Witchcraft is dead and discredited. Are you bent on reviving forgotten horrors?
An atmosphere of dread and foreboding infuses every frame of 1971's Blood on Satan's Claw, a period horror film set in a 17th-century English village that is beset by an evil force after a ploughman unearths a "fiendish" skull. This triggers a series of inexplicable events, including a young man's fiancée being driven mad the night before their wedding, his aunt disappearing mysteriously soon after, and the young man cutting off his own hand in his sleep. Furthermore, the youth of the village, led by the ironically named Angel (Linda Hayden), begin sacrificing themselves (or at the very least parts of themselves) as part of a "game" which will eventually conjure up their "master," who I'll admit is a bit furrier than most depictions of Satan, but that doesn't bother me. I only wish he had been photographed well enough to be seen. (For the most part cinematographer Dick Bush does an excellent job, so I'm guessing an effort was made to minimize the exposure of what turned out to be a duff demon costume.)
As one would hope, writer Robert Wynne-Simmons and director Piers Haggard (who also contributed to the script) have a few wrinkles to add to what was already something of a shopworn premise at the time. (This film came midway between Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man, both of which it resembles much more than the Hammer horrors that dominated the market.) For one thing, the period setting extends to the dialogue, which is full of thees and thous, and the costuming makes it look like a proto-Peter Greenaway film. Call it The Draughtsman's Compact with the Devil, with Patrick Wymark's haughty judge in the role of the skeptic who comes to realize that there's more going on than meets the eye (although not as quickly as ploughman Barry Andrews) and studies up so he can put a stop to it before it's too late. I can guess how that would have gone if Michael Reeves had been in charge.