Witchfinder General (The Conqueror Worm)

1968 period drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Matthew Hopkins appoints himself "Witchfinder General," travelling the countryside with his thuggish assistant Stearnes to falsely accuse and and put to death people thought to be witches. Soldier Richard Marshall's girlfriend's dad, a priest, is accused, and Richard goes AWOL, risking treason to come to her aid.

Vincent Price said that this was his best horror movie performance. It's a more serious Vincent Price, menacing and ruthless. It's a solid performance, strange when juxtaposed with his campy run as Lionheart in Theater of Blood. This isn't a scary horror film at all, but it's got this creepy tone with a strange period details similar to movies like Blood on Satan's Claw or even The Wicker Man. The horror has more to do with what actual people--indeed, characters whose thinking is sadly inspired by actual historical thinking--are capable of than the more fantastical ideas we get in most horror films. The ending earns a big wow with its ability to shock and horrify. Oh, by the way: I don't know what the American title (The Conqueror Worm) has to do with anything or if it's really based on an Edgar Allan Poe story. I don't think it is, but there is something literary about the dialogue, and a lot of the dialogue between Hopkins and Stearnes drips with a dark irony. "Men have strange motives for what they do." "We're doing God's work." Price recites a poem at the beginning of the movie, and that might be one of Poe's. I could look it up if Angie wouldn't have stolen the "Complete Works of" book that I used to use as a doorstop. All I know is that this movie has a Vincent Price sex scene, and my life will never be the same again. Or did I just imagine that?