Cinema
Witchfinder General
Michael Reeves · 1968
Synopsis
The east of England, 1645, during the Civil War. On a sunlit hill, a man is heard finishing a gallows with a hammer. A woman is dragged out of the village by the crowd; a priest reads the Bible, and she is hanged. Matthew Hopkins takes advantage of the disorder into which the war has thrown the country to make a business of witch-hunting, assisted by his aide, John Stearne, and travels the countryside to hunt them out.
Context
The film comes from a book by Ronald Bassett published in 1966 and deals with a real man, Matthew Hopkins, born in Suffolk, who became a witch-hunter in the mid-1640s and had, with John Stearne, more than two hundred executed according to estimates. It was shot for eighty-three thousand pounds, on location in Suffolk and Norfolk, with the interiors in aircraft hangars. The director, aged twenty-four, wanted a cold performance from Vincent Price; the actor retorted that he had made eighty-four films and asked how many he himself had made. After the release, Price wrote him a long letter to say that he had at last understood what he was looking for.
Who it is for
Eighty-six minutes, in English with subtitles or in a French version. In the United States, the film took the title of the lines by Poe that Price recites in it.
Prizes and reception
On its release, the playwright Alan Bennett wrote that he had seen no film more sadistic or more morally rotten; the young director answered him publicly.
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