Witchfinder General

Vincent Price gives his best and least camp performance as Matthew Hopkins, a real man who profited from torturing accused witches during the English Civil War. There is nothing supernatural in it. The horror is entirely that the law permits this and a certain kind of man will always volunteer.

Michael Reeves directed it at 23 and died the next year, which makes the bleakness feel like a testament. The English countryside has rarely looked so beautiful or meant so little to the people being destroyed in it.

Grim, serious and one of British horror's peaks.