If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Masterpiece Theatre and Faces of Death had an unwanted love child during a plague year, Witchfinder General is your answer: a brutal slog through East Anglia’s most scenic burning pyres, featuring Vincent Price in a powdered wig and all the moral clarity of a wet musket.
This 1968 folk horror film is allegedly about the evils of power, the horrors of misogyny, and the chaos of civil war. But mostly, it’s about watching people scream while being poked with sharp sticks until Vincent Price gets a comeuppance so bloody, it could double as an early Slayer music video.
⚖️ The Plot: Salem, but Make It British and Horny
The film follows Matthew Hopkins (Price), a lawyer with a murder kink and a job title he made up over breakfast—“Witchfinder General”—who travels around 1640s England torturing random villagers for cash. His resume: proficient in needle-stabbing, slut-shaming, and dramatically entering rooms like a goth tax auditor.
He rolls into town with his partner John Stearne, a man who looks like he smells like turnip vodka and broken oaths, and they set about the highly scientific task of poking old people and drowning women to see if they float.
Enter Richard Marshall, a Roundhead soldier who returns home from war, only to find that his priestly uncle has been executed and his fiancée Sara has been assaulted and publicly violated by Hopkins and Stearne. This sets him on a roaring rampage of revenge, complete with horse chases, hasty “now we’re married, I guess” vows, and enough sweaty close-ups to dehydrate a camel.
🩸 The Violence: Period Drama by Way of Torture Dungeon
There are entire Saw movies with less fingernail trauma than this so-called historical piece. Director Michael Reeves apparently took one look at Vincent Price and thought, “Let’s strip the camp, up the cruelty, and make Price beat someone to death with period-accurate hypocrisy.”
You could argue the film is a condemnation of authoritarian cruelty, but it’s hard to tell when you’re watching yet another innocent woman tied to a ladder like she’s auditioning for the British Museum of Flammable Wigs.
🎭 The Performances: Ye Olde Screams & Blood-Crusted Beards
Vincent Price tones down his usual hammy grandeur to play Hopkins as a cold, calculating sadist—a man who’d accuse his own mother of witchcraft if it meant a free room at the inn and a grope under the bodice.
Ian Ogilvy’s Richard Marshall is all clenched jaw and sweaty vendetta, delivering every line like he’s trying to pass a kidney stone in iambic pentameter. Meanwhile, Hilary Dwyer’s Sara spends the majority of the movie in a permanent state of being either violated, traumatized, or tied up while the local townsfolk do nothing and the audience quietly dies inside.
🪦 Final Verdict: Witchfinding Without a Clue
Witchfinder General wants to be a sobering anti-violence morality tale. What it actually is? A 90-minute grimdark Renaissance Faire with all the joy of a 17th-century execution and none of the satisfying historical nuance.
This is the kind of film where every moral takes a backseat to the next torture scene. It’s The Crucible with all the subtlety of a branding iron to the face. The only thing more disturbing than the content is the idea that this somehow became a cult classic. Then again, maybe some people just really enjoy watching Vincent Price accuse women of witchcraft in an accent that sounds like molasses over gravel.
One star, and only because Vincent Price managed to deliver his lines without sighing audibly at the script.
