Witchfinder General (AKA The Conqueror Worm)

Dir: Michael Reeves

1968

*****

Tigon Productions purchased the rights to Ronald Bassett's 1966 novel Witchfinder General while it was still in galley form and before publication. They approached American International Pictures to co-produce it with them and with a budget of just £100,000 they made one of the best British horror films of all time. It is a highly fictionalised account of the murderous witch-hunting exploits of Matthew Hopkins, a 17th-century English lawyer who claimed to have been appointed as a "Witch Finder Generall" by Parliament during the English Civil War to root out sorcery and witchcraft. Despite the novel being fairly low-brow fiction, the people at Tigon felt it "had some scope, had some breadth to it; there was canvas for a film.” Tigon offered the film to Michael Reeves, who had just completed The Sorcerers, starring Boris Karloff, for the production company. It was retitled The Conqueror Worm in the United States in an attempt to link it with Roger Corman's earlier series of Edgar Allan Poe-related films starring Vincent Price, although this movie has nothing to do with any of Poe's stories, and only briefly alludes to his poem. The story takes place in 1645, during the English Civil War. Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price), an opportunist and witchhunter, takes advantage of the breakdown in social order to impose a reign of terror in East Anglia. Hopkins and his assistant, John Stearne (Robert Russell), visit village after village, brutally torturing confessions out of suspected witches. They charge the local magistrates for the work they carry out. Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy) is a young Roundhead. After surviving a brief skirmish and killing his first enemy soldier (and thus saving the life of his Captain), he rides home to Brandeston, Suffolk, to visit his lover Sara (Hilary Dwyer). Sara is the niece of the village priest, John Lowes (Rupert Davies). Lowes gives his permission to Marshall to marry Sara, telling him there is trouble coming to the village and he wants Sara far away before it arrives. Marshall asks Sara why the old man is frightened. She tells him they have been threatened and become outcasts in their own village. Marshall vows to Sara, "rest easy and no-one shall harm you. I put my oath to that." At the end of his army leave, Marshall rides back to join his regiment, and chances upon Hopkins and Stearne on the path. Marshall gives the two men directions to Brandeston then rides on. In Brandeston, Hopkins and Stearne immediately begin rounding up suspects. Lowes is accused at his home and tortured. He has needles stuck into his back (in an attempt to locate the so-called "Devil's Mark"), and is about to be killed, when Sara stops Hopkins by offering him sexual favours in exchange for her uncle's safety. However, soon Hopkins is called away to another village. Stearne takes advantage of Hopkins' absence by raping Sara. When Hopkins returns and finds out what Stearne has done, Hopkins will have nothing further to do with the young woman. He instructs Stearne to begin torturing Lowes again. Shortly before departing the village, Hopkins and Stearne execute Lowes and two women. Marshall returns to Brandeston and is horrified by what has happened to Sara. He vows to kill both Hopkins and Stearne. After "marrying" Sara in a ceremony of his own devising and instructing her to flee to Lavenham, he rides off by himself. In the meantime, Hopkins and Stearne have become separated after a Roundhead patrol attempts to commandeer their horses. Marshall locates Stearne, but after a brutal fight, Stearne is able to escape. He reunites with Hopkins and informs him of Marshall's desire for revenge. Hopkins and Stearne enter the village of Lavenham. Marshall, on a patrol to locate the King, learns they are there and quickly rides to the village with a group of his soldier friends. Hopkins, however, having earlier learned that Sara was in Lavenham, has set a trap to capture Marshall. Hopkins and Stearne frame Marshall and Sara as witches and take them to the castle to be interrogated. Marshall watches as needles are repeatedly jabbed into Sara's back, but he refuses to confess to witchcraft, instead vowing again to kill Hopkins. He breaks free from his bonds and stamps on Stearne's face, at the same time that his army comrades approach the castle dungeon. Marshall grabs an axe and repeatedly strikes Hopkins. The soldiers enter the room and are horrified to see what their friend has done. One of them puts the mutilated but still living Hopkins out of his misery by shooting him dead. Marshall's mind snaps and he shouts, "You took him from me! You took him from me!" Sara, also apparently on the brink of insanity, screams uncontrollably over and over again. Reeves featured many scenes of intense onscreen torture and violence that were considered unusually sadistic at the time. Upon its theatrical release throughout the spring and summer of 1968, the movie's gruesome content was met with disgust by several film critics in the UK, despite having been extensively censored by the British Board of Film Censors. In the US, the film was shown virtually intact and was a box office success, but it was almost completely ignored by reviewers. Witchfinder General eventually developed into a cult film, partially attributable to Reeves's 1969 death from a drug overdose at the age of 25, only nine months after Witchfinder's release. Over the years it has gained notoriety and has since become regarded as one of the greatest horror films of all time. Reeves and co-writer Tom Baker had begun drafting a screenplay with Donald Pleasence firmly in mind as the film's star. However, once American International Pictures became involved in the production, they insisted that their contract star, Vincent Price, be given the lead, and Pleasence was dropped from the film. With the abrupt change of star, Reeves and Baker had to rethink their original concept of presenting Hopkins as "ineffective and inadequate … a ridiculous authority figure", which they had believed Pleasence could play to perfection. They knew the tall, imposing Price, with his long history of horror roles, would have to be more of a straightforward villain, and they made changes to their script accordingly. It is a shame really, because as much as I love Vincent Price, I think Donald Pleasence and the original idea for the character could have been something even greater than what it is.

Price and Reeves really didn't get on. Reeves didn't great Price at the airport which was the done thing at the time. When Price was greeted by a producer he barked "

Take me to your goddamn young genius,"  When Price arrived on location and met Reeves for the first time, the young director immediately told the actor, "I didn't want you, and I still don't want you, but I'm stuck with you!". During another incedent on set, Reeves made a suggestion to the legendary actor regarding his performance but Price objected and told the director: "I've made 87 films. What have you done?". Reeves responded: "I've made three good ones." Still, it is amazing that it was even released, given the ridiculous (and infamous) fury of the British Board of Film Censors. It was required by law for all British film productions of that time, that the completed first draft of any screenplay would be presented to the BBFC to determine if any possible censorship issues could be anticipated. On the same day as the first draft was submitted, a preliminary report was issued by a BBFC examiner, who, noting that Tony Tenser, the founder and chief executive of Tigon, was an "ape", referred to the screenplay as "perfectly beastly" and "ghoulish". The script was returned to Tenser a few days later, with a more detailed report from the same examiner, which described the screenplay as "a study in sadism in which every detail of cruelty and suffering is lovingly dwelt on … a film which followed the script at all closely would run into endless censorship trouble." After a second draft was subsequently written and sent to the BBFC only eleven days after the first draft, the reaction was nearly the same. It was returned to Tenser with an "exhaustive list" of requirements to reduce the film's possible offensiveness. Reeves and Baker completed a third and final draft that was "substantially toned down" in content from the previous attempts. This version of the screenplay, which was filmed with only a few minor revisions during the production, was missing many of the more explicit moments of violence described in the first submitted drafts: the death spasms of the pre-credits hanging victim, Lowes getting stabbed fifteen times with a steel spike, and a sniper's victim somersaulting through the air and slamming into a tree. A sequence depicting the Battle of Naseby was to be filmed, during which a soldier's head was to be cut off on screen. Most significantly, the film's finale was completely altered. In the original ending, Stearne falls in with a group of gypsies and attempts to rape one of their women, who successfully fights off her attacker by plunging her thumbs into his eyes, blinding him. The gypsies then stake him to death. Marshall arrives and convinces the gypsies to assist him in ambushing Hopkins. Hopkins is viciously beaten by Marshall, who forces a "confession" out of the bloodied man. Marshall partially drowns Hopkins (whose thumbs have been tied to his feet), then finally hangs him. naive and ambitious maybe, but I can’t help but wonder what the film would have looked like without the pesky BBFC. Like I say though, it is still a masterpiece of horror and the low budget actually makes it feel more realistic and in turn, frighteningly real.