retrospective

Witchfinder General

Witchfinder General | Michael Reeves | UK/US 1968 | 86 Min | DCP
Metro
Sa,25.09.▸20:30

The first in the so-called “Unholy Trinity” of folk horror, and Michael Reeves’s final feature in a promising but brief career, Witchfinder General adapts Ronald Bassett’s salacious novel of the same name, based on the true story (or at least the true legend) of self-proclaimed seventeenth-century witchfinder Matthew Hopkins, played with unprecedented ferocity by horror icon Vincent Price. A heavily fictionalized account of Hopkins’s torture and murder spree across the countryside during the English Civil War in order to expose and obliterate sorcery and witchcraft in the home counties, Witchfinder General is a dramatically violent and nihilistic film whose notorious censure by the BBFC was countered with success on American soil in uncut form as The Conqueror Worm.

Michael Reeves
Reeves, Michael (* 1944, † 1969) has been called the “attendant ghost of British film history” and “our directorial James Dean.” He completed only three films before his untimely death: the low-budget horror movie Revenge of the Blood Beast, the psychedelic vampire joyride The Sorcerers and, most importantly, Witchfinder General.
Watch trailer
Language eOV
Cast Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, Rupert Davies, Hilary Heath, Robert Russell
Writer Tom Baker, Michael Reeves (based on a novel by Ronald Bassett)
Editing Howard Lanning
Cinematography John Coquillon

Screenings

Metro
Sa,25.09.▸20:30