DEVIL IN THE FLESH : Piers Haggard’s ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’ (1970) [7/10]

Published on: August 20th, 2006

I first saw Blood on Satan's Claw on the 23rd of April 1982 when it was shown on Tyne Tees TV as part of their (then-)regular Friday-night horror slot. I was 11. It blew me away, instantly entering the "Top Ten Horror Films" list which I had been scrupulously compiling and updating for over a year. I especially liked the freeze-frame final shot: a witch-hunting character known only as The Judge (Patrick Wymark) is glimpsed through the flames of a pyre in which he'd just dispatched a cowled, deformed, demonic creature who may well have been the devil himself.

Twenty-four years on, I watched Blood on Satan's Claw for the second time – again on a Friday night, as it happened. While the final freeze-frame didn't quite live up to expectations, the concluding scene itself is emphatically the best, most startling, most original, thing about the whole enterprise: quite possibly one of the great endings to a horror movie. In the interim, I'd seen Witchfinder General - made by the same production company (Tigon) and same main producer (Tony Tenser) two years earlier. In almost every way Witchfinder's inferior, Blood on Satan's Claw is clearly an attempt to cash in on Witchfinder's notoriety and success. By the time of Satan's Claw, of course, Reeves was dead by his own hand (accident? suicide? we'll never know) and directorial duties were handled by Piers Haggard: not an untalented film-maker, but nowhere near the prodigious abilities of the one-off Reeves.

Blood on Satan's Claw is a full-blooded, if somewhat rough-edged exercise in Satanic exploitation: a handful of set-pieces work very well, although the script has a thrown-together, ramshackle feel with characters vanishing off for long periods, some of them never to return. We're in an unspecified rural locale in what's identified in the dialogue (the Judge sardonically speaks of "His Catholic Majesty James III", dating proceedings as later than 1700) as the early 18 century. A ploughman uncovers a grisly skull – setting in motion a series of events which sees the local youth, led by the unashamedly carnal Angel Blake (Linda Hayden), gradually fall under the spell of diabolical powers…

With a script credited to Haggard and Robert Wynne-Simmons, Blood on Satan's Claw (known, like Witchfinder General, by various different titles) is an atmospheric, intermittently effective journey into Britain's bloodstained history. At its best – the rape and violent death of innocent Cathy (former Doctor Who star Wendy Padbury); the scene in which Angel disrobes in church to tempt local vicar Fallowfield (future Doctor Who Anthony Ainley); that delirious finale – the film is undeniably effective, pushing the boundaries of sexuality and extreme behaviour in a manner than disturbs rather than titillates.

And its features a bracingly full-tilt performance from Wymark (who died within the year from a heart attack) that might have rivalled Vincent Price's chilling Matthew Hopkins from Witchfinder (in which Wymark played Oliver Cromwell) if the Judge hadn't been frustratingly absent from the action for a long central stretch. Despite this perplexing absence, this is an unusually vivid and bold British horror film – one whose growing cult following includes The League of Gentlemen: their debut feature The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse is in part an affectionate homage to Blood on Satan's Claw and is therefore presumably worth seeking out.

Neil Young
20th August, 2006

BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW  : [7/10] : aka Satan's Skin aka The Blood on Satan's Claw : UK 1970 : Piers HAGGARD : 92 mins (BBFC timing of [uncut] DVD version)
seen on DVD at home in Sunderland (UK), 18th August 2006