"This ferocious low-budget period horror movie, an exploitation version of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, is one of a small handful of pictures to touch on one of the major episodes of Western European history, the English Civil War and the Commonwealth...The film's exteriors are flat, open, more agoraphobic than idyllic; the interiors have the cold, precise tone of Van Dyck...Vincent Price gives one of his most restrained performances as Matthew Hopkins.."
- Karl French & Philip French, Cult Movies

"...this portrait of backwoods violence....remains one of the most personal and mature statements in the history of British cinema...a fairly ordinary but interestingly researched novel by Ronald Bassett, with a lot of phony Freudian motivation, is transformed into a highly ornate, evocative, and poetic study of violence, where the political disorganization and confusion of the war is mirrored by the chaos and superstition in men's minds. The performances are generally excellent, and no film before or since has used the British countryside in quite the same way."
- Daniel Pirie, TimeOut Film Guide

"The torture and degradation inflicted by the witchfinder is part of an evil that pervades the social fabric itself, chronicled coolly in all its unsavory details by Reeves' camera. The colours of death and decay imbue the movie with a muted but eerie intensity, relentlessly building up to the explosion of unconscionable violence...but rarely has violence been used so legitimately.
- Phil Hardy, The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies

"The Conqueror Worm is a stunning film in many ways, but probably Reeves's greatest achievement is that he was able to maintain an extraordinary momentum throughout, until the film ends as it began with a woman...screaming...The audience never gets a chance to relax. By the end of the film it is as if you have just run the gauntlet."
- Danny Peary, Cult Movies

"Savage, stylish minor horror melodrama with a growing reputation as the best work of its young director. Not for the squeamish despite its pleasing countryside photography."
- Halliwell's Film & Video Guide

"Price is brilliantly restrained...Splendidly evocative photography and an intelligent script that perfectly contrasts the lush green countryside with the grisly violence of Hopkins' reign makes this one of the finest horror films of the '60s."
- James O'Neill, Terror on Tape

"..an extraordinarily bleak story of political evil...the movie has a robust autumnal quality perfectly matched by Price's overripe performance. Witchfinder General bears the mark of its period-there's an overabundance of zooms and an easy reliance on the brutality of brightly hued gore-but it remains contemporary, and even frightening, in its evocation of cynical Puritanism and mass deception."
- J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

"Price is an excellent heavy, but while sometimes he seems to piously believe he is rooting out witches, most of the time he's simply killing for the fun of it, and some money....Ogilvy is somewhat dashing, but has a one-note hero's role to play. Dwyer gives evidence of acting talent, but she and all principals are hampered by Michael Reeves's mediocre script and ordinary direction."
- Variety

"..a grim portrait of pre-totalitarian violence, following 17th-century torturer Vincent Price on a righteous tear through Norfolk. The landscapes are evocative, and the gist misanthropic."
- Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

"Price delivers perhaps the best performances of his career. Rather than his usual campy villain, he plays the role straight, exuding an air of sadistic menace. Reeves directs impressively. His style - mobile camerawork, with judicious use of zooms and close-ups - owes little to Hammer horror. He displays a good feel for the landscape, contrasting a tranquil nature and a violent humanity...From the opening to the closing credits, Reeves depicts every brutality unflinchingly. But with justification. He wanted the violence to disgust rather than excite, and succeeds. Reeves's take on the human condition is unrelentingly bleak."
- Keith H. Brown, Edinburgh University Film Society

"Time has not diminished the raw power of Witchfinder General. Its perfect historical setting, beautiful camerawork and unflinching portrayal of something we'd all rather not think about ever having happened sets it apart as quite possibly the greatest British Horror Film ever made. High praise indeed, but without a doubt deserved."
- www.britishhorrorfilms.co.uk/

"One of the most in-your-face films ever released - or should that be unleashed? The movie's bleak and unrelenting violence caused such a stir back in 1968, and remains strong stuff even by today's standards. Director Reeves pulls no punches in telling a story of surface simplicity but vast political and historical interest. It's also arguably the closest approximation to the classic Western ever made in the British Isles, and one of the most remarkable cinematic treatments of that country's wilder landscapes...Reeves' approach is occasionally crude: his use of incidental music is especially heavy-handed (though Paul Ferris's score is generally excellent). But the directorial techniques are entirely appropriate given the extreme nature of this material and the fact that Reeves is deliberately echoing and critiquing 'traditional' British horror movies. He was also the only director ever to draw a totally straight performance from Price."
- Neil Young, www.jigsawlounge.co.uk

"The Conqueror Worm...stars Vincent Price and features any number of attractive young aspiring stars who seem to have been cast mainly for their ability to scream. Scream as though they were being slowly burned to death, or kicked, or poked, or stabbed - mainly about the eyes - with sticks, or shot through, or otherwise tortured, which, in fact, they are. Vincent Price has a good time as a materialistic witch-hunter and woman-disfigurer and dismemberer, and the audience at the dark, ornate New Amsterdam seemed to have a good time as well."
- Renata Adler, The New York Times.

"The ending is indeed shocking (the protracted scream that almost closes the movie is definitely well-earned), but it is also terribly sad as well; it is almost no surprise that the soundtrack to this movie foregoes an air of horror in favor of an air of bitter sadness and loss....this bleak horror film packs a punch that will not soon be forgotten."
- www.scifilm.org

"Witchfinder General is no masterpiece, but Reeves' propitious use of picturesque Suffolk countryside in autumn light, and his employment of extant locations in Hopkins' historical killing-field of Brandeston (though not Lavenham, as depicted) invest it with a breath of vision which belied its meagre 83,000 pound budget and echoed clearly of the Western myth - of Delmer Daves, and John Ford and Monument Valley - which Reeves was at pains to evoke. It is elegiac, as well as being ripe with symbolism."
- Denis Meikle, Vincent Price: The Art of Fear.

Compiled by Jeff Stafford