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. read more