Part 1: Nosebleeds, guilt and The Blood on Satan’s Claw

Is there something addictive about blogging? Or is it the tragic recognition that you’ve nothing better to do with your life and blogging is the final admission of defeat? Well, on the back of my last confession, I hope you’ll all go easy on me. When I used to flick through my precious Denis Gifford book, there was always one picture that particularly intrigued me, although I wasn’t sure why at the time.

In the still, a fair skinned, blonde young woman, was about to kiss a deformed, twisted formless mass. It was sort of a face, but not a face, things that sort of looked like eye sockets, but were not really orbits and a nose that looked more like a knobbly tree trunk; this whole distorted mass was partially obscured by a tattered hood,

To a nine year it was creepy, but kind of erotically charged too, the pale lily white perfect skin of this young blonde teenager about to be imminently corrupted or infected by contact with this misshaped, pitted mess. As I said before, every page of Gifford’s book is packed with stills, identifying the title of each still required a considerable amount of mental agility, every page is overflowing with instructions to direct you to each image - top right, bottom left, extreme bottom left, centre bottom right and so on. Trying to work this out (at the age of nine) often gave me a nose bleed, or a headache or both, which only confirmed my mother’s suspicions she’d somehow bought her son The Devil’s own cinematic directory for his birthday. After many headaches, I found the reference for the still that fascinated me; Gifford attributed it to The Blood on Satan’s Claw (Haggard, 1971), my imagination almost imploded with excitement! Who wouldn’t want to see a film with a title like that? With images like that? It was a challenge no horror obsessed nine-year old could resist. So I scurried off to my tatty, ruled schoolbook to draw out the rest of the film. It was masterpiece, but it was also a dumb move, as I forgot I had to hand the book in the following day. My scrawls were quickly discovered by my bastard of a teacher, who instantly thought I was the child of the Satan and hauled in my mother to tell her so. It was a fairly one-sided trial, much like the Witch finding in Day of Wrath (Dreyer, 1943),

I was quickly found guilty. My punishment left me heartbroken as Gifford’s’ book (which was my world) was confiscated by my father for several months afterwards. I don’t think he was really bothered by my unimaginative scrawls; he was more annoyed that the whole episode had upset my mother, and took some sadistic delight in telling me this numerous times, which only added to the weight of my guilt. It was a hard load to bear.

Is this all too personal and not very interesting? I think this blog is turning into a series of confessions. It all feels very Catholic. Sorry, I seem to have strayed from my point. What I actually wanted to talk about was a sort of little narrative of how I discovered this film and what a rich experience it was when I eventually got the opportunity to watch it. In part 2, I promise I’ll stop confessing and I’ll try and say something useful about the film. Well, I’ll talk about it at the very least.