Witchfinder General [The Conqueror Worm] **** (1968, Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, Rupert Davies, Patrick Wymark, Hilary Dwyer, Nicky Henson) – Classic Movie Review 2,580

Vincent Price stars in one of his best horror roles as the true-life 17th-century witchfinder Matthew Hopkins, in the chilling 1968 film Witchfinder General [The Conqueror Worm].

Vincent Price stars in the 1968 film Witchfinder General [The Conqueror Worm], in one of his best horror roles as the true-life 17th-century witchfinder Matthew Hopkins, who travels the length and breadth of Britain torturing and killing the people he suspects of being witches and other supposed deviants.

Co-writer/director Michael Reeves’s memorably chilling 1968 British film Witchfinder General [The Conqueror Worm] is a grisly but fascinating and compelling portrait of a society where sadism is supported in the name of the state and the church.

Ian Ogilvy also stars as Richard Marshall, a young soldier who fights the system when he discovers his fiancée Sara (Hilary Dwyer) has been abused by Price’s vicious assistant John Stearne (Robert Russell).

Keeping his performance commendably stern, severe and serious, Price has a scary, lip-smacking field day, and is extremely effective in a tour de force, while Patrick Wymark is excellent as Oliver Cromwell.

Rupert Davies (as John Lowes), Wilfrid Brambell (as Master Loach), Nicky Henson (as Trooper Swallow), Tony Selby (as Salter), Bernard Kay (as fisherman Gore) also star.

Also in the cast are Godfrey James, Bill Maxwell, Maggie Kimberly, Peter Haigh, Michael Beint, Paul Ferris, John Trenaman [John Treneman], Hira Talfrey, Anne Tirard, Peter Thomas, Edward Palmer, David Webb, Lee Peters, David Lyell, Alf Joint, Martin Terry, Jack Lynn, Beaufoy Milton and Maggie Nolan.

This is the third and final film from director Reeves, who tragically died in London from an accidental alcohol and barbiturate overdose at the age of 25 nine months after the film’s release. It is a uniquely unsettling piece of work that turns the usually welcoming East Anglian fenlands into a place of great unease and terror.

It was made on location in East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk and East Sussex) from September 17, 1967 to November 13, 1967 on a low budget of only £83,000 by Tigon British Film Productions, and distributed in the UK by Tigon Pictures and in the US by American International Pictures (AIP). It took $1.5 million at the North American box office.

The cast are Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins, Ian Ogilvy as Cornet Richard Marshall, Hilary Dwyer as Sara Lowes, Rupert Davies as John Lowes, Robert Russell as John Stearne, Patrick Wymark as Oliver Cromwell, Nicky Henson as Trooper Swallow, Wilfrid Brambell as Master Loach, Tony Selby as Salter, Bernard Kay as fisherman Gore, Godfrey James as Webb, Michael Beint as Captain Gordon, John Trenaman as Trooper Harcourt, Bill Maxwell as Gifford, Paul Ferris as Paul, Maggie Kimberly as Elizabeth, Margaret Nolan [Maggie Nolan] as Girl at Inn, Peter Haigh, Hira Talfrey, Anne Tirard, Peter Thomas, Edward Palmer, David Webb, Lee Peters, David Lyell, Alf Joint, Martin Terry, Jack Lynn, and Beaufoy Milton.

Reeves, Tom Baker and producer Louis M Heyward base their screenplay on the novel by Ronald Bassett, which supposedly derives from the poem The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe.

[Spoiler alert] The story shows Hopkins being killed in 1645 while witch-hunting, but he died of natural causes in 1647, a retired witch-hunter.

Reeves wanted Donald Pleasence to play Hopkins, but American distributor/ co-financier American International Pictures (AIP) insisted on Price, which caused friction between the two men. While filming Reeves was constantly telling Price to tone down his over-acting, and to play the role more seriously. Only on seeing the finished film did Price understand Reeves and decided to make friends.

Did this exchange ever happen? Price: ‘Young man, I have made 84 films. What have you done?’ Reeves: ‘I’ve made three good ones.’ Almost certainly not.

Eventually, Price came to regard his performance as the finest of his horror career.

The American version, retitled The Conqueror Worm (or on screen as Matthew Hopkins: Conqueror Worm), features opening and closing narration from Poe’s poem and replaces Paul Ferris’s score with a similar one by Kendall Schmidt.

American International Pictures (AIP) retitled it The Conqueror Worm (actually on screen as Matthew Hopkins: Conqueror Worm) to link it with their series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations directed by Roger Corman and starring Price. Because the film’s story has no relation to any of Poe’s stories, the American version starts and ends with Poe’s poem The Conqueror Worm being read through Price’s narration.

UK DVD versions feature both the uncut UK cinema print (the Director’s Cut), which restores the violence, and the European print (the Export Version) which includes both the BBFC censor cuts for violence and topless nudity during the tavern scenes.

Witchfinder General is directed by Michael Reeves, runs 86 minutes, is made by Tigon British Film Productions and American International Pictures (AIP), is distributed by Tigon Pictures (UK) and American International Pictures (AIP) (US), is written by Tom Baker, Michael Reeves and Louis M Heyward (additional scenes), based on Witchfinder General by Ronald Bassett, is shot in Eastmancolor by John Coquillon, is produced by Louis M Heyward, Philip Waddilove and Arnold Miller, and is scored by Paul Ferris.

Release dates: May 15, 1968 (Los Angeles), May 17, 1968 (US) and 19 May 1968 (UK).

In 2015 the 71-year-old Ian Ogilvy was filming We Still Steal the Old Way (2016), his 100th acting credit. He again plays Richie Archer in a sequel to We Still Kill the Old Way (2014). And in 2022 he starred in Renegades. He also appeared in Reeves’s The Sorcerers (1967).

On 21 May 2019, it was announced that John Hillcoat is to direct the remake of the historical horror film Witchfinder General. Nicolas Winding Refn and Rupert Preston are producing the update, which is written by Jon Croker (The Woman in Black 2). By 2024 there is no sign of it.

English film director Michael Reeves.

Michael Reeves (17 October 1943 – 11 February 1969)

Reeves worked in Italy on Castle of the Living Dead (1964), and then as director and co-writer of The She Beast (1966), with a witch hunt similar to the opening of Witchfinder General. Back in Britain, Reeves directed The Sorcerers (1967) with Boris Karloff and Ian Ogilvy, and then co-wrote and directed Witchfinder General when he was only 24.

He was taking tablets to help him sleep while at work on a film of The Oblong Box (starring Vincent Price so the two must have made up). His cleaning lady found him dead in his Knightsbridge bedroom on the morning of 11 February 1969.

Nicholas Victor Leslie Henson (12 May 1945 – 15 December 2019)

Nicky Henson and John Trenaman in Witchfinder General (1968).

RIP Nicky Henson, who died of cancer on 15 December 2019, aged 74.

Nicky Henson was the son of comedian Leslie Henson. He married actress Una Stubbs (who played his sister-in-law in TV’s EastEnders). They had two sons, Joe and Christian, both composers. The marriage ended when Henson began an affair in 1974 with Susan Hampshire, his co-star on stage. He later married ballerina Marguerite Porter, and had a third son, Keaton, a musician and illustrator. He said that, despite his 50 years of acting, his tombstone would probably read: ‘Here lies Nicky Henson – he was in one episode of Fawlty Towers’.

Nicky Henson as Trooper Swallow.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,580

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