‘Strange folk have been seen to pass this way from time to time...’
While Witchfinder General is often cited as the first folk horror film, and The Wicker Man is the film that brought the subgenre kicking and screaming into the public consciousness, but for my money, The Blood on Satan’s Claw is where it all began. All the elements that make up the folk horror genre are here – a small, rural village; the occult; an outsider; human sacrifice… and all of these nasty, vicious elements combine to produce something properly special…
We are in 18th century England. Ralph Gower (Barry Andrews), a local farmer has accidentally come across the corpse of a ‘fiend’ while ploughing the earth. The ‘fiend’ is some kind of human/animal hybrid. Understandably perturbed by this strange intrusion into his otherwise simple life, Ralph reports his findings to the local judge (Patrick Wymark) who agrees to investigate. It quickly becomes clear that Angel Blake (Linda Hayden), a local girl, has fallen under the spell of the devil.
Director Piers Haggard has a clear and distinct vision of the insularity of rural life in Britain and while he does draw from Witchfinder General in his portrayal of the English countryside, …Satan’s Claw feels very much like its own thing. The depiction of village life here has directly influenced everything from The Wicker Man to Straw Dogs to Hot Fuzz, with character archetypes established here (the teenage siren, the pious priest, the naive villager) that would go on to appear again and again in other productions.
The Blood on Satan’s Claw has retained a certain malevolent mystique that renders the film timeless. There are parts of England that still feel like the world created here, and it is this juxtaposition of the familiar and the uncanny that ensures that Haggard’s film is one of the most influential horror films in the history of British cinema.
