#27: The Blood on Satan’s Claw
17th-century English horror flick mostly schlock, but it tries
This review was originally posted to Twitter on January 5th, 2019
Initial release: 1971
Director: Piers Haggard
Horror cinema from the 60s to the early 70s seems to be largely schlock. Hammer and American International Pictures (especially Roger Corman’s work for the latter) certainly contributed to that. But sometimes you find something that stands out… or tries to, anyway. Coming from the same studio as Witchfinder General, and in fact reusing a few elements of it, The Blood on Satan’s Claw certainly has a Hammer horror vibe to the title, but it strives somewhat unsuccessfully to be a more cerebral horror film like the aforementioned Vincent Price flick.
A simple groundskeeper in a tiny English village stumbles upon a fearsome, inhuman corpse while plowing a field. Upon fetching a skeptical judge, he finds the corpse missing. Later, some of the local kids find bones and play with them; thereafter, they begin acting strange. Evoking 1960’s Village of the Damned, the local kids, just a few at first but growing in number, begin to confound the adults, especially the local reverend during his scripture classes. The ringleader seems to be a young blonde named Angel, because of course. Eventually the kids start getting up to ever more sinister games, pulling a few of the adults into it and committing gruesome sacrifices. In addition, several of them have begun exhibiting strange patches of fur and diseased skin, revealed to be the skin of Satan himself.
Once satan is complete, supposedly, he’ll be unstoppable — but he needs that skin, which is mostly unconvincing dog fur glued to the actors, pretty much. in the meantime, the kids do even more stuff, such as trying to seduce the reverend, plus ritually raping one of their victims. Ultimately, the judge is finally convinced that something evil is going down, and comes back and slays Satan at the last moment, with a sword that looked more like aluminum than steel. With that, the movie ends. It’s… a bit of a mess.
In between subplots that go nowhere (an early sequence involves the early male lead’s girlfriend going insane, and then his aunt disappears without a trace and is never found — neither character matters) and exploitative scenes is a film that falls short of the mark of serious. If there’s a high point to the film, it’s the soundtrack, which ventures far from the traditionalism of Witchfinder General to something more mysterious and unusual, well befitting the rural horror vibe the film exudes. Unlike the rest of the film, it stands out.
Ultimately I can’t really recommend the film. It’s overall too aggressively exploitative and derivative, even if the kids are menacing (especially Angel) and the camera work is better than you’d expect. Stick with Witchfinder General. or Village of the Damned, even.
