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WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968)
DVD (region 0)
d. Michael Reeves; pr. Louis M. Hayward, Arnold L. Miller, Philip Waddilove; scr. Tom Baker; novel. Ronald Bassett; ph. John Coquillon; m. Paul Ferris; ed. Howard Lanning; cast. Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, Rupert Davies, Hilary Heath, Robert Russell (86 mins)
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Cinema's Most Under-rated Auteur's Career Cut Short by Drug Suicide
Witchfinder General is the crowning achievement of a British director who died tragically young, cutting short what was promising to be a truly provocative career. Sadly, Michael Reeves made only three movies before dying from a barbiturate overdose.
All were horror films, of which this, his last, was the most controversial. Teamed with actor Vincent Price, then fresh from his roles in the classic series of American Edgar Allan Poe adaptations by Roger Corman, Reeves insisted that the actor play the role absolutely straight, resulting in Price’s most chilling and least mannered performance in the horror genre, as the murderous witch hunter and executioner Matthew Hopkins. The film was immediately notorious for its brutal violence and bleakly cynical tone and attracted the attention of censors, resulting in many cut prints being circulated. In America, the film was re-titled The Conqueror Worm to capitalize on the Price / Poe connection. In England though, at a time when Hammer films were proliferating and a more contemporary underground had yet to emerge in Pete Walker’s stern horror films of the early 1970s, Reeves explored the violent baseness of the human condition with a visual naturalism and downbeat energy that made his film truly stand apart as a genuine milestone in the development of English horror. It is still a revelation, even for the most ardent Hammer admirers.
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Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Witchfinder General tells the vile story of Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price). Circa 1645, England is in a Civil War between the Royalists and Cromwell’s Parliamentarians (known as the Roundheads). It was a time when superstition was still prevalent and lawlessness was widespread.
Hopkins had powers by Parliamentary decree to ascertain and execute witches. With an assistant, he travelled the country investigating accusations of witchcraft, frequently summoned by the dubious invitation of an informant. By design, these investigations were usually against women, resulting in the torture and killing of the innocents too often falsely accused, before simply moving on. He comes to one such village to investigate an accused priest. The priest’s niece (Hilary Dwyer) agrees to sexual favours with Price if he spares her uncle. Price agrees, but eventually goes back on his word after the woman has been raped by his equally sadistic assistant. Soon Dwyer’s betrothed, a Roundhead soldier (Ian Ogilvy), returns to the village and vows vengeance against the murderers / rapists responsible, but they quickly evade his reach. He is ordered on a mission by Cromwell and in the process learns of Price’s whereabouts. Determined, he trails them to another town where they plan to torture Dwyer in front of Ogilvy’s eyes in order to get him to confess to witchcraft so that they can then execute them both.
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The Bleakest Study of Human Nature to Emerge from Genre Cinema
Witchfinder General is one of the bleakest assessments of the human condition found in modern cinema. Even for a horror film it is disturbing and caustic.
There are no heroes, as everyone involved has an awful ulterior motive for their actions and is ultimately beyond any possibility of redemption. Price is a sadistic murderer, almost a serial killer, who is addicted to torture and the sexual exploitation of innocent women. His accomplice wants the same power and if anything is even more abhorrent as it is he who carries out most of the tortures, Price choosing only the most personally satisfying victims to torment. Price and his accomplice are an affront to morality and humanity. But Ogilvy, ostensibly the righteous figure, is far from a moral alternative despite his religious pronouncements for just revenge. At the beginning, Ogilvy swears he will protect his betrothed and her uncle but is quickly shown not to be able to do so. Thus, his later actions are in part out of due outrage at the inhumane violation of his loved ones but also out of a sense of selfish wronged pride. By the film’s end he is capable of a monstrous violence not too distinct from that which he readily condemns. This base sadism director Reeves shows to be in every man and the townsfolk are either indifferent to suffering or making false accusation for personal gain. The context of a Civil War for democratic rule is thus highly ironic.
The film is full of pain and suffering, of human indifference to humiliating torture and of a surrender to violent impulses that can bring only personal collapse and despair to supposedly moral men.
Women are victims in this case, with Dwyer attempting to use her sexuality to spare her uncle but used, thrown aside and then tortured again when the opportunity arises. But what is perhaps even worse, for Reeves, is the surrounding widespread indifference to suffering: hence in one scene, townsfolk roast potatoes in the smouldering ashes left after burning a supposed witch. Sadistic men thrive in such surroundings and no character is immune from the taint of monstrousness. In this film, the human condition is irredeemably ugly, vile and petty. This taint of human imperfection is inescapable, making the film a bitter vision indeed. Dwyer and Ogilvy are initially set up as a young couple full of promise, the very future of England perhaps, but the ugliness in human nature makes a victim out of one and a monster out of the other as Reeves systematically subverts any notion of justice, faith or hope in this world. Despite the claims of many for God’s sanction, it is a truly godless land where there is only violence and pessimistic irony, with but a perverse honour bound in murderous enterprise. In such a context, the much-remarked-on ending of Witchfinder General is one of the most despairing in all of British horror.
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Contrasting Nature and a Monstrous Humanity
The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer is somewhat patchy. This unevenness, however, comes from the fact that this version of the film is uncut and that the restored scenes of added explicitness come from different quality master sources (one of which may even be a video).
Thus, image quality often jumps between these scenes. Such is a necessary endurance for the complete version of the film to be seen – the DVD also offers the cut version, without the added scenes. Much is made of the ironic contrast between the natural splendour / wastes of the English landscape and the monstrous humans who travel through it. The film emphasizes movement through places, paralleling a moral journey that culminates in the descent into a dungeon hell. It looks drab, with an overwhelming autumnal physicality: its naturalism making for a contrast to the expressionistic colour use of the early Hammer films. Blacks are often deep but there are some additional frame edge problems on occasion. The effective use of a handheld camera adds to the disturbing immediacy to the torture scenes in particular, cleverly manipulating the audience into hating Price as much as they share in his sexual aberration, even implicating them as accessories in the ending. The final journey down a castle corridor through alternating light and dark works as an effective moral flux, as Ogilvy reaches the point of reckoning in his hatred for Price.
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Pain and the Sounds of Human Devastation
The Dolby Digital mono sound transfer suffers from uneven jumps, again primarily due to the inclusion of select shots taken from different masters.
The effect is disconcerting but must be endured to experience the restored, uncut version. The effectiveness of the sound design carries through in ambient details, such as the opening execution amidst the howling wind, suggesting a wild devastation within the natural landscape. An early scene makes good use of the noises of a nearby skirmish that Ogilvy cannot see, introducing the importance of the sound of human conflict disrupting nature. But nature is at best indifferent in response. The score is suitably ominous but in the transfer lacks home theatre fullness. What remains most disconcerting is the frequent stress on human screams and other cries of pain and suffering, making the film rather infernal, as if all England threatens to become a vast torture chamber – indeed it all heads to the final dungeon scene and its auditory barrage of sadism, madness and despair in the human voice. It achieves a quality of life in damnation as the desperation and pain in the voices adds to the immediacy of the film and the sense of unrelenting anguish. In such a bleak world as Reeves depicts, these screams of the innocents make for a terrifying motif. Price’s distinctive voice is doubly chilling as a force of total manipulative, menacing evil and is free from his trademark camp
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Bonus Features for Home Theatre Collectors
There are enough special features included here to make this DVD release something of a collector’s item.
In addition to the inclusion of both uncut and modified versions, there is an original trailer and an extensive image gallery of posters, press books and additional pictorial information from the movie. There is also an informative half-hour documentary titled “Blood Beast: the Films of Michael Reeves” which gives valuable background into the man and his films, offering rare clips from his two earlier works The She-Beast and The Sorcerers as well as information about his early career with his idol, American director Don Siegel. It charts his attitude to cinema, his mounting ambition and talent, the events leading to the creation and filming of Witchfinder General, and also offers background into the completed film’s many subsequent censorship problems and intriguingly talks of the movie as almost a UK revenge western of sorts. This fusion of both genres and international sensibilities is implied to be a distinctive facet of Reeves’ career. Intriguingly, there is also included a Goth music video for “Matthew Hopkins” by the band Cathedral, which uses samples and clips from the movie, suggesting the film’s status in alternative subcultures. Finally there are trailers for Cradle of Fear, Shallow Grave and The Stepfather. In the absence of any comprehensive commentary track, these features at least serve to contextualize the film.
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UK BLU-RAY PURCHASE INFORMATION: Witchfinder General [Blu-Ray] [1968]
USA DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Witchfinder General
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