Witchfinder General
by Michael Reeves
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Hilary Heath, Ian Ogilvy, Robert Russell (II), Rupert Davies, Vincent PriceDirector: Michael Reeves
Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 87 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-09-11
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Witchfinder General
Movie Review: Classic. Chilling. A worthy re-issue of a stand out horror classic.
Summary: 4 Stars
This British horror film from 1968 is definitely worth a look. Price gives a career best performance as the evil, self-serving Matthew Hopkins, who abuses his position as Witchfinder General in order to satisfy his own vices - all the while condemning vice in others. It's an adult, disturbing movie, which captures the raw quality of seventeenth century English life, while reflecting back some of the sexual preoccupations of the late 1960s. It also speaks to our own era, in that it deals with corruption and depravity at the top. The ending is bleak, and terrifying, and will stay with you a long time after you have put the DVD safely back in its box.
Summary of Witchfinder General
Set in 17th century England during the violent early days of Cromwell's rule THECONQUEROR WORM is Michael Reeves' dark violent tale of the infamous 17th century witchhunter Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price). A failed lawyer Hopkins practiced his wicked trade throughout the British countryside for nearly a decade capitalizing on the instability and tumultuous upheavals created by the English Civil War. After years of unchallenged torture and sadistic murder the witchfinder finally meets his match when until he runs afoul of an army officer who vows revenge.System Requirements:Running Time: 86 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:?HORROR Rating:?NR UPC:?027616087652 Manufacturer No:?M108765By 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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