The Blood on Satan’s Claw *** (1971, Patrick Wymark, Linda Hayden, Barry Andrews) – Classic Movie Review 4094

‘A CHILL-FILLED Festival of HORROR!’

Director Piers Haggard’s intriguing and skillful 1971 British costume horror thriller movie The Blood on Satan’s Claw stars Patrick Wymark, Linda Hayden and Barry Andrews. It is produced by Tony Tenser (and Malcolm B Heyworth and Peter L Andrews) for Tigon British Film Productions studios and released by Cannon Films.

Screen-writer Robert Wynne-Simmons tells the lurid, gory and gripping tale of Devil worship in a medieval British rural village in early-18th-century England. It begins with the discovery of a half-man, half-beast figure in a field and follows its strange effect on the local people as the children of the village start converting into a coven of Devil worshipers.

Wymark stars as the Witchfinder-type character The Judge, and Barry Andrews plays the landsman Ralph Gower, while Hayden (just 17) is effective in a steamy role as Angel Blake, the lusty young woman who leads the village children to Satan and seduces the Curate, the Reverend Fallowfield (Anthony Ainley). Simon Williams has a good role as Peter Edmonton, who brings his fiancée Rosalind Barton (Tamara Ustinov) to his aunt’s house for their wedding next day, but she goes insane overnight while sleeping in a disused attic room, is carted off to an asylum, and a claw has replaced her hand. Peter sneaks into the attic room at night and is attacked by a creature with a furred claw. He tries to hack it with a knife but the judge bursts in and finds Peter has severed his own hand.

Haggard directs with notable skill, keeping it involving, and emphasising blood, sex and lurid detail. Strikingly shot by cameraman Dick Bush, and atmospherically scored with strange sounds by Marc Wilkinson, it is similar to Witchfinder General and Village of the Damned, only less stylised and more violent in the fashion of the Seventies.

Australian composer Marc Wilkinson had previously worked with Haggard at the UK National Theatre.

Haggard got Dick Bush to shoot in a ‘painterly style’ with low camera angles casting the actors on high landscapes against open skies, influenced by Ingmar Bergman’s films The Seventh Seal (1957) and The Virgin Spring (1960).

Also in the cast are Michele Dotrice as Margaret, James Hayter as the squire, Avice Landone, Robin Davies, Charlotte Mitchell and Wendy Padbury.

Requested by Tigon British Film Productions, Robert Wynne-Simmons devised the film as an anthology of three loosely connected separate stories set in a Victorian era village. But Tigon executives changed their mind and got Wynne-Simmons to set the story in an early-18th-century farming community, judging the Victorian Era was already played out in other horror films. He was asked to include elements from the studio’s previous hit film Witchfinder General, like the Book of Witches and the scene where Margaret (Michele Dotrice) is ducked in water by locals suspecting she is a witch.

The star role was offered to Peter Cushing, who had to decline because of his wife’s illness. Patrick Wymark was cast after Tigon found Christopher Lee was asking a fee too high for the budget of £75,000 (later expanded to £82,000). It was Wymark’s last English language film, premiered in London on 16 July 1971, after his death of a heart attack on 20 October 1970, aged 44.

Filming began on 14 April 1970 for eight weeks, mainly in the village of Bix Bottom, Oxfordshire, in the Chiltern Hills. The ruined church is the old Saint James Church in Bix Bottom, abandoned in 1875.

The BBFC gave the UK cinema version an X rating and cut it to edit the rape scene and shots of a naked girl dancing in front of a knife-wielding boy. Some sequences were optically darkened, including the scene in which a nude Angel attempts to seduce The Reverend. The cuts were restored in the 2003 Anchor Bay DVD release. Also a shot of Angel performing oral sex on the demon was significantly shortened and darkened, though it briefly appears in the final cut.

Tigon screened the film at the New Victoria Cinema to 2,600 guests for its premiere in London but, after poor ticket sales, the film was pulled from the cinema after a week.

In May 2019, Screenbound Pictures issued a DVD and limited edition Blu-ray of a new restoration of the film.

The cast are Patrick Wymark as The Judge, Linda Hayden as Angel Blake, Barry Andrews as Ralph Gower, Michele Dotrice as Margaret, Wendy Padbury as Cathy Vespers, Anthony Ainley as The Reverend Fallowfield, Charlotte Mitchell as Ellen, Tamara Ustinov as Rosalind, Barton, Simon Williams as Peter Edmonton, James Hayter as Squire Middleton, Howard Goorney as The Doctor, Avice Landone as Isobel Banham, Robin Davies as Mark Vespers, Godfrey James as Angel’s Father, and Roberta Tovey as coven member.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4094

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert