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| Courtesy of Severin Films |
As the resurgence of the folk horror
subgenre continues to spread like wildfire thanks to the likes of A24 pictures
like Midsommar, The Witch and most recently Lamb followed
by a recent announcement by Severin Films of a forthcoming folk horror boxed
set, it was only a matter of time before frequent British television director
Piers Haggard’s 1971 medieval pagan horror epic The Blood on Satan’s Claw would
receive renewed attention.
Recently given a new 4K restoration in
both the UK and the US, the film was intended as an allegory for the
then-recent Manson Family murders and despite being preplanned as three
pictures before being condensed into one and underperforming at the box office,
the film has since gone on to be regarded as being at the forefront of the
birth of the folk horror subgenre in film alongside Witchfinder General and
The Wicker Man.
In a small English countryside during
the XVIII Century, a farmhand stumbles upon a skull with one eye and fur on its
head in the middle of a field but upon returning with the local judge it is
nowhere to be found. Not long after the
judge’s son Peter (Simon Williams) brings home a young woman named Rosalind
(Tamara Ustinov) as his fiancée only to have her abruptly go insane and be
institutionalized.
All of this leads to the local children
who seemingly have succumb to the occult under the demonic guidance of Angel
Blake (Linda Hayden), a lusty femme fatale with as strong of a thirst for carnality
as she has for blood. As more and more
people start turning up with patches of fur on their bodies and a local girl is
raped and ritualistically murdered by the cult, the judge concludes it is in
fact the work of the Devil himself and that he must vanquish him in any
capacity he can.
While an ensemble piece with many characters
and cross-cutting plot threads of the grip of evil slowly seeping through the
remote countryside, The Blood on Satan’s Claw basically boils down to a
war between good and evil with the God-fearing judge (Patrick Wymark) and local
Reverend Fallowfield (Anthony Ainley) engaged by the evil seductive nymphette Angel
Blake, played with gusto by Linda Hayden who might be one of the most
bloodthirsty femme fatales in cinema history.
Take for instance a scene where Hayden
tries to seduce the Reverend Fallowfield in his own classroom, disrobing and
strutting around the set fully nude without making a misstep, in near full
demonic control of the Reverend. Later
still she is seen licking the blood off of a blade after repeatedly stabbing
her victim in the back during a sacrificial rite but not before telling a witch
being pursued by an angry mob for her to ‘let the dogs eat you’. A true personification of physical evil in
the flesh preying on man’s weaknesses while representing a nebulous greater,
more implacable adversary destined to bring Hell back on Earth.
An earthy period mixture of folk horror
with the uncanny and graphically gruesome in between moments of unfettered
carnality, writer-director Piers Haggard’s brief dabbling in the horror genre is
an ornate handsomely photographed shocker lensed brilliantly by Phase IV and
Sorcerer cinematographer Dick Bush.
Equally powerful is the film’s haunted original score by Australian
composer Marc Wilkinson which fluctuates between electronica and orchestral
compositions.
Originally filmed under the title Satan’s
Skin before being re-released with the finished title The Blood on Satan’s
Claw, the film seen now is regarded as one of Great Britain’s finest folk
horror films and one that helped cement the genre as an important and
contemporary subgenre of horror. With
such archaic settings as the ruined Saint James Church on full display as well
as shooting in Oxfordshire to take full advantage of the English countryside,
the world of the film from top to bottom feels enmeshed in the superstitious and
otherworldly.
Seen now, the film hasn’t lost any of
its power to shock or horrify and clearly informed what would or would not evolve
into the folk-horror subgenre. Moreover,
the film has since been reassessed as a Lovecraftian progenitor in terms of its
premise and the conviction the characters have to the superstitions as cold
hard indisputable fact. An essential
component of folk-horror and an ornate, classy endeavor unafraid to take
chances or affront the viewer when necessary, The Blood on Satan’s Claw rightfully
earns its moniker as one of the greatest British horror films of all time.
--Andrew Kotwicki
