So. There's this movie. It's called Witchfinder General. Go watch it right now. It's amazing. No serious. This shit is fucking beautiful. Harkening back to a simpler time when if some a hole pissed you off you could just accuse them of witchcraft and carry on with your life, as they were brutally murdered. A prosaic England where (and this is really true) men were actually given the title Witchfinder General and had such authority to disembowel (among other things) village people whom they thought were witches. Or, as in this film, just about anybody off the street.
1635. Cromwell vs Charles I. Civil War. Mother fucking Vincent Price. This movie has it all. Wooden acting, corny effects, no sense of direction. It's no surprise that a 1980s Doom Metal band would have named themselves after it. The movie itself makes about as much sense as Inception, but at least you get to see bloodthirsty religious zealots, overcome with their own sense of justice, eradicate all vestiges of human life in a six square mile area. What's really wonderful is the script, which must have been written by some historian, every five seconds there's a reference to "the state of England," the economy and trade, the New Model Army, or how the plough revolutionized the English agrarian system. The characters talk like they're in a historical documentary, and sometimes when they walk on wooden floors the camera (set on a tripod) shakes with their footsteps. That's really the fun part of Witchfinder General, because on the whole it's not a bad film, its director, however, is obviously inept in every way and is still learning how to use the cameras he borrowed from Monty Pythons Flying Circus. The shots are choppy and misaligned, and when the camera isn't shaking, it's zooming uncomfortably. These are all very good things. Also. The lighting is terrible; which is awesome. Oh and lest I forget, there's an uncomfortable sex scene ten minutes in.
Enter Vincent Price. A Titan. He fucking makes this movie everything it is. From the very moment he rides in, floppy hat falling all over his face, speaking in that classic Vincent Price voice, you know you've picked a winner. He, like many of the other actors, does not try at all to even slightly feign an English accent. However, none of these actors have a voice quite like Vincent Price. It's creepy for sure, even unnerving at times, but mostly its giggle inducing. It's just amazing. If you've ever heard him speak you know what I mean. If not, that's what YouTube is for. Also his hair looks roughly like Richie Blackmore's circa 1977 (or Tommy Iomi's hair now) and the twenty foot feather in his hat doesn't help either. Price, in the starring role, bumbles his way through the set (with a fair ammount of camera shaking along the way) and stumbles over his line. Ok, he doesn't stumble, he delivers the lines just fine, it's just his whiny voice makes all the lines sound way funnier than they were ever meant to be, and his obvious American accent feels so out of place...it gives me an erection. Oh and this mother fucker loves him some God, and some Jesus, and some butchering mother fuckers who piss him off. First he starts with the priest, a fat old bastard who, from a short opening scene is a pretty good guy, having one of his Cromwellian dudes cut the guys back open looking for Satans mark. And what do you know, they find the sonovabitch and kill that fat ass dead. Horay God! After this, we descend into a whole lot of this; cutting people open, ripping their ears off, beheadings, a rape, infanticide, and other lively 17th century leisure activities. I mean the movie starts with some bitch getting hanged for reasons unknown. This is some hardcore shit! Vincent Price ain't gonna let any of them mother fucking witches in this mother fucking England! The movie is silly violent, and in fact is edited from an even gorier version I'm sure you can get from someone somewhere, but in that awesome late seventies way where everything is super dark lit so you can't see its just some beef not a guys liver getting pulled out. They must have used a truckload of red food coloring cause there is a truckload of fake blood gushing from wounds made of old food. Again, this is awesome to a level I cannot even begin to comprehend. Oh yeah there's also a love story between this British knight soldier guy and the fat old priests daughter (England remember) and how utterly pissed they are at Vincent Price for killing her dad, which makes the film decidedly pro-Charles I (and anti Cromwell, whoda thunk it) who got his head lopped off in 165-something after Cromwell won. Parliament then decided to go all apeshit and kill lots of people (and also neglect to pay the dudes who fought in their army) which was roundly decided as not a very good thing and in a few short years (I think maybe five or six) England was back with the monarchy and Charles II, and Cromwell was probably dead or something. I don't remember. But it doesn't matter, because if Vincent Price had been the head of this "free" England, well...I guess nothing would have been different. Cause he kills a shitton of innocent people on the grounds of "I'm the fucking Witchfinder General, asshole," which is not a very good argument in retrospect. In the end, Vincent Price ends up like his dear Ollie Cromwell will, dead as shit and yay England. Did I mention there are tits in this movie as well? No? Well there are.
Full circle.
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