The Blood on Satan's Claw

The genesis of Blood on Satan's Claw began with twenty-two-year-old Cambridge graduate Robert Wynne-Simmons who told interviewer David Taylor in Shock; The Essential Guide to Exploitation Cinema, "I was just out of University and looking to find work in the film industry. So I didn't have any track record at all and I wrote the obligatory hundred letters. It was on the first of January that I got a reply...from a producer called Chris Neame, who was working, I think, for Tony Tenser at Tigon. He'd been collecting on behalf of the other producers – there were about four people involved here – a number of potential scripts from which to make a film." Wynne-Simmons quickly learned how soon Tigon wanted to put the picture in production: "They'd done a deal with Pinewood in advance, to get a low rate from the studio. It was booked for April 1 – which sort of seemed vaguely appropriate! The letter said we've got thirty possible outlines that we've been presented with and we notice that you've done some writing – I'd written some plays and things at university – do you have anything to offer us? Before I'd really got my head together, I rang them up and said yes, there was something really exciting coming and they said could they have it by next Thursday!" The studio was interested in making a horror film that mimicked the structure of Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and Torture Garden (1967), two successful horror anthologies made by Amicus Productions. The screenwriter's challenge was to write three or four stories linked by a common theme. Wynne-Simmons revisited some of the unpublished short stories he had written as an undergraduate and adapted two of them for his first pass at a screenplay. "The first episode had to do with Simon Williams and Tamara Ustinov, and the whole idea of her going mad and being forced by the unpleasant aunt into the spare bedroom, where something nasty was lurking....Then there was another story about a group of schoolchildren who found something nasty in a field." Wynne-Simmons's screenplay clearly reflected his generation's unrest and disenchantment with the period, drawing inspiration from the true-life crimes of the Charles Manson family and Mary Bell, an eleven-year-old murderess who earned front page headlines in England in 1968. Initially the demon who appears in the village and motivates the events that occur was not intended to be Satan nor was there any intention to make the villagers Devil worshippers or members of a witch coven. "It was deliberately ambiguous...Essentially it was a God-Devil...The idea was that a God who demanded an unpleasant sacrificial type of worship was coming alive again. Also, there was this sort of feeling that evil though this creature might be, it was somehow more 'alive' than the Patrick Wymark character, whose viewpoint was essentially a dead one." The Tigon producers were not completely satisfied with the first draft of the screenplay which was set during the early Victorian era and had a scene of "The Judge arriving aboard a steam train, which was meant to be an image of him steamrolling the whole movement," according to Wynne –Simmons. Instead, Tigon wanted to capitalize on the recent success of Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General aka The Conqueror Worm and set the movie in the 17th century during the time of the witchhunts. The financier/distributors also weren't happy with the ambiguity in the script and the finale which was not the dramatic showdown between good and evil they envisioned. Wynne-Simmons confessed that "In the original script, the last scene was probably more destructive than it was in the eventual film. Patrick Wymark had militiamen with him who actually gunned people down. There was a mass grave dug and that was their end. So it was really a very, very destructive thing. Rough justice, where he just obliterated this crowd of people." Despite the changes Wynne-Simmons had to make to the screenplay of Blood on Satan's Claw, he was never quite able to transform the character of The Judge into the film's hero, even with him welding a cross-like sword in the finale. "...the person who is wielding the cross is usually the 'Van Helsing' [the hero of "Dracula"] force of good, and it was very difficult to reconcile the character of The Judge with the forces of good! This would have reduced his 'ethnic cleansing' to the minimum, sort of make him halfway acceptable." The original script was titled "The Devil's Skin" but Tigon wanted something else and during filming the movie was known as "The Devil's Touch" but was released as Satan's Skin and then retitled and re-released as Blood on Satan's Claw. At least all of these titles were better than the suggestion of Tony Tenser who owned Tigon; he wanted to call the film "The Ghouls Are Amongst Us." While Wynne-Simmons was busy with script revisions, Tigon began casting about for a director and showed some interest in Piers Haggard, a young director who had just completed his first feature film, Wedding Night (1969), which was screened for the Tigon executives (but not released theatrically until after Blood on Satan's Claw). Two of the producers, Peter Andrews and Malcolm Heyworth, were suitably impressed with Wedding Night and offered Haggard Blood on Satan's Claw though he is still puzzled about why they chose him. "I don't think I'd ever been to a horror film," he stated. "I was very arty. I'd worked at the National Theatre and in television, doing series like Callan and various BBC plays...So I couldn't have done a Hammer horror film...well, in the way that would have been accepted." Haggard realized that the film's success would depend on a convincing sense of place and time as well as four or five dramatically powerful sequences which Wynne-Simmons's screenplay had strategically placed throughout the narrative. It was also his desire to make a "folk horror tale," one that tapped into the darkness of local legends in the rural English countryside. Research was conducted on iconography of the Devil, based on drawings from the time period when Blood on Satan's Claw was set, in order to create a cinematic representation of Satan. The aspect of Wynne-Simmons's screenplay that immediately struck Haggard was the rural setting and the lyrical, poetic approach to the subject matter. "I was isolated until I went to university at seventeen," Haggard said, "and those are the formative years. Your imagination is formed at that time. I had an absolutely passionate feeling for the countryside in a very Wordsworthian sense: the light on the bank, the feeling of beech trees in spring, so pale and green; the light on the river or the river at night; walking down the lane with no lights, guiding yourself by looking up at the stars. A very strong and vivid sense of country life." One of the first things that Haggard did after being hired to direct Blood on Satan's Claw was convince the producers that the script would work better as one story and not three and they eventually agreed. Wynne-Simmons then had to stitch the three stories together in a more cohesive fashion but due to the rushed production schedule never really resolved some of the problems and continuity holes in the screenplay. For example, the character of Isobel Banham is dropped from the story after her face is clawed by the insane Rosalind Barton, never to be seen again. Another continuity error that actually worked to the film's advantage in the opinion of some is the disappearance of The Judge from the middle section of the film. In stitching together the three stories, Wynne-Simmons was never able to solve how to reintroduce The Judge into the story before his climactic appearance at the end. However, his return, when the village is almost completely engulfed in evil, makes a more unexpected and ambiguous finale. Marc Wilkinson, a composer for London's National Theatre who was hired to write the score for Blood on Satan's Claw, based his music on other orchestral works which depicted the Devil in musical form and used a thirteen note descending pattern in the score. Although Tigon executives insisted that Blood on Satan's Claw be filmed at Pinewood Studios to avoid the additional expense of location shooting, Haggard held out until they agreed to let him shoot the bulk of the movie at Bix Bottom, "a small valley midway between the towns of Nettlebed and Henley-on-Thames in the Chiltern hills. The name Bix was a holdout from the days when the valley was used as a base for the Roman army – specifically the Roman century B IX," according to David Taylor. Haggard has fond memories of producer Tony Tenser who gave him a first-rate education in controlling film budgets, production costs, promotion ideas and monitoring box office intake. Because of the limited budget, Haggard assembled a cast of mostly unknown actors who were working in television and theatre with the exception of well known character actor Patrick Wymark who had previously appeared, playing Cromwell, in Witchfinder General. The only other actor audiences might have recognized was Linda Hayden who had attracted some notoriety for her role as the teenage nymphet in Baby Love (1968) and for her appearance opposite Christopher Lee in Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970). Among actors and film crews Wymark was known as a heavy drinker and co-star Simon Williams recalled one incident that caused him some anxiety when Wymark returned from lunch drunk. "There was a scene where he had to thump me one. Tamara had gone insane and I'd gone a bit hysterical, and he had to slap me to get me to pull myself together...He did actually hurt me quite a lot." The director, cast and crew were amused by the fact that screenwriter Wynne-Simmons had the look of a young, earnest scholar and was shy which was such a contrast to the person they had imagined as the screenwriter of this disturbing, horrific tale. The opening scene of the fields being plowed by Barry Andrews was also the very first scene that was filmed for the movie. Haggard credits a lot of the film's effectiveness to cinematographer Dick Bush who had recently left the BBC to work in feature films. "Dick Bush...taught me something that I've used ever since. He said, "You're shooting these wide shots in the woods, so you must have a dark foreground. Particularly in a horror film, where who knows what might be lurking in the foreground.' It taught me that it was terribly important to identify the highlight in each frame." Linda Hayden recalled that she cut her foot badly on the first day of shooting and had to be rushed to the closest local hospital for stitches. Her unexpected appearance, in costume and makeup, made quite an impression on the other patients there who were mostly senior citizens. The famous Devil's skin removal scene – where Michele Dotrice is strapped to a table and a patch of fur is surgically removed from her thigh – was inspired by Wynne-Simmons's memory of an operation performed on him at home on the kitchen table by a doctor when he was young. Costar Simon Williams recalled that he had some reservations about working for Tigon at the time: "The whole thing had quite an "iffy" feel about it. Rumours were going about Tigon and we were all cashing our cheques quite quickly." Tigon would soon shut down production for good in 1972 after the release of Neither the Sea Nor the Sand. Williams also remembered filming the scene where he is attacked by the furry hand. "They had a little insert shot of my hand reaching for the dagger and I was doing a lot of business of inching my fingers forward and twitching them. Piers said, 'Cut! Cut! Cut! Simon, don't overact with your fingers.' One of the most powerful sequences in Blood on Satan's Claw - the rape/murder of Cathy Vespers – was unplanned and spontaneous. "I didn't have the idea of Wendy Padbury [Cathy] being beaten with May blossom, "recalled Haggard, "until the morning of the shoot...I was trying to devise some rituals that might seem meaningful for ignorant and superstitious people. It was an inversion of the stations of the cross in the Catholic Church. Likewise, the chant was written on the spot." Tamara Ustinov recalled in David Taylor's account of the film's production that "when they did the rape scene with Wendy Padbury, I remember she got very upset. I think Piers had said, "Look, you've got to make this really realistic"......I think that maybe it all went a bit far. But looking at what's done now, that's nothing...compared to what films are like now." After viewing the film British censor John Trevelyan cautioned Haggard, saying "The thing is, Piers, it's sex and violence. You can have sex. That's alright. Violence is alright. But sex and violence...this is what we have to think carefully about." He then suggested that Haggard remove 6-8 seconds from the rape scene which he did although screenwriter Wynne-Simmons later commented: "The result of the censor's intervention was to make the scene more censorable, in my mind. Because what you then have is a scene with a rape which is largely played out on the faces of the people watching it." Wynne-Simmons recalls that for the final scene in the film where The Judge confronts the Devil executive producer Tony Tenser demonstrated how he wanted the scene to be played by imitating Satan and hopping around on one leg. Haggard noted in the DVD commentary of the film that Blood on Satan's Claw was blessed with good weather for most of the exterior shooting and didn't have to rely on day for night scenes which he feels rarely works in movies. by Jeff Stafford SOURCES: "Don't Overact With Your Fingers!: The Making of Blood on Satan's Claw" by David Taylor from Shock; The Essential Guide to Exploitation Cinema edited by Stefan Jaworzyn The Blood on Satan's Claw DVD commentary by Piers Haggard, Robert Wynn-Simmons, & Linda Hayden IMDB

Linda Hayden was catapulted into international fame after her film debut in the title role of Baby Love (1968) at the age of fifteen. Hayden had just finished making Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) with Christopher Lee when she was offered the role of Angel Blake in Blood on Satan's Claw. She was quite excited by the script because it was such a departure from the approach of a Hammer horror film. Hayden recalled that producers Tony Tenser and Michael Klinger had been partners on several exploitation films but had a falling out prior to Baby Love. When Tenser recruited Hayden for Blood on Satan's Claw she felt he was gloating over the fact that he'd lured a rising star away from Klinger. Hayden stated in a recent interview that she is often approached by horror film fans who want to talk about her work in films such as Satan's Claw, Madhouse (1974), Queen Kong (1976), and Vampira (1974). She is actually happy to be remembered for these genre films and is proud of most of them with the exception of Exposé (1976, aka The House on Straw Hill) which she felt was offensive and a distortion of the film she had agreed to do. Barry Andrews was an up-and-coming actor at the time he made Blood on Satan's Claw and had previously appeared in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968). He never succeeded in becoming a leading man in features, however, except for the embarrassing sex farce, I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight (1976). Most of his later work was primarily in British television and minor supporting roles in such films as The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and ffolkes (1979). Supporting actor Milton Reid, who appears in Blood on Satan's Claw as the mute dog handler who accompanies The Judge at the climax, also appeared as the mute mulatto in the Hammer film Night Creatures (1962, aka Captain Clegg). Other film appearances include Blood of the Vampire (1958) as the executioner, Dr. No (1962), Casino Royale (1967), Berserk! (1967) as the circus strong man, and Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972). Prior to his film career as an extra and minor supporting actor, Reid (born in 1917) was a popular wrestler in England known as "The Mighty Chang" due to his Fu Manchu moustache and Asian features (his mother was Mongolian and his father was Scottish). In 1987 while living in India, he mysteriously vanished and his family never learned if he died or what happened to him despite unproven sources that state he died of a heart attack. Marc Wilkinson, the composer for the score of Blood on Satan's Claw, was recruited from London's National Theatre and had made his film debut with the scoring of Lindsay Anderson's If (1968). He became renowned for his movie score for The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969). Screenwriter Robert Wynne-Simmons recalled that the first section of Blood on Satan's Claw involving Rosalind Barton's visit to the Vespers household was actually taken from an original story he had written at college about a man who kept a knife by his bed and had a dream about a hand attacking him. Director Piers Haggard recalls going to see Witchfinder General during the making of Blood on Satan's Claw and being incredibly impressed by it – "how stylish, how clever" - and intimidated by the talent of the director, Michael Reeves, because he was much younger than himself and so gifted. Haggard is the great grand-nephew of author H. Rider Haggard, who wrote King Solomon's Mines, She and Allan Quartermain. Among the supporting cast of Blood on Satan's Claw, Tamara Ustinov is the daughter of Peter Ustinov and the niece of Angela Lansbury. Michele Dotrice is the daughter of actor Roy Dotrice (The Heroes of Telemark [1965], Lock Up Your Daughters [1969]) who dubbed the voice of Harvey Keitel in Saturn 3. Simon Williams is the son of actor and dramatist Hugh Williams who co-wrote The Grass Is Greener and other plays with his wife, Margaret Vyner. Anthony Ainley is the son of actor Henry Ainley who was a popular stage actor renowned for his performances in the plays of Shakespeare. Haggard said that during a visit to America he met director Jonathan Demme who praised Blood on Satan's Claw, along with others in the Hollywood film industry who saw the movie during its U.S. release and loved it. Most of Haggard's work after Satan's Claw has been in British television; he directed the Bob Hoskins version of Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven and several episodes of the Quatermass sci-fi TV series. Other films have included The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980) with Peter Sellers and Helen Mirren, the notorious snake feature Venom (1981) starring Oliver Reed, Klaus Kinski and Sarah Miles, and A Summer Story (1988), based on the John Galsworthy story. Haggard revealed that he kept a finger of the Devil model used in his film as a memento. When Blood on Satan's Claw was released theatrically in England and in the U.S., it was paired with The Beast in the Cellar, a thriller about two spinsters with an insane brother who murders soldiers; it starred Beryl Reid and Flora Robson. Linda Hayden's full frontal nude scene when she tries to seduce the priest and a shot of a naked dancer in the film's climax were both darkened in the prints which were distributed during the U.S. run of Blood on Satan's Claw. by Jeff Stafford SOURCES: "Don't Overact With Your Fingers!: The Making of Blood on Satan's Claw" by David Taylor from Shock; The Essential Guide to Exploitation Cinema edited by Stefan Jaworzyn The Blood on Satan's Claw DVD commentary by Piers Haggard, Robert Wynn-Simmons, & Linda Hayden IMDB

"Blood on Satan's Claw is cinematic diabolism of some style and intelligence...a horror movie of more than routine interest." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times "For a pleasant variation on the usual unsubtle, corny examples of the current British horror genre, this is one for the collectors." - Films and Filming "...offers a satisfying sense of sunlight-and-terror." - Judith Crist "An effective, serious witchcraft thriller..." - Michael Weldon, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film "...Haggard's picture collapses into gory but well-shot sensationalism...Hayden gives a stronger performance than in Taste the Blood of Dracula [1970], but neither her presence nor that of Wymark, who played Cromwell in Reeves' film [The Conqueror Worm, 1968], are sufficient to counteract the picture's exploitative approach, even though the director manages to cloak this under excellently stylized imagery." - The Encyclopedia of Horror Films "When 1971 is behind us, I hope I may be able to point to this neat little witchcraft thriller as one of the "sleeper" highlights of the year. I could hardly have expected a film as literate as this from the prolific but undistinguished Tony Tenser...The opening scenes are Lovecraftian in structure....The fact that we never really understand the creation, nature or form of the demon, his intent or the circumstances by which he controls his disciples, is at once a flaw and strength of the film...Ignore the title and programmer status. It deserves to be seen." - John Duvoli, Cinefantastique "Blood on Satan's Claw was not typical of the British horror films of the late sixties and early seventies...Quite apart from the plot having no distinct hero figure, it was further complicated by an exceedingly erratic narrative thread and an oppressive atmosphere of madness and decay. It also intertwined two of the cinema's greatest taboo subjects: the inherent evil of children and the overt sexuality of evil. Moody, downbeat, thoughtful and, at times, both lyrical and overtly sadistic, Blood on Satan's Claw joined that small cartel of contemporaneous British horror films – including Witchfinder General...which occupy their own, very precise space at the outskirts of the genre." - David Taylor, Shock: The Essential Guide to Exploitation Cinema "...a concerted effort to recapture the glories of Witchfinder General...it had a downbeat feel that was depressing without having the reasoned misanthropy of the Reeves film...but the direction and cutting gives the film an unsettling, disorienting feel...The finale is frightening not because of the cheesy monster, but because Wymark makes you believe that, although he must kill the creature, he is absolutely terrified of it. Photographer Dick Bush films the story in glorious autumnal colours, and this lushness contrasts nicely with the darkness of the tale." - Andy Boot, Fragments of Fear: An Illustrated History of British Horror Films "Richly atmospheric horror film with erotic overtones, somewhat gruesome at times." - Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide "Moderately frightening, rather silly but at least original period horror comic." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide "....for the first hour Piers Haggard keeps his theme and the blood flowing nicely...Sadly, Haggard lets things slip, and the make up man takes over." - Adrian Turner, TimeOut Film Guide "Gruesome British supernatural chiller (tensely directed by Piers Haggard from Robert Wynne-Simmons' script)...Period atmosphere and costuming are excellent." - John Stanley, Creature Features "Atmospheric British horror...This mood piece...is almost in the category of The Conqueror Worm, thanks to strong performances hard-edged violence, and convincing period detail." - James O'Neill, Terror on Tape "...a taut, eerie and exciting period gothic that contains some genuine chills amidst the commercially exploitable sex and gore. Intended as a successor, in spirit if not in story, to Witchfinder General, the film is an unexpectedly intelligent study of devilry and repression...What immediately strikes you when watching Blood On Satan's Claw is how well it uses the usually tranquil English countryside as a place of terror. This wasn't something new in 1970 – Tigon's earlier Witchfinder General is still one of the great examples of this usage thanks to John Coquillon's work as DP – but it's worth mentioning Dick Bush's extraordinarily evocative photography of a rural community." - Mike Sutton, DVD Times "...the best film TIGON made was Blood on Satan's Claw. Taking the theme of possession and taking supernatural evil seriously, Satan's Claw has a compromised script and an undistinguished cast. Yet it works brilliantly....the style of the film is simultaneously creepy and thoughtful. It doesn't apologize for itself or compensate for scaring you with cheap gags, irony or physical humour. Satan's Claw just does its job and does it better than most. With more resources and more time to script edit, this would have been a masterpiece." - John White, 10bullets.com "...Satan's Claw is a nasty film. A very, very nasty film, with rape, child abduction, limb-lopping, DIY surgery, insanity and murder piled higher and higher until it's hard for the viewer to take much more. Which, let's face it, is pretty much everything a horror film should be." - British Horror Films, www.britishhorrorfilms.co.uk

The Judge (Patrick Wymark): I give you His Catholic Majesty King James III, may God bless him and keep him in exile. The Doctor (Howard Goorney): These ancient sages had access to much wisdom. The Judge: Witchcraft is dead and discredited. Are you bent on reviving forgotten horrors? The Judge: You must have patience, even while people die. Only thus can the whole evil be destroyed. You must let it grow. The Doctor: How do we know what is dead? You come from the city. You cannot know the ways of the country. Did Ralph not describe such a countenance? The Judge: Perhaps some such thing. The Judge: Leave me to judge who is innocent. The Doctor: A fiend has been seen hereabouts, hobbling on one leg. Reverend Fallowfield (Anthony Ainley): There is growing amongst you all an insolent ungodliness, which I will not tolerate! The Judge: I am ready to return, but understand, I shall use undreamed-of measures, to conquer the evil. Compiled by Jeff Stafford

While plowing his fields, a farmer unearths the skeletal remains of something unearthly and rushes off to inform the local authorities. When they return to investigate, the evidence is gone but shortly thereafter a series of strange events plague the village: a young girl goes mad after encountering something in an attic room, her fiancé amputates his own hand in an imagined attack in bed, children begin to wander off and disappear in the woods. Evil spreads through the village like a plague and a teenage girl, Angel Blake, becomes the instrument of an unknown fiend, leading her young followers in sacrificial rituals that will result in the rebirth of a satanic being. Just as the situation threatens to escalate out of control, the local magistrate and a group of armed men arrive to confront the demon invoked by the possessed cult members. Following on the heels of Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm) in 1968, The Blood on Satan's Claw (1970) is a lesser known tale of rural violence similarly set in the 17th century when witch hunts and the persecution of people accused of devil worship was at its height in England and Scotland. Initially envisioned by the producers as an anthology horror film in the manner of such Amicus productions as Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), the separate story threads, through the insistence of the director Piers Haggard, were stitched together by screenwriter Robert Wynne-Simmons to form a single narrative about a village under siege from something unspeakable. Unlike Reeves's Witchfinder General, which was dominated by Vincent Price's frighteningly intense performance as the infamous Matthew Hopkins, The Blood on Satan's Claw was more ambiguous and disturbing in its approach to depictions of good and evil. For example, there is no conventional hero in Satan's Claw (the original release title in England) and The Judge, with his rigid beliefs and dour manner, becomes the villagers' savior by default. There is no other authority figure present that has the power or support to restore a rational sense of order to the village. The Judge's approach to controlling the situation, however, is not dissimilar to a tyrant's organized plan for ethnic cleansing. In an interview with David Taylor for Shock: The Essential Guide to Exploitation Cinema, scenarist Wynne-Simmons revealed "The central theme of the whole film was the stamping out of the old religions. Not by Christianity, but by an atheistic belief that all sorts of things must be blocked out of the mind. So the Judge represents a dogged enlightenment, if you like, who is saying 'Don't let these things lurk in dark corners. Bring it out into the open and then get rid of it. When it becomes a fully fledged cult, it will show itself." Due to the critical and commercial success of Reeves's Witchfinder General, the Tigon Studio executives who produced The Blood on Satan's Claw pressured the screenwriter and director to replicate some of the same elements for their film such as changing the setting from its original Victorian era to the time of Matthew Hopkins. "There were certain other things which had to be added," Wynne-Simmons recalled. "One was the Book of Witches, which I thought was quite dreadful...For heaven's sake, everyone's heard of witches! They don't really need to look them up in a book! The other addition was the witch-ducking scene. This had to be included because it had been so successful in Witchfinder General, so they wanted to repeat it. I didn't mind that so much, as it did show the incredible stupidity of people at the time." It is the original touches added by Wynne-Simmons and Piers Haggard, however, that give The Blood on Satan's Claw a resonance other period thrillers rarely achieve. These include contemporary parallels between Angel Blake's coven and the Manson Family as well as similarities to the notorious Mary Bell murder case which scandalized England in 1968. Haggard's determination to shoot the majority of the film on location in a valley in the Chiltern Hills, a chalk escarpment in Southeast England, grounds the film in a believable bucolic setting where the lyrical, pastoral mood often gives way to a darker and more horrific tone. Strong performances, particularly by Linda Hayden as the seductive Angel Blake and Patrick Wymark as the Judge, an atmospheric score by Marc Wilkinson and impressive cinematography by Dick Bush (who went on to lens several films for Ken Russell including Savage Messiah [1972], Mahler [1974], Tommy [1975] and Crimes of Passion [1984]) place The Blood on Satan's Claw in the top tier of great British horror films. The film provoked some minor controversy when it was first released due to its graphic violence, particularly the scene where an offending patch of "Satan's skin" is surgically removed from the thigh of a squirming cult member (Michele Dotrice). And in the United States, where the movie was unceremoniously dumped on the grindhouse and drive-in circuits with The Beast in the Cellar as the second feature, scenes featuring nudity such as Linda Hayden's attempted seduction of a priest were darkened to avoid an X rating. Like most horror films of the early seventies, The Blood on Satan's Claw received little attention from the major critics and passed unnoticed except for genre enthusiasts who championed the film and are responsible for its large and still-growing cult following today. Producer: Peter L. Andrews, Malcolm B. Heyworth, Tony Tenser Director: Piers Haggard Screenplay: Piers Haggard, Robert Wynne-Simmons Cinematography: Dick Bush Film Editing: Richard Best Art Direction: Arnold Chapkis Music: Marc Wilkinson Cast: Patrick Wymark (The Judge), Linda Hayden (Angel Blake), Barry Andrews (Ralph Gower), Michele Dotrice (Margaret), Wendy Padbury (Cathy Vespers), Anthony Ainley (Reverend Fallowfield). C-93m. Letterboxed. by Jeff Stafford