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**Minor Spoilers**

Blood On Satan's Claw (1970)

Dir: Piers Haggard

Set in 17th Century England, the film opens with Ralph Gower (Barry Andrews) uncovering a deformed skull, with one eye and strange fur upon it, while plowing a field. He gets the local judge (Patrick Wymark, who was cast after it was decided both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee would be too expensive, and who died the same year) to take a look at it. But the skull has vanished and the Judge disregards Ralph's supernatural fears.

Peter Edmonton (Simon Williams) brings his Fiancée to visit his Aunt, where the Judge is also staying, she is put up in the attic room. That night she is heard screaming and upon breaking down the door, Peter and the Judge discover she has gone insane. While being taken away to the asylum, Peter notices her hand is like an animals claw. The Judge, now believing something demonic roams the sleepy village, leaves to gather help and knowledge to fight the growing evil.

Meanwhile the local children have started to act strange. They are rude and surly and start to play cruel games on the local Vicar (Anthony Ainley, best known for playing `The Master' in the famous UK Sci-Fi show "Dr Who"). Their leader is Angel Blake (Linda Hayden) who after finding a strange claw, slowly becomes more and more wayward. Soon, strange patches of fur start to grow on some of the children and on anyone who comes into contact with the vile skin. Skin that belongs to Satan. Skin that Angel and the now evil drenched teenagers are hacking from the young bodies of their former friends. And in the woods, as murder and depravity spreads amongst the children, something slowly takes on it's unholy form…

 

Don't let the extremely strange plot idea put you off or make you think you are about to watch a film of the silliest kind. "Blood On Satan's Claw" is a serious, bleak, nasty and yet stylish exercise in horror, that not only marks it as one of the best British terror movies ever made (by the short lived `Tigon Films'), but a high point in the horror genre as a whole.
From the very start this film casts an eerie spell. After the camera has lingered on the jellied eye in the monstrous skull, we go into one of the most atmospheric title sequences created. As a raven sits in ominous silhouette, on a tree branch, the magnificent music (that has the same kind of feel as the superlative score by Paul Ferris for "Witchfinder General) by Marc Wilkinson drifts out over the viewer, giving a haunting feel to the mist shrouded English countryside.

The score will later become an essential part of the films oppressive, sinister atmosphere as the music seems to creep through the trees, with the wonderfully creepy oboe cues punctuating the lilting strings. There is also a more romantic piece that is occasionally combined into the main theme, but this combination gives it a sense of impending sadness and tragedy. Emotions this film does not shy away from.

The script, by Robert Wynne-Simmons (with Director Piers Haggard), delivers not only a wonderful 17th century atmosphere, with delightfully camp `Ye Olde English' dialogue like "Oh Sir, I was so afeared", but also paints a harsh picture of the class attitude towards `superstitious peasants' (The judge is at first a very unsympathetic character, before his enlightened change into the stern hero) and is uncompromising in it's brutality.

Haggard (aside from this, probably best known for "Venom", a film itself best known for the snake that sneaks up Oliver Reed's trouser leg) handles the shock sequences and the atmosphere expertly. Moving the story along nicely while still having time to show the devastating effect the evil is having on the community.

Not only is the film at times searingly violent and cruel, but also constantly disturbing due to the fact it is children (Hayden herself was only 17 at the time) that are the sadistic murderers and perverted followers of Satan. And it's in this depiction of childhood perversion that the film really shocks.
No other British horror movie ever came close to the uncompromisingly cruel teenage characters we are given here. Only the spanish film "Could You Kill A Child" comes close to the evil children that populate this film.
After killing a young boy, the children joke with his unknowing Mother, telling her that they shut him up in the woodshed, leading her into discovering the butchered body of her Son. They laugh and skip through the forest, leading their fellow children to their deaths.

This callous attitude is most explicitly shown in the films most notorious sequence where a girl is attacked by the other children who force her to the ground to cut off her bit of the Devil's skin. As the animal like Devil looks on, she is held down by her friends as one of the older boys' starts to strip.
The other boys, and even more shockingly the girls, tear off her clothes and watch in ecstasy as she is raped. The rape serves no part in getting the skin, it is purely an act of perverted sadism.
The performance by Wendy Padbury in this role (who also came from the rather more family friendly "Dr Who", as one of The Doctor's companions) is heartbreakingly effective.
The look of pure disgust and shame as she is brutalized makes for a truly uncomfortable viewing experience in itself, but add to that the fact it's all being watched by the other children (and even a leering old couple) and you have what is perhaps the nastiest scene ever to appear in British Cinema. By the time she is finally murdered (as she is held on top of the grinning rapist) a raw numbness has settled on the viewer, and the atmosphere of corruption is almost palpable. If that wasn't enough, the film also features a squirm inducing sequence where one of the girls has her patch of skin slowly cut off with a scalpel while fully conscious.

Due to this violence, the erotically charged nudity is made generally disturbing and is at its most effective in the sequence where Angel strips naked in front of the Vicar and attempts to seduce him. This is Hayden's scene all the way, and she shows that even at such a young age she is willing to give her all for the part. As she slowly walks, fully nude, towards the Vicar she breathlessly purrs at him "D'You wan' come play our games with us" making him turn away in shame.
Her performance is frightening, erotic and profoundly unsettling. Hayden is one of the unsung heroines of British horror/exploitation cinema, and in this film she shows just how good an actor you have to be, to create an effectively bad character.

In fact all the performances are at least solid, with special mention to the young actors who add such an effective, childishly cruel streak to their roles and never hold back during the disturbing scenes.Wymark, who only appears at the beginning and the end of the film, is in top form as well. With The Judge `Tigon Films' give us a just, but extremely harsh, character that seems to be more realistic given the times, than the normal completely sympathetic hero of `Hammers' films. And his final sequence shows just how powerful a character he is.

The few faults the film has are purely cosmetic. The Devil is a nicely different, almost medieval interpretation, but is rather cheap looking and the finale is perhaps a little too low key, despite an excellent use of freeze framing as The Judge does battle and seems to be compromised by the budget. But this is easily put into shade by the movies many triumphs.

A must see movie for any fan of British horror films, of 70's exploitation, and of top class horror in general. "Blood on Satan's Claw" is a powerful, vicious exercise in fear.