Witchfinder General. Difficult to take seriously after reading of the Witchfinder Army in Good Omens, or that episode of Blackadder with the Witchsmeller Pursuivant in it.
Mr Larrington's Theory of Horror Fillums, which is mine and belongs to me, is that they have a half-life of about ten years. Thus any episode of The League Of Gentlemen featuring Papa Lazarou is way scarier than Witchfinder General. The Exorcist had people tied in knots when it was first released, but when I finally got round to watching it circa 2001, it was just tedious.
The exception to this rule is, natch, The Blair Witch Project. One early hype review featured a fillum critic coming out of a screening at the Cannes Film Festival looking as though a North Korean Secret Policegoon had just hit her over the head with a board. "Wowsa!", TWFKAML and I said, " This we must see!". It proved slightly less scary than seeing one's grandad wearing a hand-knitted jumper and smoking a pipe.
Tonight there will be more kung-fu. No hype, no controversy, just Oriental types beating laughably unrealistic shit out of each other.
