Witchfinder General

It's like, no, it's above mid.

Maybe now I think since Witchfinder General has been kind of reassessed as like, you know, unholy Trinity excellence.

I feel like this coming after it gets a little bit lost in the shuffle because maybe people who see Witchfinder General, which is like Price is Best and totally serious and hardcore frightening, you know, and that's the Matthew Hopkins real, real history.

I think maybe people, even the production at the time was kind of like, we got to change this to try and capture that.

And maybe that didn't quite work.

And maybe people look at this now and they think it's not as good as Witchfinder General.

But and they're like or they see Price going back to, you know, playing it up.

Yeah.

Also worth looking at.

I watched the Witchfinder General series.

I think it's on time and I haven't seen it I haven't seen it ever but I know that that's Vincent Price and his sort of best performance so I think it's hilarious that this film was seen as like really controversial and really taboo because obviously watching it now it just seems very tame however there is one scene where you do see a woman fully set alight slowly actually because they sort of dipper into the fire but it's over the top it's sort of like bawdy and gaudy and all the rest of it but I had good fun with it I also watched the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society because that was on BBC Two one random weekend evening.

So that was really good, actually.

The thing that creeps me out about...

Vincent Price movies aren't creepy, unless you're watching Witchfinder General or something like that.

They go up to a line, but they can't be fun.

But the thing that creeps me out about Mask of the Red Death is that everybody other than Vincent Price, I'm convinced, is like... an off-screen evil British asshole, and they're just really having fun.

Say something like, I want the satisfaction of taking it away from you after what you've done to me and Lonnie rather than I want the cash.

Lonnie is dressed like Witchfinder General and says he's sponsoring Chick all the way up to the bout without a doubt.

He talks about Rocco attacking him and he says, I got what you call knocked around the chest.

I had several inches of me beard torn off and some collector's items records smashed.

But Russell's film created a great deal of interest.

I suppose earlier, Michael Reeves with Witchfinder General also kind of Started that ball rolling slightly because that film was very successful and resulted in things like Mark of the Devil and indeed also Jess Franco's film The Bloody Judge.

But non-exploitation really kind of explodes after the success of Ken Russell's film.

And so you get all of these movies that kind of revel in the idea of what goes on behind convent walls.

Ian Ogilvie is an actor who has entertained generations, having starred in a plethora of roles across film and television.

He's worked alongside iconic actors like Boris Karloff and Vincent Price in cult horror films like The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General, as well as having roles in everything from The Avengers and I, Claudius to Murder, She Wrote and Robin of Sherwood.

However, his most famous part is probably that of Simon Templer in The Return of the Saint, a move which saw him take over the famed halo from Roger Moore.

Ogilvy is now back on screen in the British action thriller Nightfall, a film that sees him share the screen with Geoffrey Moore, the son of his Saint predecessor, Roger Moore.

You'll have to hurry.

Time's getting on, you know.

I mean, you've just touched on sort of Boris Karloff there and you've worked with, you know, so many sort of, I mean, you did Witchfinder General, you know, as well, sort of classic horror.

I mean, that must, people must come up to you all the time and talk about these films.

But I think you could make a really good case that The Blood on Satan's Claw is a witch movie.

And that Witchfinder General focuses on witches, but really it's just Vincent Price running around and killing women.

Well, that's sort of the same thing as what's the Arthur Miller movie? The Crucible.

The Crucible.

Wicker Man, 1973.

Or Witchfinder General.

Hmm.

Well, I think Wicker Man is probably the pinnacle of British folk horror.

So it's kind of hard for me to go against it in any way.

I probably do.

I think you like Witchfinder General.

I think I probably like it more than you do, but I think, uh, I think you do like it.

One of the few competitors.

Amicus was probably the biggest competitor, but Tygon put out some other horror movies, including Witchfinder General, which this movie probably takes some cues from.

I don't have the box office, of course, so I don't have exactly what this is up against, but I do have some of the movies that it was probably playing up against a little bit here in April and May of 1971.

So this is pretty interesting.

And that would have been what you, if you went and saw this in a drive-in back during that time period, that's what you would have been seeing, would have been those two movies together.

You mentioned it, Smoke.

This is kind of an unholy trinity, so to speak, an unofficial unholy trinity with the Witchfinder General from 1968 and the Wicker Man from 1973.

Well, have you seen Witchfinder General? I've never seen that one, but obviously I've seen the Wicker Man.