Another viewing (on DVD) confirms my previous opinion that this is a nasty movie which wallows in its sadism, has very little true feeling for the period (e.g the ready coupling of hero and heroine) and gives the great Vincent Price little scope other than to look grim. The backgrounds are pretty, as is the ill-used Hilary Dwyer, but the film is no more accomplished than the average Hammer horror. Michael Reeves' early demise was, as they say, a good career move!
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This isnt a Hammer film.
"wallows in its sadism" its about Witch trials, what did you expect?
"Vincent Price little scope other than to look grim" he plays Matthew Hopkins, so he should look grim
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When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk
It is very over-rated. Boring and with nothing to say.
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The ready coupling of the hero and heroine? As I recall, the characters of Sarah and Richard were already a courting couple when the film opens. The love scene occurs after Richard has asked Sarah's uncle for her hand in marriage. I don't think that can be described as ready coupling by any standards, then or now.
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"I am not young enough to know everything." : Oscar Wilde
This is an excellent and historically accurate horror film. It deals with with the factual witch hunts which occured all over England at the time of the civil war. At that time you could hung/burned for being anything other than a puritan.
I don't think it's that horrific when you rememeber what really went on in those dark times.
It is more frightening to think this kind of witch hunting is still going on all over the developing world right now.
;-)
I think Vincent Price's paige-boy haircut is the most frightening thing in this film.
shareyes his barnet certainley is a shocker... I tell you what though, them boot's he's got a pretty damn cool
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Loved the bit when those street kids are poking around the body parts in the fire.
Those aren't body parts, those are potatos, they are roasting them.
shareIf you watch closely, you can see the kids are actualy cooking potatos on the remains.Thats really gross.
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Sorry . . . this is a great film. Flawed, but wonderful.
And, brice, you seriously don't think people had sex during that period? And it's about torture . . . of course it has sadistic tendencies.
I think it has a nice historical look other films of the period, like the Hammer films, have.
..what i thought was interesting was the implied cannibalism scene towards the beginning. Ogilvy's character shoots an armed peasant crawling up through the weeds/brush, and then it fades into a cookout scene...lmao. Generally speaking, this movie is classic: A horror movie that uses implication and a minimal amount of gore, not to mention Price's convincing ability as the menacing Matthew Hopkins.
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Michael Reeves' early demise was, as they say, a good career move!
I agree, the script is awful, it's lurid, sadistic trash...reminds me of those 50's porn books that masqueraded under scientific titles
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Nope, this movie ain´t overpraised, it´s a masterpiece, the best movie ever from the UK (and I have seen a lot and am aware of the UK-movie history!).
If one views it just as a horror movie, one´s missing the ethical, philosophical, historical (accurate !), psychological, ... dimensions of this movie.
OK, maybe that was not all intended by Michael REEVES, but it´s all there for those who wanna see.
I have seen this movie first time as a midnight run on TV some 20 years ago (unprepared for what was coming!) and I never forgot it (I guess nobody can). Seen it app. 5, 6 times since then and as a reviewer of this movie wrote, you´ll think about THE WITCHFINDER GENERAL as long as you think about movies (and I think about this movie now for app. 20 years and am still in awe).
In my humble opinion, this is by far not as bloody as some reviews suggest, in fact the shown brutality is pretty tame (never in the foreground, never in detail, the movie is shot like a historical painting, also the colors used are there because the director and cinematographer wanted them this way). The fact that people consider this as extremely brutal (which it is, but brutality is something other then bloody !!!) is the storyline. The brutality is NEVER in the foreground, it´s just an esential part of the story, but never a means by itself. The brutality is more psychological, because one gets sucked into the story and watching this in it´s hard-to-take accuracy simply makes you feel the pain these people suffer. That´s what makes it so brutal and NOT the scenes/pictures of the movie. It´s one of the psychological most accurate movies I have ever seen and well worth to be compared with Ingmar Bergman´s masterpiece THE SEVENT SEAL, which has a compareable setting and also the theme is not that far away from WITCHFINDER.
I also think the ending is awesome !
And as far as the age of the director is concerned, hez come one, Orseon WELLES has doen is masterpiece CITIYEN KANE in very young yeras, John Carpenter did so (Assault), Speilberg (Duel, Jaws) and I could name many many more who were in their prime young and never got better than in the Twen and 30-somethign years.
I´d even go as far as to say, IF somebody accomplishes anything great, then in the first half of his life, not in the 2nd ...
And Michael REEVES did achieve something great in and for the UK-cinema, which nobody after him could ever come to reach again.
Very good post, wmjahn. The film certainly isn't as bloody as I thought it was going to be, yet the scenes do resonate on a psychological level, which I would attribute to the simple fact that this is a true story, overall. These things really happened. It's one thing to watch fantasy horror where it is not real, but it is another to see things played out on screen that depict the true atrocities that man is capable of.
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Whose idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have an "S" in it?
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Another viewing (on DVD) confirms my previous opinion that this is a nasty movie which wallows in its sadism
It was exactly the film the world deserved in 1968, and is very much one of the genuine masterpieces of British regional horror. Also many of the more lurid or sadistic moments were added at the insistence of AIP and against the wishes of Michael Reeves, who's "director's cut" of the film is the version preferred by purists.
I prefer the nasty, all-out American print CONQUEROR WORM, and recall it being shown more or less uncut on TV when I was a kid. I've been in awe of this movie for the majority of my conscious life: It's low budget is not as visible onscreen as many other contemporaries and the message it has about man's inhumanity to his fellow man has never really been topped.