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The most famous film by British 1960s horror studio Creator/TigonBritishFilmProductions (even though everyone assumes that it [[WrongfullyAttributed must have been by Hammer]]). ''Witchfinder General'', known in the USA as "The Conqueror Worm", starred horror icon Creator/VincentPrice as the notorious seventeenth-century fanatic Matthew Hopkins, the [[JobTitle eponymous]] self-styled [[TheWitchHunter Witchfinder General]]. Initially condemned by critics for its graphic violence, but a modest commercial success, the film has become a celebrated CultClassic of [[FolkHorror British rural horror]].

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!!This film contains the following tropes:

* AgeLift: Hopkins, who was in his late twenties at the oldest at the time of his death, was played by Vincent Price, who was fifty-six years of age when the film was made.
* ArtisticLicenseHistory: You can read about it [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchfinder_General_(film)#Historical_accuracy here]] at Website/TheOtherWiki. Though its worth noting that the novel it adapted its story from also uses some Artistic License.
* AxCrazy: [[spoiler: Richard is quite literally driven to this by the end.]]
* BigBad: Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Hopkins is dead, and his reign of terror in England is presumably over, but Marshall and Sara are severely traumatised and possibly permanently insane as a result of their terrible experiences.]]
* BurnTheWitch: Several extremely graphic and gruesome witch-burning scenes.
* CampbellCountry: One of the {{Trope Codifier}}s of English rural horror.
* ChekhovsGunman: When Elizabeth Clarke is being burned, a man called Paul (presumably her lover) is seen being restrained. [[spoiler: Paul later shows up to try and take revenge on Hopkins as he's framing Richard and Sara. Although he's shot before he can do anything directly, he's able to tell Richard's comrades where they've gone]].
* ChristianityIsCatholic: Initially averted - the film touches on the divisions within the Church of England, and the fact that Reverend Lowes is targeted partly because the Puritans consider his High Church practices too ''close'' to Catholicism; but in the final scene we see Puritan soldiers making the sign of the cross, a ''very'' un-Puritan thing to do.
* ColdBloodedTorture: Lots and lots, as you'd expect from the concept.
* ContrivedCoincidence: Sara flees Brandestown to take up residence in Lavenham, in the hopes that she'll be safe from Hopkins. It just so happens that's the town Hopkins decides to go to after nearly being captured by Richard.
* CrapsackWorld: England is portrayed as a country gripped in civil war, where the general chaos has led to the people becoming superstitious. Many con men have cropped up in this time of trouble, torturing and killing with impunity under the guise of finding witches.
* EyeScream: [[spoiler: Stearne's ultimate fate, which pales in comparison to what happens to Hopkins immediately after]].
* FakeUltimateHero: Hopkins is an uncomedic, darker example of this trope.
* FictionalizedDeathAccount: Matthew Hopkins probably died of consumption, although one account has him ironically tried and executed for witchcraft by an unnamed individual. The film ends with him being axed by a fictional Roundhead, before another Roundhead puts him out of his misery by shooting him.
* TheFilmOfTheBook: It is based upon the 1966 novel of the same name by author Ronald Bassett.
* ForcedToWatch: [[spoiler: It's no coincidence that Richard has to watch Sara be tortured first]].
* GracefulLadiesLikePurple: Sara in the last act of the film is wearing a violet dress, which only serves to highlight her virtue and valor.
* HeroicBSOD: Richard gets a short thousand-yard stare when he realizes Sara is telling him that Hopkins defiled her.
* HeroicSeductress: Sara wisely realises that Hopkins wants to sleep with her, and uses the opportunity to get him to spare Father Lowes in exchange.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: In addition to a highly fictionalized Hopkins, we have a cameo by UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell. (Stearne and Lowes were also real people.)
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Hopkins is [[DarkerAndEdgier turned into a far more cruel, monstrous]] individual in this film than what surviving historical documents would attest to.
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: The film has no actual supernatural content, and demonstrates that human fanaticism, corruption and cruelty can create worse horrors than any magical monster.
* ImperiledInPregnancy: One of Hopkins's victims begs to spared because she is "with child" (although it's not known if she was or was lying in the hopes of pity). Either way she's ducked with the other two. She drowns, and Hopkins declares that she was innocent after all.
* MadnessMantra: When [[spoiler: Richard is denied his final revenge on Hopkins.]]
* MarketBasedTitle: Known as ''The Conqueror Worm'' in the USA to turn it into a DolledUpInstallment of Creator/RogerCorman's Creator/EdgarAllanPoe adaptations, many of which had featured Price.
* MercyKill: One of the soldiers does this to Hopkins, who is still alive after being savagely hacked with an axe by Marshall. [[spoiler:As he only has one bullet, he realizes too late that he can't put Marshall out of ''his'' misery, leaving Marshall to go finally and fully insane.]]
* OnlyAFleshWound: Stearne seems to forget that he was shot in the shoulder by the time the third act rolls around.
* TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou: A very disturbing example, as the soldier's MercyKill on the injured Hopkins sends Marshall into a psychotic rage at having his full vengeance "stolen".
* ReCut: A particularly complex range of alternate versions. Many versions, especially the UK one, were heavily cut to censor the graphic violence and torture scenes. Unconnectedly, the film's producers added additional scenes, in particular to certain European releases, featuring sex and nudity between Hopkins's henchmen and bar girls, which the director, Michael Reeves, was very unhappy with. Reeves's early death meant that he wasn't around in the home video age to advise on an official "director's cut". There are a number of quite different versions circulating that have been released for home video, screened in cinemas, or broadcast, some of which contain both the violence and the sex, some of which contain only one of them, and some of which have neither.
* ReligiousHorror: One of the central tropes of the film, in a religion-gone-bad sense.
* RevengeBeforeReason: Richard is told by his subordinates that he should speak to the magistrates and his superiors about Hopkins, but Richard feels that he must kill Hopkins on his own. He also compromises his duty as a soldier to conduct his personal vendetta.
* SameLanguageDub: Robert Russell was dubbed by Bernard Kay.
* ScarpiaUltimatum: Initially downplayed but later made even worse. Hopkins declares Sara's uncle to be a witch and starts torturing him, until she, and not Hopkins, comes up with the idea of offering him sex to let her father go. He agrees, but when his depraved minion Stearne rapes her, he treats '''her''' as betraying him and has her uncle tortured and killed.
* SelfSurgery: Stearne is shot in the shoulder while fighting some soldiers who's intended to confiscate his mare. Left alone and bleeding, he sets about extracting the bullet himself with his knife, and his screams are heard as the camera [[GoryDiscretionShot pans up to the overhanging trees]].
* SexyDiscretionShot: The implication that Sara is offering herself to Hopkins is shown with ToplessnessFromTheBack, before cutting away.
* ShamefulStrip: Downplayed but one of the methods of torture has Stearne drilling into the victim's back. Naturally the clothing has to be ripped for that to happen.
* TheSociopath:
** Matthew Hopkins, who pretends to be a Puritan hunting witches, but is really just torturing random women to death for money.
** John Stearne. While Hopkins at least ''tries'' to pass for someone who genuinely wants to rid the world of evil, Stearne is an ObviouslyEvil sadist who makes no attempt whatsoever to hide that he's only working with Hopkins so he can hurt people.
* StrawHypocrite: Hopkins is portrayed as a ManipulativeBastard who claims to be a [[KnightTemplar strongly]] [[TheFundamentalist principled]] Puritan, but is simply using it as a ruse to get the town's people's trust as a stepping stone from going through their hearts to get to their wallets.
* TorturePorn: The film was considered to be this when first released, and is still disturbing today. The director Michael Reeves disagreed strongly when critics brought this up, and he especially resented when the playwright Alan Bennett said that he felt the film's violence should have been offset with comic relief:
--> '''Michael Reeves''': "Surely the most immoral thing in any form of entertainment is the conditioning of the audience to accept and enjoy violence ... Violence is horrible, degrading and sordid. Insofar as one is going to show it on the screen at all, it should be presented as such – and the more people it shocks into sickened recognition of these facts the better."
* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Apart from the characters of Hopkins and Stearne and some of their torture techniques, all of the film is fictitious.
* WitchHunt: What Hopkins claims is his mission.

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