DB7

Where's Vinegar Tom?
Witchfinder General is accurate enough, save for the lack of a greyhound with the head of an ox that could turn itself into a four-year-old child with no head

* Alex von Tunzelmann

1. Witchfinder General
2. Release: 1968
3. Country: UK
4. Cert (UK): 18
5. Runtime: 87 mins
6. Directors: Michael Reeves
7. Cast: Ian Ogilvy, Vincent Price
8. More on this film

Witchfinder General is the story of the infamous Matthew Hopkins, a lawyer from Suffolk who set himself up as a freelance interrogator. Using underhand methods, Hopkins was able between 1644 and 1646 to secure the conviction and subsequent execution of 230 people for witchcraft. The film takes the trial and execution of a real priest, John Lowes, as its starting point, adding on a fictional love story between Lowes's ward Sarah and a Roundhead soldier, Richard Marshall.

Casting
Vincent Price, in his late fifties, is a very weatherbeaten Matthew Hopkins, who would have been in his twenties in 1645. But his performance captures the sanctimonious, icy sleaziness evident in the real Hopkins's writing. A magistrate tells him he has one old and two young women suspected of witchcraft, and Hopkins confides that he has a new method of execution. "It's a fitting end for the foul ungodliness that is womankind," he intones, unbuttoning his doublet. "Now fetch that young pair here." Meanwhile, his real-life sidekick John Stearne is portrayed by Robert Russell as a sadistic heavy. "What line of business are you in?" asks a camp peasant. "Witchfindin'," growls Stearne. The peasant doesn't miss a beat: "Ooh, that's nice! Very nice."

Justice
Technically, torture was illegal in England by 1645. The film follows the real Hopkins in applying a very broad definition of what isn't torture, putting suspected witches through sleep deprivation and ducking in water. The only thing Hopkins did that probably isn't on the menu at Guantanamo Bay was to find and pierce the devil's mark. This was supposedly a teat that witches used to suckle imps, usually concealed as a mole or wart. It was said the mark would not hurt or bleed if pricked with a pin. The film shows Hopkins's assistant going at people's freckles with a dagger, but the fact that they're yelling and bleeding all over the place would have been little use. The real Hopkins facilitated matters by having a special retractable pin made, ensuring a very high conviction rate.

War
Marshall is summoned to the Battle of Naseby, the decisive 1645 showdown between Royalists and Parliamentarians. The film's budget is showing. Cromwell's forces at Naseby numbered 13,500; here, they seem to be, well, 13. Later, Cromwell himself is shown being warty and eating chicken drumsticks – the official food of history – while his aides say things like "The conflict at Naseby, sir, will go down as a triumph of your strategy." You don't even have to blink to miss the actual battle, because it isn't here

Details
Hopkins arrests Sarah and Marshall, meaning to get them both convicted of witchcraft. "I observed the accused talking with their familiars," says his put-up witness. "A black cat and a stoat." Is that all? The real Hopkins got one woman to confess to having Newes, a polecat; Jarmara, a fat spaniel with no legs; Vinegar Tom, a greyhound with the head of an ox that could turn itself into a four-year-old child with no head; and various others including Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Grizzell and Greedigut; names, Hopkins wrote, "which no mortal could invent." He had obviously never met Sarah Palin's children.

Violence
Marshall breaks free from his bonds and starts whacking Hopkins with a handy axe. There is a legend that Hopkins got his just desserts by being tried as a witch himself, but it's more likely that he died of tuberculosis in 1647

Verdict
Bearing in mind that Witchfinder General is a cheap, schlocky horror film, it manages to be a remarkably accurate piece of historical film-making. It skips over the process of 17th century justice by not showing any actual trials, but the film's depiction of witch-hunting as the manipulation of a credulous public by cynical, greedy misogynists is certainly justifiable, and the civil war setting is accurate and evocative. But whatever happened to Vinegar Tom?

schalcken

How great to see my favourite film here! I totally agree. Its use of the English landscape brilliantly well done and the performance Reeves coaxes out of Vincent Price is really evil.

Anyone got any memorabilia from this film to exchange? I'm after German lobby cards, especially....

homeguard

billy bentley

I have a copy of Malcolm Gaskill's "Witchfinders: A Seventeenth Century English Tragedy" (pub.2005) on my bookshelf and hope to start it fairly soon.

didi-5

I absolutely love Witchfinder General even though I always regret watching it on my own when I can't sleep later! It's a really unusual British film in many ways as it isn't just a Hammer horror - it really is terrifying, chilling, and rather weird. I can't think of a more perfect Matthew Hopkins than Vincent Price. Perhaps it was his last great role after the Corman chillers he'd made a few years earlier. And maybe the only decent role for Ian Ogilvy as well before he got bogged down in Roger Moore impersonations for the Saint.

This and The Wicker Man really fly the flag for offbeat British horror, IMO.

m35541

Apart from the fact that Hopkins and Stearne died peacefully in their beds and the fact that their victims had "proper trials" - a fault of most films which seem to assume that due process of law was suspended for suspected witches; one of the saddest things about the whole phenomenon was that it wasn't; the film of The Crucible is one of the few that addresses why trials and confessions were so important in these cases - the other major historical inaccuracy is the whole Hopkins/Stearne relationship.

In the film there is a class antagonism that runs through the whole relationship. Hopkins is middle class and seems to dispise the lower class Stearne. The latter always calls him Matthew and seems to view himself as Hopkins' partner. Hopkins always calls him Stearne and views him as a brute whom he has to deal with in order to carry out God's work. In reality both were middle class (though Stearne was lesser middle class than Hopkins), Stearne carried out his own investigations without Hopkins' help and even, as Hopkins did, wrote a book justifying his activities. The whole relationship as portrayed in the film (which I think works well in the context of the film) is a fiction.

torinfan

ROTFLOL

I saw Witchfinder General many years ago. Great film.

Tell me your troubles and doubts
Giving me everything inside and out .

Moor Larkin

The most notable thing was that Hilary Dwyer's character was stark staring mad by the end of it...................

as you would expect.......... probably...........

cinemal

This was the first feature film I ever bought on 8mm after seeing the trailer on another 8mm reel. That was in the early 70's and cost me £82. Had the DVD for £3 a couple of years ago. How times change.
I like VP's subdued, non hammy performance in this one.