Films: Witchfinder General (1968)
Alias: Witchfinder General
Type: Natural
Location: Civilized Area
Height/Weight: That of an average human.
Affiliation: Evil
Summary: How pitiful superstition can make us. Sometimes, humans just want an excuse to kill and burn things, even if it doesn't make a lick of sense. And then there are people willing to exploit that fear, and turn it into something more hideous than any sorcery and witchcraft allegedly being practiced. Mr. Hopkins was one of those people, and he nailed it down to an art form.
History: In the 17th century English Civil War, authority was low and superstition was high. Matthew Hopkins, and his assistant John Stearne, took notice of this, and decided to make a quick and very dirty buck out of it. Claiming to be agents of the cross, this duo rounded up random men and mostly women, and wasted no time hanging/burning/maiming them all. Bastards.
Notable Kills: There's dropping people over moats to drown and even a woman getting slowly lowered on a cross into a pit of fire. And let's not forget the old-fashioned lynching.
Final Fate: Hopkins' crimes eventually catch up to him, as his torture of a soldier and his fiancé results in the former breaking free of his restraints, stabbing Stearne in the eye, and bludgeoning the evil man with an axe. Some soldiers come in and shoot Hopkins out of his misery. He will NOT be missed.
Powers/Abilities: None.
Weakness: Anything conventional.
Scariness Factor: 4-Being played by Vincent Price helps, but not as much as knowing how to exploit public fear. Hopkins is a horrible, greedy person, and by tapping into the land's deepest common dread, he got away with all kinds of grisly murder. See anyone like him? Knee em' where it hurts.
Trivia: -Matthew Hopkins was indeed a real, self-proclaimed "Witchfinder General" back in the day. He and his followers managed to kill more people falsely accused of witchcraft than anyone did in the past century combined! He could have put a wedding ring on the gallows and everyone would have called it a perfect match.
-America, in a bid to tie this film to Roger Corman's films about Edgar Allen Poe, re-titled this film after one of the man's poems, "The Conqueror Worm".
