Witchfinder General
by Ronald Bassettliterary work· published 1966
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Witchfinder General is a 1966 horror novel written by Ronald Bassett. It tells the heavily fictionalized story of Matthew Hopkins, a notorious 17th-century witch-hunter. According to historian Malcolm Gaskill, in Bassett's novel Hopkins is a 50-ish Ipswich lawyer "who becomes a pikeman in a parliamentarian regiment to escape his creditors, and from there reinvents himself as 'a black-winged Attila, leaving behind him a trail of gibbet-hung corpses'." Promoted as a horror novel, the back cover blurb of the book warned that the contents were "Not for those with delicate stomachs." The book served as the basis for Michael Reeves's violent and controversial 1968 film of the same name, also known as The Conqueror Worm.
Adaptations (1)
Witchfinder General was adapted into a 1968 film.
Witchfinder General1968 · film · 86 min · dir. Michael Reeves · IMDb ↗IMDb6.794%England, 1645. The cruel civil war between Royalists and Parliamentarians that is ravaging the country causes an era of chaos and legal arbitrariness that allows unscrupulous men to profit by exploiting the absurd superstitions of the peasants; like Matthew Hopkins, a monster disguised as a man who wanders from town to town offering his services as a witch hunter.
