tropes of his Poe movies, fully meet those expectations. But then Price arrives onscreen and the movie takes a sudden, darkly violent turn into the depths of despair. His Matthew Hopkins is a true piece of work, an utterly contemptible man who uses his sheer power of persuasion to invoke fear in the locals to take action against innocent people whom he claims are enemies of the Church. This is all bullshit, of course, as Hopkins is more than happy to accept the sexual advances of Sara in exchange for her Uncle’s life. And so for a time Lowe’s life is spared, though he is still bound and shackled in the local jail. That is until Hopkins’ loathsome assistant Stearne, angry at being denied the chance to torture the priest, confronts Sara and rapes her while Hopkins is in another town. When Hopkins discovers that Stearne knows his secret, he completely disavows Sara and orders the torturing to continue, ending in the hanging of Lowe’s and two innocent women just before the “Witchfinder” and his assistant leave town.
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An early form of fishing, using hobos as bait.
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It is here that the movie begins to exhibit a far darker and much more violent tone than other movies of the period. The scenes of torture in the jailhouse, while not entirely historically accurate, still makes the blood boil with rage at the inhumanity of not only Hopkins and Stearne, but also the villagers and local law enforcement who are easily bribed into bearing false witness against the accused. These so-called “witches” are subjected to endless beatings by Stearne before being strung up and dunked into a nearby pond to see if they float. If they drown, Hopkins says, then their confessions were false and they are declared innocent. If they attempt to stay above water by swimming, then they carry the mark of the devil and must be executed by hanging. Either way, they’re fucking dead, which suits Hopkins just fine, as the money is all he really cares about.
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Richard and Sara make a solemn vow to totally ruin Vincent Price's shit.
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| No smart-ass comment. I just really like this shot. |
Needless to say, when Marshall returns to discover his fiancé has been thoroughly pillaged by Hopkins and her uncle murdered, he’s not a happy guy. He kneels with Sara by the altar of her uncle’s church and vows to kill Hopkins and Stearne at all costs, even at the risk of court-martial and execution for deserting his post in Cromwell’s army. And so the rest of the movie plays out as Marshall searches the countryside for the evil Witchfinder, ultimately leading to a showdown in the town of Lavenham where, in the film’s most disturbing scene, we see that Hopkins has upgraded to burning accused witches, an act we get to see in agonizing detail, punctuated by the anguished cries of the lover of the accused. After the burning Hopkins and Stearne manage to get the upper hand on Marshall, capturing him and Sara and taking them to a nearby castle for interrogation and torture. I don’t want to spoil what happens next, suffice it to say that everyone gets what they deserve, which is not necessarily a good thing for anyone involved.
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Somehow the village of Lavenham's annual marshmallow roast got way out of hand.
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WITCHFINDER GENERAL is a fantastic descent into hell, filtered through a lens of stark realism that never gives the viewer a break until the gut-punch of an ending. I was quite taken aback by the level of brutality on display for a movie from this era, but none of it is gratuitous. It is simply the way things were. And Price’s performance here runs entirely counter to the winking, tongue-in-cheek roles he is most well known for. His Hopkins is truly a bastard, and the horror in this movie comes not from the supernatural, but from the knowledge that history is full of vile men such as he. No ghost or vampire or even a witch will ever evoke as much fear as the inhumanity we inflict on one another.
My Rating:
8.5/10
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