BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW

(A.k.a THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW; SATAN'S SKIN; THE DEVIL'S SKIN)

We're in 17th Century rural England. Young farmhand Ralph (Barry Andrews) discovers a strange skull poking out of the soil while manually ploughing his master's field.

He rushes to tell the local Judge (Patrick Wymark), who's a city gent recently relocated to the country and has no time for the superstitions of his new village's community.

Upon inspection of said field, the Judge finds no trace of the skull and so dismisses Ralph's claims as tomfoolery. But what neither realise is that the local kids, all of whom diligently attend the church's Sunday school classes to begin with, have retrieved the remains and are slowly succumbing to Satanic forces as a result.

There are subplots, such as the plight of the Judge's son Peter (Simon Williams) and his innocent fiancée, and the village doctor's (Howard Gooney) slow persuading of the Judge that witchcraft does exist. But the real star of this show is precocious teenager Angel (Linda Hayden).

Angel, an attendee at the Sunday school classes presided over by Eric Roberts lookalike Fallowfield (Anthony Ainley), soon takes charge of her youthful following and leads the village's kids into devil worship - all the while culling their brood of those who display overt signs of having been possessed by the Beast. Sayonara Mark (Robin Davies), so long Cathy (Wendy Padbury)...

As the deaths mount, the kids become more and more detached from the adult world and the Judge finally starts to believe that evil is afoot, does he have the power to put an end to the Hellish work that's unfolding before his eyes?

Though shot on a low budget and riddled with inconsistent performances as a result, BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW earns its cult reputation by virtue of a relentless pace and a most appealing blend of both Hammer-esque period design and 70s exploitation detail (minor gore; nudity).

A rape scene perpetrated by youths against one of their friends occurs midway through and is truly jarring. It's made all the more shocking by Marc Wilkinson's playful, almost twee score.

Production values are nice despite the apparent budgetary restrictions, with director Piers Haggard always ensuring his film is sufficiently lit and that it makes good use of the attractive woodlands locations. Wymark makes for a good, typically brusque aristocratic figure while Hayden really does excel as the sexy minx who is convincingly capable of leading a village's pubescent population, Pied Piper-style, into oblivion.

The chasm between adults and their children is a definite early theme of the film, while later questions over the validity of religion - especially Catholic values - come into play.

A Tigon Films production from 1971, it's entirely understandable that at times the film takes on elements of their big hit from 1969, WITCHFINDER GENERAL. But, thankfully, CLAW is mostly original and Haggard must be commended for staying as true as he could to Robert Wynne-Simmons' original script in the face of producer adversity.

Rough around the edges and all the more convincing for it, BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW continues to age extremely well. It's an increasingly cruel film, right down to its intentionally ambiguous final frame.

It hardly even matters that, at 42 years old, there are moments where the film is unintentionally funny: the casting of Michele Dotrice (Betty from TV's "Some Mothers Do Have 'Em") in a pivotal role; possessed kids played by adults and forced to wear huge hairy fake eyebrows; the clumsy delivery of period dialogue...

Odeon Entertainment bring BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW to UK blu-ray on a region B disc which proffers the uncut film in a most attractive 1080p HD transfer. Encoded as an MPEG4-AVC file of decent size, the film looks lovely for the most part. Colours are subdued but natural, skin tones are free from waxy DNR interference and a new level of detail can be experienced through the very fine grain texture on screen. Some darker scenes do suffer from the flicker of wear and age, admittedly, but by-and-large this is a great presentation taken from an exceedingly print. The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

English audio comes in a pleasingly clean, consistent LPCM 2.0 mix.

A stirring, and colourful, animated main menu opens the disc. From there, pop-up menus include a scene-selection menu which allows access to the film via 18 chapters.

Most of the bonus features here have been available before (notably, on Anchor Bay UK’s stand-alone and Tigon boxset DVD releases).

There is, however, the addition of a new 22-minute chat with Haggard. He’s relaxed and refreshingly honest as he addresses the screen, telling of how his knowledge of horror cinema was limited at the time of the shoot and how he had no allusions toward creating a work of art: he perceived the film as being fun, nothing more. This is a well-produced HD featurette with welcome clips from the film interspersed throughout.

Haggard also turns up in a couple of the previous extras, the first of which is a fluent and highly involving commentary track which also includes Wynne-Simmons and Hayden. Moderated by SGM friend Jonathan Sothcott, this covers lots of ground and has a really informal, engaging feel to it.

Fans will no doubt have already heard the second audio commentary track featured here. It comes courtesy of Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson of TV's "The League of Gentlemen" and was previously exclusive to the box set version of Anchor Bay's DVD. It remains a witty and sometimes surprisingly insightful listen. Mostly though, it's a funny barrage of observations such as "how many of those 'children' look like they're under 35?" (the kids at Sunday school), "titties, look! You used to see titties on television too" ... "she looks like Anne Diamond now though" (when Hayden strips in an attempt to seduce the cleric).

"Touching the Devil" is the 20-minute Making Of featurette we're all previously familiar with. Watching it again is no chore, as it offers great reveals covered differently in the former commentary regarding the changing of the original title (THE DEVIL'S TOUCH), Haggard's subtle workaround for what would've been a compromised ending and Hayden's box office pulling power of the time.

Hayden gets to chat more about her involvement in CLAW in the still-enjoyable 12-minute featurette "An Angel for Satan". It's a nice career-spanning interview that even contains brief home movie footage of her as a child with her parents.

The film's original theatrical trailer clocks in at just under 2-and-a-half minutes in length and makes for entertainingly bombastic viewing.

BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW is a wonderfully enjoyable, occasional laughable and undeniably flawed slice of British horror history. The good far outweighs the bad (as does the so-bad-it's-good), and the film retains an edge that even the likes of WITCHFINDER GENERAL have lost over the years.

The blu-ray from Odeon Entertainment is likely to be as good a release as this film is ever going to enjoy, and I'm pleased to report it does it complete justice.

Review by Stuart Willis