Witchfinder General

[poliphilo]

I spent an evening with the Witchfinder General. Ghastly things happen in an England of meadows and copses and vast East Anglian skies. A Cromwellian soldier gallops across pastureland, scattering sheep to a soundtrack of pastiche Vaughan Williams. As cheap, badly written movies go, it's a masterpiece.

This is the restored edition- and you can tell exactly what the censor cut for the first British release because the excised material has been grafted in from a degraded copy- so the action keeps going fuzzy at moments of high brutality. Censorship is stupid. Some of these cuts seem to have been made simply to flex authoritarian muscle and let the filmmakers know who's boss, because the stuff that's been taken out is no stronger than what's been left in. And in other places the effect of the cut is to heighten disgust and horror because the thing you picture in your head is always worse than anything that can be shown on screen.

Vincent Price gives what is arguably his finest performance ever. Michael Reeves, the director, told him not to wave his arms about so much. Price drew himself up and said, "Young man, I've made 84 movies. How many have you made?" And Reeves replied, "two good ones." Price, to his credit, fell about laughing.

This was Reeves'last film. He killed himself, probably by accident, with an overdose of sleeping tablets.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

All the correct ingredients are there. You almost have it.

I'm going to type in everything EXCEPT I am substituting * for the opening and closing brackets, and hope that LJ will leave the code intact.

Here is an example:

This a href=*"http://www.somebergmanfilm.comBergman* Film*/a* is my very favorite.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Whenever I write a href the computer splits the a from the href and sticks them on separate lines.

I think I must be unteachable.....

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

A glorious photograph, properly uploaded!

(And don't worry about LJ's line splitting; it keeps up with the proper spacing--you need a space between a and href=etc.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This was taken by my buddy Graham Lawrence at the school sports day in 1962 or 3. It's probably the only picture in existence of me in a school cap.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Of course! I see you now.

I'm so enjoying seeing you and Ailz as children.

And photographs that were faded and forgotten take on a new luminosity online--

Amazing how well the old camera film works when transmuted into jpgs.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm running short of childhood snaps of myself. My mother has them all. But we have plenty more of Ailz.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

More of Ailz would be very nice!

I tried to find The Conqueror Worm on Netflix. No luck.

But they had everything else.

You can queue up everything, and they just send them on to you three at a time whenever you send anything back. Very nice system!

Actually much much cheaper than Blockbuster, which charges about $4 plus tax for each movie. And you have to get them back on time, too.

Sometimes I hesitate to rent a movie, lest it be not that great and still cost me close to $5. With Netflix I can get those on-the-fence movies and try them out.

Thanks for the good list! I added them all to my Netflix roster.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

How odd that Witchfinder General/Conqueror Worm should be unavailable. I've done a bit of research and it seems like it could be out of print in the States. Let's hope they get it back in print pretty damn quick.

I'm glad you've been able to get all the others. I look forward to our discussions of Bergman.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I dunnit
I dunnit
I DUNNIT!!!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Hooray!

Now, quick! Go to notepad or something quick and copy and paste your code there. Each time I upload photos, I just copy and paste from my little code page that I keep out on my keyboard.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.
Yes, I've written the code down.
All will be well from now on in.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

And now who is the elegant man in the hat?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

MEEEEEEE!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

See how elegant you are? I thought (due to the context of the post) that you were the young Bergman!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Heehee. If only.....

Bergman has a long, gaunt face- the face of self-flagellating monk.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

the face of self-flagellating monk.

Not hardly you!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I just realized that I told you incorrectly that you needed a final, closing bracketed a when posting a jpg.

For photographs that stand alone, there's no need for an a.

Just do the first part, the a href= part. You do need that.

Hope this isn't needlessly confusing.