Witchfinder General (1968), directed by Michael Reeves.
Aka Conqueror Worm.
Life is pretty good for a self-appointed witchfinder during the English Civil War. He finds witches wherever he needs them and gets paid per head and can extort sex from comely maidens. What could go wrong? Maybe messing with the bride-to-be of a stalwart soldier who isn't putting up with this nonsense.
Controversial at the time for sadism and exploitative violence, it was censored in the UK but ran uncut in the US. We see much worse today, but this violence is meant to be realistic, repellent and genuinely disturbing. Our heroes are driven mad both by what they experience, and their frenzy for revenge.
I remember being a bit nauseated by some of this when I was young, but older and more calloused now, it does not seem so unsettling.
Ian Ogilvy and Hilary Heath are fine as our lovers, young but with a maturity hard to find these days. Unusual for 1968, we have a lyrical erotic love scene. Heath became a producer after she stopped acting.
Vincent Price is hard to read, which makes him even scarier than usual.
It's better looking than its tiny budget would suggest. Good bits: they enact the Monty Python "if she floats she's a witch" test, and we see people baking potatoes in the embers after a witch burning.
Misc notes:
The director wanted Donald Pleasance for the villain, and would have made him more "twitchy" and perverse.
He thought of the film as an "English western".
He was very rude to Vincent Price, but others say this brought out a harder, more opaque character than he usually portrayed.
The director died the next year at age 25.
Ian Ogilvy has several thundering gallops with impressive tracking shots. The huge, powerful horse was called "Captain". He loved to run and it took a mile to slow him down and turn him around.
Don Siegel showed this to Sam Peckinpah, who then hired the cinematographer for several of his own films.
Filmed in the parts of England where the events actually occurred.
Many of the named characters and events are historical, if freely adapted. Witchfinder Matthew Hopkins was not savagely chopped to death with an axe; he died in his bed.
Available on Blu-ray with a happy, uncensored commentary track by a film historian, leading man Ogilvy and one of the producers. They praise the restoration and point out that the fine original score is back. Apparently the original American distribution had substitute electronic music.
This completes the Shout Factory Vincent Price Collection volume 1. The earlier titles:
On to volume 2!