CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

morrison-dylan-fan After watching 29 Czech films from the Cold War era in April,I started searching round for a title to finish my viewing season.Since starting things with Otakar Vávra's superb Sci-Fi Film Noir Krakatit,I was delighted to stumble upon another Vávra film,which led to me getting ready to surf the Czech wave for the final time.The plot:Found stealing a wafer from the church,an old women is asked by a priest why she did it,who is told that it is due to other women telling the old women that it would help her cows to get milk again.Reporting the news to Countess de Galle,Galle begins to fear that witchcraft is spreading across the land.Fearful about losing power,Galle sets up an inquisition to be led by a man called Boblig.Finding the accused women not willing to confess about being "witches",Boblig decides that the only option left to get the much needed confessions,is to use torture.View on the film:Casting a spell the year that the occupying Soviet Union destroyed the reforms from the Prague Spring,co-writer/(along with Ester Krumbachová) director Otakar Vávra's adaptation of Václav Kaplický's real life novel nails allegorical Horror,courtroom Drama,and historical Melodrama to the cross.Set in the 1600's,the writers cut to the bone in making a powerful case against the futility of torture, (which the KGB were infamous for using) with every "witness" being brainwashed by torture into confessing to anything,no matter how outrageous the allegation is.Sitting in on every courtroom "hearing", Vávra and cinematographer Josef Illík build an atmosphere of breathless unease,by tightly holding the camera over the accused faces,and capturing the moments of torturous pain shatter across their face.Smartly keeping the stabs at gore limited and occasionally cutting to a Shakespeare- style narrator , Vávra subtly explores the horrors of an unequal society,from the royal households and the courts being blazed with an impeccable set design,that covers every wall with gold and paintings,which are rubbed away by the accused being stuck in dusty,burnt to a crisp households.Going against each other, Vladimír Smeral & Elo Romancik give impeccable performances as Boblig and Lautner. Labelling anyone who questions his methods as "the devil" Vladimír Smeral gives a formidable performance as Boblig,whose existence Smeral wraps in a burning rage to keep a grip on the power he has gathered.Speaking out over what he sees, Elo Romancik gives a fantastic performance as Lautner,thanks to Romancik's burning all sign of Lautner's faith and hope piece by piece,as the witchhammer comes down on Czech cinema.

gizmomogwai 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.

MartinHafer This is a recreation of a series of witch trials that occurred around 1600. Since it's a Czechoslovakian film, I assume it is set somewhere around there. The film begins with an odd occurrence--an old lady pretends to eat a communion wafer at church but instead shoves it into a handkerchief. When confronted about this weird behavior, folks immediately assume it's because she's involved with witches and that these devil worshipers plan on using the host for some unholy ceremony. THe woman really is just very superstitious and she's really taking the wafer to trade someone--as they want to use the wafer to supposedly cure a sick animal. This is goofy--but the priest certainly does not think it constitutes witchcraft and admonishes everyone to forget about it. However, the elders insist on bringing in a witch-finder and determining if it's all part of a demonic ceremony. From there, everything gets way out of hand and they start burning practically anyone--all due to an overzealous and evil man bent on abusing the gullibility of others.The film gets very high marks for realism. The torture and subsequent confessions seem very well done--though are a bit difficult to watch. And, the entire abuse of the silly system and complicity of the Church is quite interesting--as well as the lone priest who fights this evil tribunal. My only complaint is the opening scene. It's jam-packed full of very gratuitous nudity. Later, there is some explicit nudity but it is necessary for the film and should have been used (such as when they stripped the lady to look for 'the Devil's mark' on her as well as to humiliate her). So, the violence and nudity make it a film I would NOT recommend to your kids or mother-in-law! Otherwise, extremely well done but possibly not the sort of thing you'd want to watch (it can be a bit hard to take).

Octopussy78 I have just seen the movie and I liked it more than any other movie about catholic persecution of witches. The last one I saw (and I think last one made) was The Crucible - that one wasn't bad, but I could not feel as much despair, corruption and that fear to speak up your mind as in this one. Kladivo na Carodejnice - with all the brutality, torture and all that injustice is real and very hard to forget. It is very well played and made. "Kladivo na Carodejnice" is a movie, that definitely catches your attention even when it's nearly 40 years old (not as if it was a bad thing)...that pathetic way in which some movies were made in 60's (I think it is about the lightning in these black&white movies) makes it look so threatening, so dark and sad....and so beautiful.