Aka Witchhammer
It’s the witch hunt story: a simple act, intended to be innocuous, spirals out of control resulting in mass paranoia and the elevation of officials with an agenda less Holy than the one they hide behind.
Czechoslovakian director Otakar Vávra’s film is based on a novel of the same name that was in turn based on real events, and is both a chronicle of vicious tortures and a thinly veiled political metaphor.
The confessional scenes are the most engaging and the most emotionally powerful. The people that orchestrated the tortures and ordeals were less interesting. Elsewhere there’s some abstract scenes of a crazed monk who reads passages from the abominable Malleus Maleficarum directly to the viewer, which seemed to be his only purpose; he was great.
3 unscrupulous inquisitors out of 5
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