Arthur Miller may have written his knockout play The Crucible condemning witch hunts in 1952, but that doesn't mean the Czechs should be denied the opportunity to take a shot at capturing the subject matter. Coming from the other side of the Iron Curtain, Witches' Hammer achieves basically the same thing, highlighting the inherent injustice in torturing innocent people into confessing witchcraft, and then brutally executing them. What we have here is evil disguised as good, and when a priest points that out, he becomes a target in the hunt as well.
The movie starts with a heavy indication of the misogyny found in witch trials. A man says woman is sin. This is juxtaposed against women bathing, and while you may call that gratuitous nudity, it is basically a contrasting view of women not as evil beings, but just women.
After this, the movie simply shows us the process of witch trials, which the modern day audience will recognize as backwards. But were audiences also supposed to recognize it as something else? If Miller was attacking McCarthyism, could this movie in fact be attacking the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia? I'm not so sure. Nothing seems overly communist about the inquisitors. On the contrary, they're driven by a warped form of religion rather than an atheist leftist doctrine. Of course, tyranny can look much the same no matter what ideology is being used to justify it.
Ultimately, Witches' Hammer may not be quite as great as Miller's play, but it is better than the 1996 film adaptation of Miller's play. A savage view of Europe's past, it is a film worth seeing.
The movie starts with a heavy indication of the misogyny found in witch trials. A man says woman is sin. This is juxtaposed against women bathing, and while you may call that gratuitous nudity, it is basically a contrasting view of women not as evil beings, but just women.
After this, the movie simply shows us the process of witch trials, which the modern day audience will recognize as backwards. But were audiences also supposed to recognize it as something else? If Miller was attacking McCarthyism, could this movie in fact be attacking the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia? I'm not so sure. Nothing seems overly communist about the inquisitors. On the contrary, they're driven by a warped form of religion rather than an atheist leftist doctrine. Of course, tyranny can look much the same no matter what ideology is being used to justify it.
Ultimately, Witches' Hammer may not be quite as great as Miller's play, but it is better than the 1996 film adaptation of Miller's play. A savage view of Europe's past, it is a film worth seeing.