General Witchfinders: The British Horror Podcast

Welcome to the very first episode of the General Witchfinders Book Club – a new spin-off from our regular British horror podcast, run in partnership with Teasel & Skylark , an independent bookshop in Dorchester. To accompany our real-life, face-to-face book club meet-ups, host Ross Cleaver invites a special guest co-host onto the show every two months to discuss our latest reading choice. On...

Summer is the season of the spin-off at General Witchfinders. We have a few episodes beyond our usual format to share, starting with James’s exploration of parapsychology in the 1970s. Why did that decade see such a dramatic rise in the cultural obsession with ESP, telekinesis, and psychic premonitions? James has been digging into the archives and thinks he has the answer. Join James and Ross for...

https://www.actonecinema.co.uk/movie/general-witchfinders-present-dr-jekyll-sister-hyde/ We are bringing General Witchfinders to London on Halloween-eve – Friday 30th October at 7:30pm. We really want to make this night a success – and by success, we mean not spending a load of money just to watch a film in a cinema all on our own! If you can make it, please grab a ticket and bring along a Hammer-...

Hammer Horror delivered one of its finest 1970s films with Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, despite a notoriously cursed production. This 1971 British release is the studio’s fourth and final Mummy film, loosely adapted by Christopher Wicking from Bram Stoker’s 1903 novel The Jewel of Seven Stars. Crucially, it remains the only entry in the franchise where a physical mummy never actually appears. The...

In this special live episode, we dive deep into the world of Folk Horror, discussing the legendary Big Christopher Lee , the ghost stories of M.R. James , and the groundbreaking television work of Nigel Kneale . Recorded live at the King’s Arms Hotel in Dorchester, this event was hosted in partnership with our local independent bookshop, Teasel & Skylark, to celebrate the launch of our new zin...

The Medusa Touch (1978): Richard Burton and the Power of Catastrophe In this episode, we investigate the 1978 supernatural horror thriller The Medusa Touch . Directed by Jack Gold and adapted from the Peter Van Greenaway novel, The Medusa Touch is a quintessential piece of seventies British cinema that sits at the dark intersection of the disaster movie and the occult thriller. The film follows th...

Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) | Hammer Horror & Peter Cushing Deep Dive Welcome to another atmospheric installment of the General Witchfinders podcast. In this episode, we are throwing chronology to the wind and jumping straight into the heart of the Hammer Films oeuvre. Having previously explored the Baron’s first experiment in The Curse of Frankenstein and his final bow in Frankenstein a...

The Asphyx (1972) In this episode, we dive deep into the 1972 British science fiction horror cult classic , The Asphyx (also known as Spirit of the Dead or The Horror of Death ). Set in the Victorian era, this unique period chiller follows a wealthy philanthropist and amateur scientist, Sir Hugo Cunningham, who stumbles upon a way to photograph the "Asphyx"—the Ancient Greek spirit of death that a...

In this episode, we explore the 1981 television pilot K-9 and Company, a unique and historic entry in the Doctor Who universe. Produced as a proposed Doctor Who spin-off, K-9 and Company stars the legendary Elisabeth Sladen as investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith alongside the robotic dog K9, voiced by John Leeson. While both were iconic former companions of the Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who, t...

The Ice House is part of the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas tradition, originally broadcast under the banner A Ghost Story for Christmas. First shown on BBC1 on Christmas Day 1978, it marked the final instalment of the original 1971 to 1978 run. This episode completes our podcast coverage of that era. - Written by John Bowen, who previously delivered The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, The Ice House wa...

This time we watched the 1973 British horror film Psychomania, a cult biker horror oddity originally filmed as The Living Dead before the title changed. In the United States it appeared as The Death Wheelers. Not to be confused with the 1963 American film Psychomania, also known as Violent Midnight. The film was produced by Benmar Productions, better known for Spaghetti Westerns shot in Spain. The...

We return to our rundown of Flash Gordon , just as Flash and Prince Barin are being taken to the Hawkmen’s planet to fight to the death! Flash Gordon was directed by Mike Hodges, the British filmmaker behind Get Carter and Pulp , and produced by the legendary Dino De Laurentiis. Based on the King Features comic strip created by Alex Raymond, the film stars Sam J. Jones as the all-American hero Fla...

Sorry this one’s a bit late — but to make up for it, we’ve gone all in with an extra-long episode of General Witchfinders , split into two parts. This week, we take you through the extraordinary, over-the-top world of Flash Gordon (1980) — the space opera superhero film that blended camp comedy, science-fiction spectacle, and Queen’s iconic soundtrack into something truly cosmic. The second half o...

Hammer horror reaches peak gothic chills with The Plague of the Zombies (1966), a Hammer Film Productions classic that defines British horror cinema. Shot at Bray Studios from 28 July 1965 and filmed back-to-back with Hammer’s The Reptile (see episode 19), it used the same eerie Cornish village set designed by Hammer’s celebrated production designer Bernard Robinson. Director John Gilling – the so...

This time on General Witchfinders, we’re heading into deep space — and hell itself — with the notorious 1997 science fiction horror film Event Horizon .·· Directed by Paul Anderson and written by Philip Eisner, Event Horizon is set in 2047. A rescue crew investigates the ship Event Horizon, which vanished years earlier and is now orbiting Neptune.·· After Mortal Kombat (1995), Anderson was suddenl...

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970). We’re back to Hammer Horror, back to Christopher Lee, and back to Dracula. In this episode of General Witchfinders , we sink our teeth into Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), the fifth official film in Hammer’s Dracula series and our sixth Hammer Dracula review to date. You can find links to all previous vampire escapades at https://tinyurl.com/Witchdrac . This B...

In this episode of General Witchfinders , we revisit one of the most unsettling and prophetic dramas ever broadcast by the BBC – Survivors (1975), created by Terry Nation , the man behind the Daleks and Blake’s 7 . Specifically, we’re talking about The Fourth Horseman , the chilling first episode of this 1970s British post-apocalyptic classic . 💀 Trigger warning / content note : this episode cont...

This time on General Witchfinders , we’re heading back into the blood-soaked, Rage-infected streets of post-apocalyptic Britain with 28 Weeks Later — the 2007 zombie horror sequel to Danny Boyle’s groundbreaking 28 Days Later . Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later builds on the legacy of 28 Days Later (which we covered in episode 43), expanding the world of the Rage Virus and the af...

This time we watched Tomorrow, the Rat — Episode 4 from Series 1 of Doomwatch , first broadcast 2 March 1970 and written by Terence Dudley. That’s four years before James Herbert published The Rats (which we covered in episode 4). It’s highly likely he was inspired by this vintage BBC sci-fi thriller—pen in hand, watching Doomwatch unfold. Doomwatch was a vintage BBC science fiction series that ai...

In this episode of General Witchfinders , we take a close look at The Creeping Flesh (1973), a British horror film from cult studio Tigon British Film Productions . Best known for low-budget horror that ran alongside the likes of Hammer Horror and Amicus , Tigon was founded in 1966 by Tony Tenser and operated out of Hammer House on Wardour Street in London. This marks our first dive into their bac...

Join us for Hammer’s Hands of the Ripper , a 1971 British horror film released as the second half of a double feature with Twins of Evil . Directed by Peter Sasdy, produced by Aida Young, and written by L.W. Davidson from a story by Edward Spencer Shew. Making good use of the large Baker Street set at Pinewood Studios—left over from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes —the production was denied pe...

Bear with us this month, listeners, as we take a left turn down Duckett's Passage to talk about something a little different from our usual classic British horror. Nicholas Simon Lyndhurst, born April 1961, is an English actor who began his career as a child actor and is best known for his role as Rodney Trotter in the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses, which ran from 1981 to 2003. PART ONE: Tonigh...

It’s 17th February 1964 – You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ by The Righteous Brothers is at number one in the UK. Sir Alec Douglas-Home is Prime Minister, Beatlemania has erupted in the United States, Southampton has been granted city status (can you tell this script was running short?), and the Channel Tunnel Agreement was signed, with an estimated completion time of five years (though it would act...

The original run of A Ghost Story for Christmas aired on the BBC from 1971 to 1978, bringing classic ghost stories to television and keeping alive the tradition of sharing supernatural tales during the Christmas season.  In our journey through the series, we’ve covered A Warning to the Curious and The Signalman in Episode 21, Whistle and I’ll Come to You and Stigma in Episode 32, and The Stal...

A Ghost Story for Christmas is a series of annual British short films first broadcast on BBC One from 1971 to 1978, and sporadically revived by the BBC since 2005. With one exception, the original films were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and shot on 16 mm color film. The series aimed to adapt classic ghost stories for television, echoing the tradition of telling supernatural tales at Christmas...