The 1968 role Vincent Price loathed every second of playing: “I’m stuck with you”
The modern horror movie scene simply would not exist without Vincent Price.
A tremendous portrayer of camp villains, Price’s spine-tingling voice and facial expressions made him one of the ultimate cult icons. From his appearance in the original version of The Fly to his iconic appearance in Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’, there is nobody quite like him, so when Irwin Allen made his film The Story of Mankind and was in need of an actor to play Satan himself, guess who got the call.
In 1968, Price starred in the British folk horror Witchfinder General, loosely inspired by the story of Matthew Hopkins (played by Price), a witch hunter active during Britain’s civil war, which follows a Parliamentarian soldier, played by Ian Ogilvy, attempting to track down Hopkins before he can pass judgment on an innocent woman. The movie was made for just £82,000 (the equivalent of about £1.3million in 2026) and filmed in East Anglia, a region Hopkins actually patrolled in real life.
Witchfinder General (which was also called The Conqueror Worm in certain territories) was directed by a prodigal filmmaker named Michael Reeves, and you might think that a director in their mid-20s would be thrilled to be working with such a legend so early in their career, but alas, that wasn’t the case.
“I didn’t want you,” Reeves allegedly told the screen icon (via Fingal County Council), “I still don’t want you, but I’m stuck with you”, to which the iconic actor supposedly retorted, “Young man, I’ve made 84 films. What have you done?”, and the director clapped back with “I’ve made three good ones”. Ouch.
“Reeves hated me,” Price would later clarify, “He didn’t want me at all for the part. I didn’t like him either”.
While it’s not uncommon for actors and directors to clash on set, this feud went a lot further. Despite Price’s protests, Reeves instructed him to shoot a pistol while riding a horse, a bad idea because when he fired the gun, the horse reared up, throwing Price to the ground. Possibly in retaliation, Price then got drunk on the final day of shooting, so Reeves furiously instructed Ogilvy not to hold back when attacking his co-star with a prop axe, Price’s padded costume acting as his saving grace.
Tragically, the two men wouldn’t get the chance to reconcile, for nine months after Witchfinder General was released, Reeves died after accidentally overdosing on sleeping pills at just 25 years old. As is the way with these things, Witchfinder General became more popular in the wake of its director’s premature demise.
Since most of the anecdotes come from Price, it’s important to take any potential biases into account, but whatever the true version of events, Witchfinder General remains a favourite of folk horror devotees, helped by an absolutely insane real-life story to accompany the onscreen action.
