The story is a rare example of diving headlong into the action done right. It spends little time establishing the status quo prior to its disruption, but instead gives a general impression of what it might have been prior to the supernatural horrors which stalk the land. While in many cases this could have been abrupt, the audio drama uses a strong cast and a building sense of dread to hook the listener very early on. The Blood on Satan's Claw first received a VHS release in the United States in 1985 by Paragon Video Productions. [31] It was re-released in this format in 1993 by MGM Home Entertainment. [32] [33] In 2005, it was released by Anchor Bay Entertainment in a Region 2 box set along with several other Tigon British Film Distributors films, including Witchfinder General, The Beast in the Cellar, and others. [32] BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW, an evocative title if ever there was one, accomplishes everything it sets out to do.

Set in the early 18th century, this is a time when the beliefs and customs of folklore and old Paganism still held firm and Christian fears of witchcraft and Satanism were at the height of hysteria, beliefs combining and conflicting, with the English Civil War and England's witch trials still in living memory. Exploring the epidemic qualities of terror and hysteria, which we've witnessed so often throughout history and continue to this day, Wynne-Simmons crafts an atmospheric narrative of compelling and creeping dread. This book is a novelisation of the classic folk-horror film, 'The Blood on Satan's Claw' written fifty years later by the original screen play writer. If you've seen the film then you're probably the target audience for this and it's fun reading along waiting for all the bits you remember from the film to crop up and the novel does expand on the film in quite a few ways to give the reader a little more context. The story is a simple one of the devil coming to the town of Hexbridge in the 1700s. The discovery of a grotesque relic begins corrupting the youth, and before long strange mutilations and hysteria break out among the townsfolk. The screenplay for the film was originally written by Robert Wynne-Simmons as an anthology of horror stories set in a small village, and had the working title of Satan's Skin. After director Haggard was hired for the project, he and Wynne-Simmons reworked the screenplay into a singular cohesive narrative. Principal photography took place in 1970, mainly in the Chiltern Hills region of England. I'm partial to these rural horror stories about communities collectively engaging with the devil, but not necessarily when they take the premise so straightforwardly as this. This audio drama has a very nice soundscape and better acting than most audiobooks, and on a scene to scene level the writing is good enough. The problem is that overall, despite the witchy trappings, it has the mentality of a very unimaginative slasher movie. The devil possesses practically all of the kids in town almost immediately, and the middle 80% is just a sequence of the same "kid getting murdered" scene playing out over and over again without much escalation or character building or mythology to build a more interesting context for them to fit into. It relies heavily on familiar tropes to get right into its business and get right out of it as soon as it's time to stop, without any particular narrative tissue in between. Moreover, while there are some kind of neat touches, a lot of the specific expression of the devil is either boring, problematic, or just dull. My favorite part about the community aspect of these stories is that the devil gets to be a social lever exploiting internal conflicts and prejudices, and this devil has exactly 0 of that subtlety or charisma.

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Evans-Powell, David (2021). The Blood on Satan's Claw. Devils Advocates. Liverpool: Auteur Publishing. ISBN 978-1-800-34806-6.

The 1960s witnessed the rise of Satanism as Anton LaVey founded the first Church of Satan, and Alexander Sanders founded the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca in Europe. The occult was a freedom from religion and an openness of the unknown, power, sex, and witchcraft. “I was trying to make a folk horror in a way because we are all a bit interested in witchcraft, we were all a bit interested in free love,” said Haggard. "The rules of the cinema were changing and nudity became possible; over prevalent because the lid had slightly been taken off.” To me, this recording most resembles a 1970s Hammer horror movie -- the vauge setting, the overblown language, and rather silly plot. However, it worked then -- goodness knows how -- and it works now, with the added bonus of nostalgia. The climax is a ballsy one for director Piers Haggard (who also helmed the taut VENOM) as he dares to portray Satan himself. It's always a risk serving up a visual absolute of a universal concept, but it works surprisingly well here because Haggard knows just how much to show.Whilst this book is released under an imprint of Liverpool University Press, Evans-Powell’s delivery gives it greater appeal. Not just for students and scholars, it is accessible, and of interest to wider fans (and even detractors) of The Blood on Satan’s Claw– a film which, although not entirely devoid of flaws (in my opinion it would be better had the fiend itself not be seen outright, but just vaguely depicted in shadows – and for the ending to have been drawn out longer, as it seems a tad rushed), is an important piece of both folk horror and British film history and, indeed, a disturbingly mesmeric artistic creation. An important addition to the Devil’s Advocates catalogue, and one concisely and extremely well provided by its author. Blood on Satan's Claw and the Devil films of the 1970s". www.acidemic.com . Retrieved 28 January 2022. Hamilton, John (2005). Beasts in the Cellar: The Exploitation Film Career of Tony Tenser. London: FAB Press. ISBN 978-1-903-25426-4.