17TH CENTURY SHOCKS
More Puritanism period productions
Witchfinder General
Michael Reeves’ bleak film – shockingly violent for the time (1968) – follows witchhunter Matthew Hopkins’ reign of terror in East Anglia during the English Civil War. Vincent Price dialled down the camp for once in the starring role.
Blood on Satan’S Claw
The ploughing-up of a strange skull leads to an outbreak of pagan sacrifice and sexual violence among the young folk of a nearby village in Piers Haggard’s sublime 1971 folk horror.
Twins of Evil
Hammer Films’ 1971 production stars Peter Cushing as the stern leader of a brotherhood of puritan witch-hunters, who eventually has to decapitate his own niece after she’s turned into a vampire. Bummer.
a field In England
Ben Wheatley melded historical drama, hallucinatory psychedelia and black comedy in this blackand-white 2013 release, in which five men digging for buried treasure turn against one another.