Witchhammer (Czech: Kladivo na čarodějnice) is a 1970 Czechoslovak drama film directed by Otakar Vávra and starring Elo Romančík.

The priest reports the incident to the owner of the local estate who, in turn, calls in an inquisitor, a judge specializing in witchcraft trials.

However, a priest, Kryštof Lautner, criticizes Boblig for inhumane methods, and another clergy member senses many of the accused women burnt at the stake are in fact innocent, and openly prays for the trials to stop.

The story of the film is based on Václav Kaplický's book Kladivo na čarodějnice (1963),[1] a novel about witch trials in Northern Moravia during the 1670s.

[5] With the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 following the Prague Spring, scholar Peter Hames wrote that it was "difficult to see" Witchhammer "as anything other than a response to the political realities of the post-invasion period".

[6] Richard Chatten of The Independent wrote the film was "possibly Vavra's indirect disclaimer to a paper to which he was obliged to lend his name in 1968 endorsing the Soviet invasion".

[12] This was part of a general trend after the Warsaw Pact invasion, with more Czechoslovak films banned in 1970 than in the past 20 years.

[16] Radio Prague's Jan Richter wrote it is "perhaps the strongest film Otakar Vávra ever made" and "an impressive analogy with what was happening after the Soviet occupation".

[18] In 2011, Will Tizard of Variety called Witchhammer a "sly parable on paranoia and political persecution," and said it and other films Vávra made in the 1960s are his "most prized artistic legacy to critics".