Blood on Satan's Claw - 1971 film review

I like horror fiction and films, but there's no point in denying that quite a lot of it is...well, horrible. The title of the film Blood on Satan's Claw didn't exactly incentivise me to watch it, but then I discovered that Mark Gatiss, whose judgments on popular culture I always find interesting, rated it as an important example of 'folk horror'. He even ranked it alongside The Wicker Man, a film I have always admired. So I decided to give it a go.

Was it trashy or terrific? Well, I can see why there are arguments on both sides, but first things first. This is a movie that came out before The Wicker Man, but although the two films have one or two common elements (including the highly effective use of music), I don't think anyone can deny that the Anthony Shaffer film is much more sophisticated. Blood on Satan's Claw was written by a young Cambridge graduate, Robert Wynne-Simmons, and originally it took the form of an anthology film, with three stories in one. The director, Piers Haggard, persuaded him to combine the stories into a single tale, and this was a sensible idea. But the storyline remained somewhat fragmented. As a result, there's something disjointed about the film, a major difference from The Wicker Man. 

The story is set in the early 18th century. A farmer ploughing a field uncovers a deformed skull, which mysteriously vanishes. Shortly afterwards, a young woman (Tamara Ustinov) goes mad as a result of an encounter with a mysterious creature in the attic of a house where a judge (Patrick Wymark, in his last role before his tragically early death) is visiting. In the local village, a young boy is hunted and killed, and then his sister suffers a dreadful fate. It's clear that a girl called Angel (played by Linda Hayden in her customary sexy way) is at the heart of the mischief. But what exactly is going on?

This isn't a film for the squeamish, and it has exploitative elements, as Piers Haggard later acknowledged, which I didn't like. What's more, it's definitely not strong on subtlety. On the other hand, the cinematography has been rightly acclaimed - the visual presentation of the English landscape, lovely yet menacing, is impressive - and the very unevenness of the storyline contributes to the sense that rural life is unpredictable and disturbing. So, very far from a masterpiece, but a cult curiosity at the very least.