Witchfinder General

A film about the terrifying combination of sadism and power.

It remains contemporary, and even frightening, in its evocation of cynical Puritanism and mass deception.

Vincent Price has a good time as a materialistic witch-hunter and woman-disfigurer and dismemberer, and the audience at the dark, ornate New Amsterdam seemed to have a good time as well.

The mass hysteria, prayers, and consequences remain most timely and provocative considering there is never a single witch in the film...

Visually, the theme is beautifully supported by Reeves' subtle use of colour, in which the delicate patchwork greens of the English countryside are shot through by the colours of death and decay as Matthew Hopkins prowls through it robed in black.

A legitimately beastly vision

Price is superb as real-life witchhunter Matthew Hopkins, and writer-director Michael Reeves pulls no punches with this absorbing material.

With no supernatural elements to speak of, it is as much an historical drama as a horror film.

This is not the kind of horror that comes from cobwebs and creaky doors. Its horrors are all too human and impossible to cast off with a simple fade out.

It's an interesting indictment of blind piousness, but it's not much of a scare film for Halloween time.