BLOOD ON SATANS CLAW 1971
“The Blood On Satan’s Claw” is a British Folk Horror movie that is credited as being a pioneer in the genre. Release in 1971, it appears to have a cult following who seem to enjoy the movie very much. On letterboxd, the average rating is 3.3 stars, so I figured that I would try it out. I was also interested in the movie because it has been the inspiration for at least a few songs in music, to say the least.
The idea is that a corpse is discovered in a field on a farm, and eventually the whole town becomes in league with Satan, slowly falling into creepy evil behavior, and in the movie itself, being labeled as devil worshipers. Despite the idea to the plot being interesting and having a lot of potential, I found the execution of the movie to be boring. I feel bad about that, in a way, considering how it seems so beloved in the decades since its release, but I just found myself bored while watching it.
There is a lot of reference to British witch hunting which I appreciate, and nods towards old superstitions of yore. I did find this interesting, but much of the dialogue and acting detracted from what could have been an interesting movie to me. There are some parts that I enjoyed, but overall, I found that the movie was too long for how boring it was. The movie is one hour and 36 minutes long, but I stated looking at the timer after the first 30 minutes. I repeatedly found myself just waiting for the movie to end.
I didn’t feel any connection with any of the characters. I just felt like a viewer, watching random things happen. The acting and dialogue is laughable, though the soundtrack and filmography is great! It’s strange how a movie can look this good, while being so bad. I suppose that the campy-ness is something that others would like, and usually, I would too; but I just couldn’t get into this one.
What really bothers me about the dialogue, is how it was written with so much emphasis of being “of the time”, which was to be the 18th century, or 1700’s. “Thou” is constantly used, which is anachronistic. I thought I was being a stickler by finding this annoying, but when I looked this up, it turns out that “thou” was not commonly used in the English language, especially when speaking to one another. Upon further research, it turns out that it was used in a derogatory sense. It makes sense to me then, that the actors seemed to speak the dialogue unable to make it sound real. That’s simply because it wasn’t!
The movie has a disappointing ending, where there’s a Sabbath, and the main evil lady, Angel, ends up impaled. The devil, we presume, is held at swordpoint, and we assume that he is burned in the fire.
I find this movie incredibly disappointing, and booed when it finally ended. I personally don’t want to watch this movie ever again. It was a waste of time, and not interesting. Looking up the movie on wikipedia, it was partially inspired by the Manson murders, which is interesting to me. I can see a slight resemblance, though this still isn’t enough for me to want to watch it again.
My video: https://youtu.be/0cXw8vhUv_8
