|
Author
|
Topic: Witchfinder General, 2 x 800ft Col Sound
|
Tom Photiou
Film God
Posts: 4837
From: Plymouth U.K
Registered: Dec 2003
|
posted May 20, 2018 04:47 PM
I dont think there are many people within our hobby who doesn't know about this excellent release from Walton films, our copy is on agfa stock with very good colour. The print is sharp and the sound is what i would call average to good. This print has to be around 40 years old.
Witchfinder General is a 1968 British horror film directed by Michael Reeves and starring Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy and Hilary Dwyer. The screenplay was by Reeves and Tom Baker based on Ronald Bassett's novel of the same name. Made on a low budget of under £100,000, the movie was co-produced by Tigon British Film Productions and American International Pictures. The story details the heavily fictionalised murderous witch-hunting exploits of Matthew Hopkins, a 17th-century English lawyer who claimed to have been appointed as a "Witch Finder General" by Parliament during the English Civil War to root out sorcery and witchcraft.
The film 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 Price although this movie has nothing to do with any of Poe's stories, and only briefly alludes to his poem.
Director Reeves featured many scenes of intense on-screen 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.[5] Over the years, several prominent critics have championed the film, including J. Hoberman, Danny Peary, Robin Wood and Derek Malcolm. In 2005, the magazine Film named Witchfinder General the 15th-greatest horror film of all time. Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn stated in 2016, that he had bought the remake rights.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tom Photiou
Film God
Posts: 4837
From: Plymouth U.K
Registered: Dec 2003
|
posted May 23, 2018 05:15 PM
I always find it amusing how your censors work in the States, this film released over the pond was,as you know, re titled The Conqueror Worm, had all the violence in there including the additional footage of Price being hacked with an axe, but for some weird reason they shy away from a bit of nudity. I find that most odd.
Horror films have an R rating where anyone under 17 can go as long as they are with a parent, so a 10 year old could watch a gory violent horror movie as long as they are accompanied, but a flash of breast, ( as in this film reviewed here) is cut!!!!!. How odd.
Personally, i hate censorship of any kind, some idiot gets to watch it then decides that he or she will determine what the public can see. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
[ May 26, 2018, 01:40 AM: Message edited by: Tom Photiou ]
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
