The production history of Michael Reeves’s final film is almost as fascinating as the film itself. Irrefutably a masterpiece of, not just horror, but of cinema, Witchfinder General ranks alongside Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man as one of the most acute sociological and psychological examinations of how violence is promoted and maintained in the name of religion.
1645, England: A civil war is raging between Oliver Cromwell’s Royalists and the King’s Parliament. Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price), taking full advantage of the civil unrest, sallies his wares as a witch hunter sent by government. However, after Hopkins arrives in Brandiston and hangs a priest named John Lowes (Rupert Davies), Royalist solider Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy) seeks vengeance on behalf of the recently deceased’s niece, Sara Lowes (Hilary Heath), who is also Richard’s fiancée. Yet, after the Marshall tracks down the witchfinder, Hopkins quickly turns the accusatory finger upon Sara and his assailant.
Witchfinder General is the last film from one of the, not would be, but brightest young stars behind the camera, Michael Reeves. At the tender age of 25, the filmmaker would live only nine months after the completion of the feature before succumbing to a barbiturate overdose. Reeves’s cinematic acumen was apparent from the offset of his career, yet only matured with Witchfinder General. In much the same manner as another Master of the Arts, American playwright Arthur Miller with “The Crucible,” the director adapts a piece of history, which he discovered in Ronald Bassett’s novel of the same name published two years prior, in order to indict and comment upon the hypocritical times in which he lived. However, long before Oliver Stone would be scrutinized for meddling with historic fact, Reeves forgoes creating a faithful retelling of what came before as he crafts his tale so as to meet his desired ends.
After working with the likes of Barbara Steele and Boris Karloff, Reeves set his sights on Donald Pleasence as his lead in Witchfinder General. However, AIP, who partially financed the affair (the work was shot in under two months on a budget of a little over £80,000), demanded that Vincent Price play the title role. Rumor has it that the filmmaker, so distraught that his vision was being compromised for the bottom line, when a hostile Price (having heard beforehand of Reeves’s dissention of the actor) asked the director upon their first meeting, “I’ve made 87 [sic] films. What have you done?” pithily responded, “I’ve made three good ones.” As such, the cold, hostile distance which the two maintained throughout filming was channeled through Price’s acting, which resulted in the American actor later admitting that, as a consequence of the professional strife, he’d delivered “one of the best performances I’ve ever given.” Nonetheless, Price offered Reeves one last jibe on the final day principle as he appeared on set unabashedly drunk.
Yet the film’s notoriety rests–not with its production or, ironically, its incendiary criticism of the manner in which religious dogma is executed–but upon its ready depiction of violence. Billed as “The Year’s Most Violent Film,” Reeves delivered a tale in which characters are tortured, abused, raped, and maimed. The censors, in lieu of the fact that such is never presented gratuitously as, like Hopkins, the director coolly distances himself from it, demanded cuts be made, which–as throughout the history of the Arts–guaranteed the work a wider audience than it would have otherwise garnered on its own accord. But, alas, almost twenty years later, the production would later be truncated via its soundtrack as Paul Ferris’s exquisite score was replaced by Kendall Schmidt misplaced synthesizer-driven cacophony of noise. To add insult to injury, this occurred after AIP, with the hope of capitalizing upon the success of Roger Corman’s Poe collaborations with Price, retitled the work “The Conqueror Worm” after it hit American soil.
However, all of this is extraneous to the feature itself. Witchfinder General’s effectiveness is due to its genesis and aesthetic principle being founded upon the crux of terror as a monster stalks and slays innocents. As the chaos of civil war parallels the bewilderment and fear which Hopkins preys upon as, fittingly, a rebel solider plays antagonist to Parliament’s agent of morality, the film is the epitome of horror for the Witchfinder becomes truly frightening in that he symbolizes the lack of intellectual and moral progress humanity has made over the course of 300 years. Using the same psychology found within Jonathan Edwards’s hellfire sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” via the Ad Baculum approach of the fear of the consequences for non-compliance, Reeves casts a dark light on Hopkins’s supposedly moral crusade for we witness his ethical standing crumble as he accepts sexual favors in exchange for pardons atop him unrepentantly pointing the finger to those whom he openly distains or who threatens his power, be it physically or in the form of whistle blowing. Frustratingly, yet revealingly, though a war is raging, we watch as Hopkins becomes responsible for more deaths than two military forces combined and, at that, in the name of religion. But, on that note, Reeves’s masterstroke is that he never attempts to legitimize or renounce the veracity of religion, but rather focuses upon how such is being utilized given the time (as well as his own).
Still yet, though Hopkins’s motives are readily cast as impure as those which he claims to be hunting, it is those which he is serving and, at that, twice over, who are the true monsters for even the most logistically naïve individual would find the Witchfinder’s methods suspect. Hopkins tells us repeatedly, though we never witness Example 1, that a witch cut will refuse to bleed, a witch burned will faint as Satan relieves his own of suffering, amid the ol’ Catch-22 of a submerged person who is of the Black Arts will inevitably float (and thereby be burned or hung) or will drown if innocent. This says nothing of the Guantanamo Bay tactic (thus the film continues to resound as it remains sadly pertinent) of forcing a confession by way of torture as Hopkins’s aide, John Stearne (played to an aplomb by Robert Russell), has his boss silently admit his sadistic motives. Furthermore, not only does no one dare posit a complaint for fear of being accused via support of the condemned (though each and every person finds Hopkins’s tactics dubious), goaded by and using hysteria as their alibi, characters willfully point fingers at those which they merely bear a grudge knowing that their enemy will inexorably perish since innocence cannot be proven. In short, Hopkins serves as a hired assassin who is never short of interested, paying clients.
Lambasted upon its release and brutally dissected throughout the following decades, Witchfinder General’s saving grace is ironic in the fact that its message remains wretchedly poignant. Due to its unapologetically violent content, a cult following developed, thus permitting the feature to remain in circulation until a time in which it would be, not only understood, but appreciated. Much like Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, Michael Reeves’s work stands as a testament of humanity’s cognitive and ethical stagnation and, with that, perhaps the filmmaker’s final production has yet to find its time and place. Paradoxically, critics still deliberate upon why the director opted to deviate from the script’s original, upbeat and redeeming finale in favor of its improvised, nihilistic final chord.
– Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
