WITCHFINDER GENERAL

Inquisitor Matthew Hopkins goes up and down an England lacerated by civil war and witch hunting in the seventeenth century at the time of Cromwell, Hopkins satisfies his own sadistic tendencies in tortures and executions. When he arrives in Brandeston, he accuses pastor John Lowes of witchcraft. His niece Sarah accepts to go to bed with Hopkins to save her uncle. She is engaged to Richard Marshall, a captain in Cromwell's army. But Lowes is executed just the same. Sarah is raped by Hopkins' assistant too and is in turn accused of witchcraft. When he returns to Brandeston, Richard is imprisoned in turn and forced to witness Sarah's tortures, but he manages to free himself and hacks Hopkins to pieces with an ax as the bound girl looks on. Sarah goes mad.

"The ending, in which Sarah finally breaks down as she watches Richard hack the Witchfinder into pieces and her screams on the soundtrack merge with the romantic theme music, deserves recognition as one of the cinema's great climaxes. ... Reeves was the kind of filmmaker which the British cinema needed (and still needs) so desperately badly: someone who could merge the popular tradition of the horror film with more avantgarde concerns without rearing the curious bastard which so often results from such experiments.
Witchfinder General especially in its overpowering use of landscape contains the seeds of something which could yet develop into an important cinematic idiom in this country, and one which is as intrinsically native to England as the western is to America. The literary romantic tradition into." (David Pirie, A Heritage of Horror, New York, Avon Books, 1973, p. 155)

Director: Michael Reeves.
Screenplay: Tom Baker, Michael Reeves, dal romanzo di Ronald Bassett.
Director of photography: John Coquillon.
Editor: Howard Lanning.
Music: Paul Ferris.
Cast: Vincent Price (Matthew Hopkins), lan Ogilvy (Richard Marshall), Hillary Dwyer (Sarah), Patrick Wymark (Cromwell), Rupert Davies (John Lowes), Robert Russell, Tony Selby, Nick Henson, Alf Joint, Godfrey James, William Maxwell, Maggie Kimberley.
Production company: Louis M. Heyward, Philip Waddilove, Arnold Miller per la Tigon.