On Demand on Comcast

I just found this notorious movie listed as The Conqueror Worm, with an R rating and a running time of 98 minutes. It had appeared on TV in decades past, but only in a 75-minute syndication print. When I started it, the title read:

Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General

There was no voiceover of a stanza from the poem "The Conqueror Worm" by Edgar Allan Poe (a poem that had nothing to do with witch hunts, but it was the gimmick of American International Pictures to link Poe to every one of their films that starred Vincent Price), this was the full original movie as released in Britain. The blue time bar promised a 98 minute length, but the movie ended at 88 minutes. Either 10 minutes is missing or the movie was never longer than 88.

Alas, a disappointing film. One reason I wanted to see the full version was when it was mentioned in the book Danse Macabre by Stephen King:

"Vincent Price, as the Witchfinder General in AIP's The Conqueror Worm, surely one of the most revolting horror pictures to be released by a major studio in the sixties, had a regular cookout at the climax of this one"

Evidently, King had not seen this film, because the climax featured Matthew Hopkins' demise instead. The 75-minute TV cut showed one person burned at the stake in the middle of the movie. I had an expectation that another such scene or several would be present, but the full movie has just that one. What the witch hunters are shown doing is hanging their victims, or terrorizing them in perfunctory ways, but most often they lay around on a tavern floor with women, fully clothed and doing nothing. The cast is the best thing about this movie, and they do what they can within a mediocre production. Ian Ogilvy gets to do away with Vincent Price, too bad it's with a fake hatchet and red paint.

As for another candidate for most revolting '60's picture by a major studio, I'd go with Sodom and Gommorah (1962), or The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). These are historical movies rather than horror, but the latter is the one with a "cookout" near the end.