Part 2: Nosebleeds, guilt and The Blood on Satan’s Claw

So, this is the film bit, I told you I’d get there. The 1950s, 60s and early 70s were a highpoint in British cinemas relationship with the horror genre. Of course this was partly due to Hammer and the remarkable success they enjoyed with The Curse of Frankenstein (Fisher, 1957) and Dracula (Fisher, 1958), but the contribution of the Quatermass films (although not strictly horror) to this resurgence can’t be overlooked either. British cinema has traditionally been very queasy about the horror genre; I think this is primarily down to issues of ‘good taste’. Ealing’s chillingly unsettling The Dead of Night (Dearden, Crichton, Hamer, Cavalcanti, 1945), with its portmanteau structure and wonderful revelatory twist made it something of an exception not only to the studio’s repertoire, but to the history of British cinema up to that point. As horror gained more popularity in the 60s and 70s the portmanteau became an exhausted trope, the product of unimaginative writers and grasping producers squeezing every last drop of blood out of the format.

The trio of the blog title refers to refers to three British horror films of the late 60s and early seventies, (Witchfinder General, Reeves, 1968, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, Haggard,1971, and The Wicker Man, Hardy, 1973) which have been traditionally grouped together because of their thematic interest in what has been called ‘folk horror’. I suppose I would simplistically call this films which exhibit an interest in pagan and, or, satanic folklore and practice and are typically located in rural settings. If anyone’s interested in exploring this term in more detail I heartily Adam Scovell’s wonderful book, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange, and Ian Cooper’s excellent close examination of Witchfinder General.

Adam is much more eloquent and rigorous in pinning down the essential characteristics of folk horror than I could ever be, so take my definition with a pinch of salt if you want something more academically orientated, read his book. I suppose my cack-handed definition will lead to a number of flawed and erroneous conclusions about the films, but you know what, it’s just a blog, not a PHD thesis, anyone interested in a more precise and academic discussion should read Adam’s book (I wish I got commission every time I mentioned it, it’s that good)

I managed to see Witchfinder (albeit in a butchered form) and Wicker man with comparative ease, but The Blood on Satan’s Claw was, for some reason, much harder to locate. I didn’t manage to see it until my early twenties on a grainy fifth generation VHS copy. I can’t remember how I acquired it. Anyway, this is the one I’d like to talk about a little, simply because I think it’s the most overlooked of the trio and it was the one that made the strongest impact on me when I finally saw it. I should say now that I owe a huge debt to Lucy Fife Donaldson (another academic her of mine), any merit this blog has, is due to her valuable insight. Its flaws are entirely down to me.

This film is memorable and rich in so many ways, from its shocking, painterly compositions in the opening sequence, Marc Wilkinson’s intelligent beautiful, melancholic haunting score. Adam has a wonderful analysis of it on https://celluloidwickerman.com/2014/07/17/the-music-of-folk-horror-part-6-blood-on-satans-claw/ and his assertion that Pagan and Satanic forces are located in the very soil of rural England.

Directed by Piers Haggard in 1971 for Tigon, the film was originally intended to have a portmanteau structure (like Dead of Night). Haggard changed the film’s structure, originally to have been three separate narratives in the same location. Haggard eliminated two of Robert Wynn-Symonds stories, but using scenes from each to creative a longer narrative. As a result of this bold decision a number of narrative threads seem to just evaporate from the film, but far from making the film incoherent, it adds to the uncanny and eerie nature of life in the village, not everything can be explained by the narrative, its powers are limited. One could suggest that the powers of Satan extend not just to the village, but to also to the narrative’s limited access to information.

Set in the Seventeenth Century, in a small East Anglian village, the narrative explores why the children of the village are being murdered and having their skin removed by their possessed peers. It is revealed that Satan, who is hidden within the village, can only assume his complete physical form with this skin. He has also clearly possessed members of the village, both young and old, to aid him in this task. It is only stopped when a local Magistrate (who was previously sceptical of events) played by Patrick Wymark, dispatches Satan with a two-handed sword (not unlike a cross) and the village is apparently returned to sanity and Christianity. However, the value of this act and just what it resolves is steeped in ambiguity.

The film’s attitude and representation of the rural landscape is neatly set out in the opening scenes and the titles. From ground level, in a close-up, amongst sinewy, wild grass, we can see a horse drawn plough in the distance, struggling to make progress through the wild terrain: farming this land is clearly hard work. A grey pall hangs over the image, the prelude to an oncoming storm. Stones, pebbles and clots of sticky mud are churned up by the plough.

But this is also a composition of contrasts as the horse and plough struggle in the distance a composed still life occupies the foreground which is rich in potential meaning. There are the tools of the ploughman’s trade, the spiked teeth of a rake, which poke ominously, like predator’s teeth, through the tough vegetation. Like all the most complex still life compositions, there’s a subtlety and deliberation at work in the choice of objects and their potential meanings. A shiny green apple sits next to the sharp points of the rake. A Gourd dominates the foreground, leading our eye toward and through these objects to the horizon. Is this temptation? If it is, it certainly won’t be the only time it is raised as a pivotal theme or moment within the film’s narrative. These objects resonate with religious weight and symbolism. It is it as if some mighty fall from grace about to happen and its consequences are inextricably bound up in those razor-sharp rake teeth, which apparently have casually fallen in such a way that they direct the audience gaze towards the tiny figure, struggling with his plough and horse on the horizon. As Adam Scovell eloquently asserts: “The Blood on Satan’s Claw instantly places malevolence upon its soil… Haggard has him (Ralph) ploughing the land, an endless, sticky mud covering his lower legs and machinery giving the landscape a palpable, clawing sentience and agency.” (Scovall, pg 19)

This opening shot of Ralph (Barry Andrews) struggling, is followed, as Scovell rightly says, by a series of close ups, very close to the ground, which emphasize the physical exertion required to plough this land, as it seems to resist his efforts.

This is complimented by the manner in which the sequence also undermines consistent screen direction; shot on either side of the 180 degree line the articulation of space also seeming to deliberately illustrate Ralph’s lack of progress. The sound design carefully privileges the rattle and squeaking of the plough and Ralph’s puffing and panting as the physical energy he’s expended during cutting movement between the wider shots and the extreme close ups creates a rather disconcerting aesthetic strategy which rejects the notion of a gradual cinematic dissection of space. Other choices within the sound design also, as we’ll, see foreshadow events to come as a Raven’s continuous noisy caw disturbs any sense of peace.

As we see Ralph’s face in close-up, we hear a voice in the distance calling his name, the following cut to cut to the wide shot reveals more about this landscape. There a bleak grey quality to it, the trees are bereft of leaves, the bare branches twist like agonized limbs, this no verdant paradise, but a cold, misty, autumnal day. The invitation to equate these decisions with an impending sense of doom and death is almost inescapable. Ralph waves his cap and calls out to the source of the cry. The identity of the small voice calling his name is revealed in the next shot and a telling and disturbing composition. In a wide shot we see Cathy, she has her back to us and she enthusiastically waves to Ralph, who is a small dot on the horizon.

However, the most telling quality of this composition lies in the foreground; a twisted, bare and withered branch twists itself round the figure of Cathy, who is placed in the mid-ground. This is not an arbitrary decision or choice, but seems to foreshadow Cathy’s fate within the narrative as she is brutally raped and killed by the followers of Satan in a pagan ritual at a ruined Church which has been consumed and eroded by the toxic agency of nature. Christian ideology and traditions are powerless to stop the relentless march of overwhelming satanic power.

Cathy turns and leaves the frame and we cut back to the wide shot of Ralph as he wipes the sweat from his neck, in the background we hear the cawing of the crow as it becomes more insistent. This sound carries over into the following shot as Ralph continues to wipe his neck, he pauses as he sees something outside of the frame; his expression becomes increasingly non-plussed. The following shot appears to be Ralph’s point of view as we see a number of pigeons clustered around unseen in the soil, behind them a crow sits ominously watching. The introduction of Marc Wilson’s score, which beautifully imitates the cawing of the crow, in this shot emphasizes the significance of this moment. The cut back to Ralph would seem to reinforce the conclusion that the previous shot was indeed his point of view, his expression changing to curiosity as Wilkinson’s evocative score increases in complexity and tempo, mimicking the call of a Raven.

The following wide shot again places us at ground level; the composition emphasizes depth, the foreground is packed with clots of earth in soft focus, the midground and the birds pick at a knot of fur and feathers in the soil , around them the ominously cawing Raven again appears.

The association in literature as of the Raven as a harbinger of doom, or witches familiar, marks the significance of this moment and Wilkson’s score closely reflects to the repetitive guttural, scratchy call of the bird. In the distance can see Ralph slowly trudging towards this cluster of frantic feathered activity.

In close-up we see Ralph bend down, looking straight into the camera, his expression is one of bafflement and disbelief, the moment is all the more disturbing because it appear that Ralph is looking straight at us, we are that tangled mass on the ground that caused him such consternation.

Choosing to structure this moment in this way has several important consequences for analysis as it at once reinforces narrative mystery what precisely is this mysterious and horrific ‘thing’ he’s looking at, but it also strips away that fundamental illusion of cinema that we are invisible onlookers, Ralph’s look of concern exposes our voyeurism, it is an acutely uncomfortable moment within the sequence. In horror cinema the camera is often aligned with the look of, and point of view of the monster, but the articulation of voyeurism is uncovered in a more nuanced way here as the pleasures inherent our look are uncomfortable undermined without placing us in the position of a brutal antagonist.

The fundamental importance of looking and the power it has to destabilize and expose our position does not stop here. The following shot places us in Ralph’s point of view and the twisted mess that attracted so much attention from the endothermic vertebrates is finally disclosed. A skull is partially exposed within a mesh of fur and feathers an orbit, containing what appears to be a human eye in a well preserved state, challenges both the look of Ralph and the spectator, and it is here we need to contemplate the dramatic significance of this shot as it spears to offer us the point of view of something which is dead, elevating the uncanny nature of this exchange and the malignant force if the bony, knobbly skull. This, in a number of ways, recalls that twisted mass we saw the young girl about to kiss in that still.

I wouldn’t blame anyone who got bored with this, it's long. Longer, as Malcolm Tucker would say, than a Leonard Cohen song and perhaps I've overreached more than a man with short arms trying to reach the top shelf, but I’ve tried to give some sense of what a wonderful and rich film this is. The opening highlights the relationship between the the landscape and the Satanic with an insistence that (it seems to me) is not done as rigorously in either of the other two films in the trio. I don’t mind if you don’t agree, but if you’ve not seen this film, watch it.