Linda Hayden in her definitive performance as the heavy-browed Angel Blake in Piers Haggard’s THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW.
Imports
THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW
1971, Anchor Bay Entertainment UK, DD-5.1 & 2.0/DTS/MA/LB/+, £12.99, 92m 58s, PAL DVD-2 By Kim Newman
Many sources (including the
cover but not the menu of this release) slightly mis-title THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW as BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW, perhaps because most British TV, video and 16mm prints have retained a working title, SATAN’S SKIN. One of the best-remembered British hor- rors of the early 1970s, it was initiated as an Amicus-style multi-story film but reworked for co-producers Tigon Films into a feature-narrative follow-up (and riposte) to the late Michael Reeves’ MATTHEW HOPKINS— WITCHFINDER GENERAL [US: THE CONQUEROR WORM, 1968].
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Reeves’ film is set during the English Civil War (1642-8) and deals with a corrupt authority figure—Hopkins the Witchfinder, played by Vincent Price—roaming the countryside persecuting inno- cents accused of witchcraft. Piers Haggard’s movie is set af- ter the “glorious, bloodless revolution” of 1688 (signalled by a reference to “His Catholic Majesty” in exile) and deals with a stern, heavy-handed but moral authority figure—the Judge, played by Patrick Wymark, Cromwell in WITCHFINDER— cracking down on witches who are anything but innocent. In a pre-credits sequence
that must have stuck in Clive Barker’s mind (“Rawhead Rex” opens the same way), honest yeo- man Ralph Gower (DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE’s Barry Andrews) turns over a fur- row while plowing and discov- ers remains (a staring eye, misshapen skull, some bones, patches of hairy skin) which are neither human nor animal. This
unleashes an evil which spreads throughout a small rural com- munity. The low-born fiancée (BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB’s Tamara Ustinov) of a local aristocrat (THE UNCANNY’s Simon Williams) is put in an at- tic room for a night by a nasty aunt (Avice Landon) and at- tacked by something hairy that drives her mad and gives her a hideously-clawed hand. Pout- ing peasant teenager Angel Blake (TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA’s Linda Hayden) gets the Devil in her and leads a coven of young folk (and some token old idiots) in a playful com- mune who worship the Evil One and set out to destroy goodly folk like the ineffectual Reverend Fallowfield (NAKED EVIL’s An- thony Ainley) and Ralph’s sweet- heart Cathy Vespers (Wendy Padbury, then best-known for a continuing role on DOCTOR WHO). A mob catch stray witch Margaret (AND SOON THE DARKNESS’ Michele Dotrice) and “swim” her (the process,
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