The Blood on Satan's Claw

by Fiona Moore

I'll admit I sat down to watch The Blood on Satan's Claw with mixed expectations. The title is tragically generic, the budget low and the director, Piers Haggard, a complete unknown. However, it was made by Tigon Productions, who made the groundbreaking folk horror movie Witchfinder General, so I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

It did not disappoint.

Quad movie poster from the London screening

The Blood on Satan's Claw is possibly the best horror movie from the UK since 1968's Witchfinder General. Claw is following similar ground as a story in which the horror is not the monster (which might not actually exist) but the people who unleash it.

In the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, a ploughman, Ralph (Barry Andrews), unearths what he thinks is the corpse of a fiend. He runs to find the local judge (the late Patrick Wymark, whose character is never named). But when both return, the body has disappeared.

Not long afterwards, the ironically-named Angel Blake (Linda Hayden) finds a claw in the same field. Soon, strange events begin to unfold. The fiancee of Peter Edmonton (Simon Williams), the local landowner's heir, goes mad and is taken off to bedlam; Peter himself has a similar fit and cuts off his own hand; villagers begin developing strange patches of fur on their bodies and claws on their hands.

Angel rallies a coven of disaffected, mostly young, villagers around herself. They set off on a violent spree, murdering and raping villagers and leveling false accusations at the local vicar (Anthony Ainley) after he spurns Angel's affections.

Finally, Peter sends for the judge, who returns with a blessed sword. He interrupts the coven's attempt to raise the Devil and finally kills Angel. The villagers return to normal and the chaos is resolved.

Angel attempts to seduce the vicar.

The Blood on Satan's Claw covers a lot of the same ground as last year's schlock-fest Cry of the Banshee. Both films feature an unpleasant older male authority figure (Peter Cushing reportedly turned down the role due to his wife's illness), a coven led by a charismatic female witch with a fondness for holding orgies in ruined churches, and innocents having their lives ruined by witch-hunts.

However, Claw addresses a lot of my complaints about Banshee. In Claw, the coven feels believably grounded in village life, and there are consequences for everyone's actions and those of the people hunting them– a village woman at one point begs the men of the town not to kill her child.

The sexual violence in Satan's Claw is horrifying rather than aimed at sadistic titillation as it is in Banshee. This suggests there was indeed a better movie that could have been made out of the earlier schlock-fest, and now there has been.

The fault lines that Angel and her followers exploit are also credible, and well set up. The curate is an educated, bookish man who struggles to find common ground with his peasant congregation and to maintain his authority in the community. So it's logical how he finds few allies when Angel accuses him of raping her.

Friction between Peter and his aunt, who is (in a quiet nod to women's lib) the local wealthy landowner, over his choice of fiancee seems to be what triggers the initial set of attacks. The coven prey on Ralph and his fiancee Cathy, charmingly played by Doctor Who's own Wendy Padbury, seemingly just because they are a well-meaning, innocent couple and the coven need an outlet for their sadistic impulses.

Cathy is victimized by cult members.

On the production side, Haggard handles the low budget well. The demon could have been another laughable man in a furry suit, but the lighting and the use of hand-held wobbly cameras hide the costume's limitations. Ragged and dented pieces of Civil War armour on the coven and villagers remind us that divisions in the country have not yet healed as well as giving the whole story a post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

But The Blood on Satan's Claw is still a bit of a gem in the rough. The script could  have done with another round of editing. Characters tend to disappear from the story without any real explanation of what happened to them. It's also never convincingly explained why the judge is converted from his initial scepticism about witchcraft beyond reading one book about demons.

Satan's Claw also just about manages to avoid being another panic story about feral youth running wild by virtue of the fact that Angel's coven includes older people as well, but it's still teetering on that edge.

An unlikely hero.

Nonetheless, I'd recommend this film as another groundbreaking move for the horror industry. We seem to have had a complete reversal in the past fifteen years. Hammer now produces cheap schlock while smaller studios produce groundbreaking and exciting horror movies. Will Tigon manage to pull this off a third time? I certainly look forward to finding out!

4 stars

The Virgin Witch

by George Pritchard

With Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, & Girly on one end of the spectrum, and Robin Redbreast on the other, The Virgin Witch manages to fit between the two with great ease. Its effervescence reminds me of the Beach Party movies, in the best way, the sense of casual kindness and low stakes between beautiful people.

Our story follows two sisters, Christina (also referred to as Christie and Chris by other characters) and Betty, who have moved to London in order to become fashion models. This goes surprisingly well. They are hired for a shoot on the day they arrive in London, and are invited to a country seat, Witchwold, for a weekend fashion shoot.

This life of easy employment and naked breasts proves to be more than it seems — the owner of Witchwold, and indeed the whole photography studio, prove to be witches! Not particularly bad ones, although not opposed to vagueness for its own sake. Mild spookiness and light drama ensues, and while there is one death, it is so silly as to be negligible.

We get to hear quite a bit about the beliefs of the witches, who seem to base their beliefs somewhat on Occult Revival teachings and somewhat on more recent developments (as covered by our own Erica Frank!)

Like Beware the God Who Smiles, the intricacies of magic are largely a framework for erotic images of the “softcore” variety. Christina and Betty take baths, wear a variety of small dresses, undress for no particular reason, and generally display themselves. The structure of the film also suggests Lust for a Vampire, with the setting, plot, and characters largely designed to get nubile actresses in sexy scenarios of various stripes.

With simple effects, blatant ADR, and middling acting, The Virgin Witch is best enjoyed with friends, and maybe a few intoxicants. You won’t cry, but you’ll certainly laugh.

Three stars.

[New to the Journey?  Read this for a brief introduction!]

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