In this film Vincent Price plays the Witchfinder General. A man who rides from village to village with his cronies, identifying witches, setting them up for trails, torturing them to prove they are devil worshipers, and then hanging or burning them. It’s never really clear whether the Witchfinder believes these people are witches or not… but it’s made very clear that he enjoys the power of deciding who lives and who dies.
Witchfinder General is different from any other movie that Vincent Price ever made in his career. He was still under contract with the studio AIP and was cast as the lead against the director (Michael Reeves) wishes (He requested Donald Pleasance in the role). This made life on the set very hard as Reeves would not let Vincent put in one of his trademark, gleefully over–the-top performances that I cherish so much. This resulted in the most sadistically evil, low key characters I’ve ever seen Price play. It’s chilling really.
It has everything you would expect in a witch hunt movie, but since the torture\murder scenes are not played up for gore, and because this sort of thing really happened, the pain inflicted in this movie really got under my skin. I did not enjoy watching this movie… I made me incredibly uncomfortable. I can see why some regard it as one one Vincent’s best movies, even Price himself later appreciated the performance the director brought out of him. I highly recommend it.
