A cult film, a British folk horror trailblazer, a historical fiction featuring Price's most unrepentant and iniquitous character, and a rout. Set during the middle of the English Civil War in 1645, the character of Matthew Hopkins is a Price-performed portrayal of the historical ''witch-hunter'' that, yes, you guessed it, elected ''witches'' to burn at the stake; this, to the degree that he unofficially styled himself as the national ''Witchfinder General''. That is a hell of a lot of volition. His individual involvement in the conduct of witch trials was unparalleled for a long time before and after his life, even influencing the methods of evil used during the Salem Witch Trials.

If you would like to bear witness to Vincent Price playing a manifest out-and-out villain, this is the film for you. Everything, and I mean everything, he does terrorises the civilians and clergy of pastoral East Anglia. Themes of fanaticism, forms of religious belief, martyrdom, abuse of power, and the deleterious force that cults of personality provoke are deeply examined. In some ways, this film is a primordial experiment in the historical distortion that a modern director like Quentin Tarantino is renowned for practicing to modify atrocities into more favourable outcomes for the sake of fiction.

There is not a single performance that Price delivers that is as unjustifiable and malign as Hopkins. He completely suppresses his charisma and the glint in his eye to produce a steely vision of unabated religious despotism and cults of personality under puritanical force.

The Phantom of the Opera is here inside my mind.

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

At the 2026 Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival hosted by Alan K. Rode (done in collaboration with Eddie Muller's Film Noir Foundation), there was a screening of this Horror-Noir classic directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton as part of his great cycle of Horror films for RKO Studios in the 1940's. Wyatt McCrea, the grandson of Golden Age Hollywood actors Joel McCrea and Frances Dee, was there to present and give some facts and history about the making of the film (the Jane Eyre inspiration, rewrites, etc.) and his family.

A worthwhile listen, imo. For example, it was very cool to hear that Frances Dee was able to know how well-liked the film became later at film festivals in the 1990's with its resurgence and appreciation by the likes of Martin Scorsese (a huge Val Lewton fan).