Directed by Michael Reeves / Screenplay by Michael Reeves and Tom Baker

Witchfinder General is the third and final feature by the English director Michael Reeves, who died at the tender age of 25 just a few months after its release. The sharp, intelligent screenplay by Reeves and Tom Baker (no relation to the Doctor Who actor) uses the social upheaval of the English Civil War as the backdrop for a study of how corrupt and ambitious men exploit chaos and prejudice to win power and control the populace - a topic still resonant today. The story is a fictionalised account of the real-life exploits of Matthew Hopkins, the Puritan lawyer who made it his business to root out sorcery in East Anglia during the 1640s, sending more victims to the gallows in three years than all the witch-hunters of the previous century put together. The real Hopkins died in his twenties, but the role in Witchfinder General went to an older man, and a screen legend at that. Michael Reeves was unhappy with the studio’s insistence on casting the American horror icon Vincent Price, and the two men were at odds throughout the shoot: during one quarrel, the furious star is said to have thundered, ‘I have made eighty-four films! What have you done?’ - to which the young director replied, ‘I’ve made two good ones.’ But the results paid off, and Price later conceded that Reeves had coaxed from him ‘one of the best performances I’ve ever given.’ Noted for its bewitchingly beautiful evocation of the English countryside as well as for its scenes of grisly violence, Witchfinder General is a masterpiece of British period horror: a tale of treachery and revenge that plays out almost like a classic Western.

Framed Dimensions: 410mm x 300mm

Acrylic on 300gsm Arches oil paper
Glazed, mounted and framed

Supplied with signed letter of authenticity from Barnaby