Witchfinder General
by Michael Reeves
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ian Ogilvy, Patrick Wymark, Rupert Davies, Vincent Price, Wilfrid BrambellDirector: Michael Reeves
Brand: MGM
Writer: Michael Reeves
Producer: Arnold L. Miller
Producer: Louis M. Heyward
Writer: Louis M. Heyward
Writer: Edgar Allan Poe
Writer: Ronald Bassett
Writer: Tom Baker
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 86 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-09-11
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Witchfinder General
Movie Review: Vincent Price's best performance, and quite an extraordinary film....
Summary: 5 Stars
I remember seeing this film on regular TV (WFLD-TV in Chicago to be exact) at 2 in the afternoon. I remember the bone chilling screams from the prison scene. I searched far and wide for this film, and when I saw the whole film, I had seen a masterpiece.
Witchfinder General (aka Conqueror Worm) is an extraordinary film. It's one of a handful of features directed by Michael Reeves. This is the film he's most famous for, and it's as bleak and as terrifying as you've heard. It's not a "gorehound" film (even though there's gore galore in it); it's an immensely intelligent film. It takes place during the English Civil War where law and order had pretty much broken down, and local magistrates were running amok. Frequently, witch hunters were employed to rid the countryside of "wrongdoers" (or people they just didn't like), and Matthew Hopkins (played by Vincent Price) was one of these men. Hopkins was a real witch hunter, but this story is not completely based on fact.
The film, despite its limited budget, is wonderfully shot in the English countryside, giving it a really gentle flavour at times, which is ironic, as the film is very violent and cruel. It's not a happy film, in fact, quite brutal and bleak. The torture scenes are incredibly brutal and realistic, and are very difficult to watch, as they are not slick like modern Hollywood. The veneer of civilization is lifted, and the underbelly of society comes out with a venegance.
This, I believe, is Vincent Price's best performance. Here he drops the campiness and hamminess and shows that he was a great, brilliant actor. He plays it entirely cold, giving his performance a shade of sadism and cruelty, something not found in his other work. Michael Reeves, the director, was rather distant from Price, which angered Vincent deeply. Vincent later admitted that Reeves's treatment of him enabled him to give the cold, dispassionate performance you see here.
The film has been hard to find in its original version. The BBFC (the British Film Censorship board) made Reeves cut the most violent scenes from the film. Reeves insisted on the scenes staying in, claiming that they were realistic depictions of the torture that went on during Matthew Hopkins's time. Surprisingly, the film wasn't cut at all for its U.S. release. The only things that AIP Pictures did to the film was put on a prologue and epilogue with Vincent Price reading an Edgar Allen Poe poem, and retitling the film Conqueror Worm (they did this to tie the film into their other Edgar Allen Poe adaptations). They also used a different score for their release. On this DVD, you get the official cut from Michael Reeves (the commentary on the DVD by the co-producer says this DVD is in fact Reeves's original version). There is also commentary by Ian Oglivy (the 2nd lead actor in the film) and the co-producer, and a featurette on Michael Reeves, who died shortly after making this film. This is quite an extraordinary film considering the time it was made, its budget, and the inexperienced director. Everything meshed here, and the film is still chilling today.
Summary of Witchfinder General
WITCHFINDER GENERAL - DVD MovieBy consensus, Vincent Price's finest performance among his gallery of horror-movie rogues comes in Witchfinder General, the intense 1968 film that erased any hint of camp from the actor's persona. Price plays Matthew Hopkins, a sadistic 17th-century "witchfinder" who uses barbaric methods to identify (and invariably execute) supposed witches. Along with Price's disciplined work, Witchfinder is also the best film by the talented and ill-fated director Michael Reeves, who was only 24 when he shot the movie. Blessed with a great feeling for English landscapes and an eye for blackly telling details (peasants roasting potatoes in the ashes of a burned witch), Reeves was clearly a promising filmmaker, who died in 1969 from a drug overdose. The most vivid thing about Witchfinder General is the way it explicitly links paranoia and witch-hunting to misogyny, and how female sexual energy is seen by the ruling order as a threat. The final sequence is perhaps the most harrowing fade-out of any Sixties horror picture, and offers no comforting resolution.
Included on the Witchfinder package is a disc of three featurettes: a half-hour bio, the 12?minute Art of Fear that looks at his horror work (with the expected focus on the other films in this box set), and a 15?minute piece on other actors working with Price (although these actors are not interviewed, just the gallery of experts who speak in the other docs). The Witchfinder disc includes a valuable backgrounder on the movie, including the story behind the original U.S. release of the film, titled The Conqueror Worm (to cash in on Price's connection to Edgar Allan Poe works, which this is not), plus a commentary with producer Philip Waddilove and Michael Reeves' favored leading man, Ian Ogilvy. --Robert Horton
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