Format: DVD from River Valley District Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.
Witchfinder General is one of those movies that comes with a great deal of additional baggage in the vast number of names it goes by. The copy I got was titled Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General, and I’ve seen it listed as Edgar Allen Poe’s Witchfinder General. It was also released in the States as The Conqueror Worm another weak attempt to connect this story to the canon of Poe despite it having no connection at all.
Sherman set the Way-Back Machine for the time of Oliver Cromwell and civil war raging across England. While Cromwell’s troops attempt to purge Catholicism from Great Britain, Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price) moves from town to town conducting trials to find witches. This goes about how you would expect based on what history you know from these days. Someone accused of witchcraft is put on trial and endures a variety of torture, in this case at the hands of Hopkins’s assistant John Stearne (Robert Russell). Eventually, they are put to a final test which is either fatal, proving their innocence or valid confession, or not so fatal, which means a horrible death.
