Untrue Confessions: “Witchfinder General” (1968)

 IN THE WAY OF AN EXPLANATION: Though Matthew Hopkins, the antagonist of  Michael Reeves’ “Witchfinder General”, was a figure of genuine historic infamy, his exploits emerge in sketchy fictionalization to the extent that it might account for the film’s curious assertion of the generic “all person’s fictitious” disclaimer.

           “Witchfinder General”  (1968)

    Whenever the subject arises as to the hows and whys relating the attraction and obedient acclimation to the rise of unhealthy societal extremes such as Nazism, it might be useful to examine the phenomenon of witch hunting and the necessary public acceptance of an open perversion of prosecutorial abuses as the norm. The results of this general public acquiescence should be the dramatic catalyst in Michael Reeves’ lurid “Witchfinder General”, though the film’s interest is decidedly more limited in its injudicious favorability to the unsavory illustration of torturous bloodletting rather than any informed dramatization which might grant the savagery a useful historical context. In “Witchfinder General”, cause is an irrelevancy, only the bloody effect is of value.

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