Witchfinder General + A Field in England (15)

Enter a time of cavaliers and roundheads, charlatans and zealots, heresy and horror. 

A fierce pairing of folk horrors that torch any naïve notions of “merry old England,” Witchfinder General and A Field in England share both a historical setting in the English Civil War and a particular relish for cinematic carnage.

Witchfinder General 
Dir Michael Reeves | GB 1968 | 87 mins 
Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy

In the midst of the English Civil War, a witch hunter roams the East Anglian countryside carrying out a ruthless campaign of persecution against suspected witches and deviants – his sadism seemingly performed in the name of church and state. 
The first in the “unholy trinity” of British folk horror from the turn of the 1970s, Witchfinder General (1968) is the original cinematic sin of a subgenre that still captivates more than 50 years on. Like its strange bedfellows The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973), the film provocatively inverts the notion of the British countryside as a place of bucolic bliss. Instead, the more remote corners of the islands we call home are characterised as places of terrifying isolation, where base desires, moral degradation and religious fanaticism run rampant – completely unchecked by the influences of polite society. 

 
A Field in England 
Dir Ben Wheatley | GB 2013 | 90 mins 
Reece Shearsmith, Michael Smiley

England during the Civil War. A small group of deserters flee from a raging battle through an overgrown field. After being captured by an alchemist, they are forced to aid him in his search for a hidden treasure. But the party’s search descends into chaos as they fall under the influence of the terrifying energies trapped inside the field. 
Cult director Ben Wheatley delivered a bracing new take on British folk horror with 2013’s A Field in England. Shot in striking monochrome, and generating maximum impact from its minimalist set-up, this is a feral thrill ride powered by psychedelic fungi and gleeful formal experimentation. A worthy successor to its genre forebears. 

Runtime of 192 mins includes a short intermission between films.

This event is excluded from the HOME Film Pass.