Paul A. J. Lewis
“Well, there’s a howdy-do.” These are the first words spoken by the Judge (Patrick Wymark) in Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw. They are the words that open the film “proper,” following the pre-credits sequence, in which ploughman Ralph Gower (Barry Andrews) discovers the fiend’s partially-skeletonised skull in the ploughed earth, its one remaining eyeball staring impassively. We may reasonably assume that the Judge is responding to Ralph bursting into the home of Isobel Banham (Avice Landon), excitedly declaring his discovery of the fiend’s remains. A dry greeting, the Judge’s words set the tone for his encounters with other folk throughout the film: aloof, slightly patronising, paternal.
The unearthed skull that opens the film
Satan’s Claw’s Judge is contemporaneous with the depiction of such problematic figures of authority as rogue cop “Dirty” Harry Callahan in Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971), shown stomping all over the rights of sadistic San Francisco sniper Scorpio, whose countercultural heritage is signalled through his long hair and CND belt buckle. Similarly, the Judge takes responsibility for suppressing the threat posed by the young people of the village as the influence of the fiend spreads—a rather thinly-veiled allegory for youthful rebellion allied to any “problematic” ideology. It is in the film’s exploration of this theme that Satan’s Claw’s origins as a picture intended by Tigon to capitalise on the popularity of Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968) becomes most apparent. It is here, too, that Haggard’s film differs most wildly from its predecessor, inasmuch as Reeves’ picture works hard to deny the existence of the supernatural, depicting its witch-hunting antagonist (Hopkins) as an opportunist who is out to satiate his own wants and needs. In Haggard’s film, on the other hand, the Judge expresses scepticism at first but becomes increasingly cognisant of the fact that the supernatural fiend is indeed real. Finally, through his actions, the Judge, an austere authoritarian, attempts to prevent the diabolical terror from tearing the community asunder–but at what cost?
Both Satan’s Claw and Witchfinder General take as their setting one of the most turbulent periods in English history, one that represented a seismic shift in terms of attitudes towards faith and power. Witchfinder General’s narrative is set during the Civil War of the mid-17th Century, and makes much of its focus on Roundhead soldier Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy) as a symbol of a new, more enlightened society that is set against a rural culture dominated by superstition, with the patriarchal figure of Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price) exploiting the techniques outlined in Catholic monarch James I’s 1599 treatise Daemonologie to identify and persecute “witches.” Satan’s Claw is set during the period that followed the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which led to the exile of James II, thus ending the Stuart line of Catholic monarchs, with the Bill of Rights establishing a constitutional (and Protestant) monarchy, limiting the power of the Crown. In between had been a to-ing and fro-ing of Catholicism and Protestantism, with communities becoming polarised and persecution rampant on both sides of the spectrum of faith.
A product of this era of religious and political division, the Judge is initially shown to be sceptical of the notion that the thing Ralph has discovered in the field is unearthly: “You see, my dear, the way these old superstitions die hard,” he notes to Isobel, in a vague reference to the repressed beliefs of the Old Religion and their persistence in rural communities. However, as the Judge is reminded by the village doctor (Howard Goorney), “You come from the city. You cannot know the ways of the country.” (This is in response to the Judge’s suggestion that “witchcraft is dead and discredited.”) Given pause for thought by a book about witchcraft shown to him by the doctor, the Judge returns to London, despite Ralph’s protestations that he should stay. However, he promises, “I shall not forget you. I shall return when the time is right. But you must have patience, even while people die. Only then can the whole evil be destroyed. We must let it grow.”
In the Judge’s absence, the fiend’s influence spreads principally through the village’s adolescent population, connecting the behaviour of the youths to countercultural trends and anxieties about the “deviant” behaviours of young people. As Peter (Simon Williams) declares when he rides into the city to seek the Judge’s assistance, “Mere children commit the foulest deeds!” If we accept the premise that the worship of unearthly fiends (and a commitment to their diabolical plan) is ideological, it’s difficult not to see the manner in which Angel (Linda Hayden) acts to spread the fiend’s influence amongst the other young people as a form of radicalisation. For his part, Haggard has said that one of the things that drew him to the project was the concept of “moral and spiritual infestation” (Touching).
In the face of this threat, the morality of the Judge is not uncomplicated. The Judge tells Peter that he was once a suitor of Isobel’s, before Isobel married Peter’s now-deceased uncle; it is the Judge who insists Rosalind (Tamara Ustinov) sleep apart from the others, leading to her being sequestered within the attic. This is a matter of decorum that is clearly also motivated by class-based prejudice: Isobel has already sneered at Rosalind for being the daughter of a mere farmer. When the fiend attacks Rosalind in the night, the Judge holds Peter back from entering the attic, enabling Isobel to strike the girl—and blows which initially seem intended to shock Rosalind out of her hysteria swiftly become sadistic. Isobel’s assault on Rosalind is cut against the Judge slapping Peter across the face in the stairwell outside. “Count yourself fortunate, young man,” the Judge tells Peter, “She could never have been a fit wife for you.”
Prior to the casting of Patrick Wymark, Peter Cushing had been considered for the role of the Judge (Audio). In John Hough’s Twins of Evil (also 1971), Cushing essayed a similarly problematic figure of paternalistic authority, in the form of Gustav Weil, the head of the Puritanical sect The Brotherhood, who is driven by a sadistic desire to eradicate witchcraft. With his impassively brutal methods, Weil is an inversion of the positive influence of Cushing’s Van Helsing in Terence Fisher’s Dracula (1958). By contrast with Cushing’s stark performance as Weil, Wymark plays the Judge with dry wit and some warmth beneath the character’s austere façade. At the time, Wymark was known primarily for his work in television; Satan’s Claw would prove to be his last screen role, and Wymark passed away only months after the film was completed. Reflecting on Wymark’s performance, Haggard has commented that “Every time I watch the film I’m struck more by his contribution. I just think that he did a wonderful job because he was able to give it, with his presence, a kind of philosophical resonance and a kind of dread” (Simpson). Elsewhere, Haggard has suggested that “the combination of wit and power” that Wymark brings to the role “is very charming, very effective […] It’s not a horror turn” (Audio).
The Judge is one in a long line of characters played by Wymark which reference turbulent events in seventeenth-century England. In Witchfinder General, Wymark had of course appeared as Oliver Cromwell. Two years later, in 1970, Wymark appeared in Ken Hughes’ Cromwell, not as Cromwell but as a member of the other team: the Earl of Strafford, one of Charles 1’s advisors. In 1967, Wymark also played the enigmatically named The Judge in John Mortimer’s stage play The Judge, a work which references Judge Jeffreys, the “Hanging Judge” of the reign of James II. Jeffreys’ severity in condemning to death those who had taken part in the 1685 Monmouth Rebellion, a Protestant attempt to overthrow James II, is legendary. (Jeffreys’ activities had formed the basis for Jess Franco’s 1970 witch-hunting film The Bloody Judge, another film clearly modelled on Witchfinder General: in that picture, Jeffreys was played by Christopher Lee, who was coincidentally also considered for the role of the Judge in Satan’s Claw.) Wymark had also played two key roles in the 1961 Royal Shakespeare Company production of John Whiting’s play The Devils, based on the witch-hunting hysteria that gripped the French town of Loudun in the 1630s: Wymark had played both Baron De Laubardemont, one of Father Grandier’s accusers, and witch-hunter Father Barre (after Max Adrian left the production).
In Haggard’s film, Wymark’s performance as the Judge–his dry and austere demeanour–carries a sense of the dour, Puritan fervour of Cromwell and the Parliamentarians. As Jonathan Rigby points out in English Gothic, Wymark’s Judge gloats even over winning a card game against Peter and Rosalind (“So, young people, your elders triumph”): “he’s clearly bent on snuffing out any form of youthful expression, be it malign or otherwise,” Rigby continues, “and comes across like a one-man, 17th century equivalent of the Obscene Publications Squad” (172).
The fallout from the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 echoes throughout Satan’s Claw. During his first night at Isobel’s house, whilst drinking with Peter, the Judge makes a dry toast to “his Catholic majesty, King James III. May God bless him and keep him in exile,” before throwing his glass sharply to the floor. (It’s a wonderful moment, Wymark’s rosy-cheeked appearance and the fact that he sways slightly on his feet is an index of the Judge’s state of inebriation; the gesture of throwing the glass is quietly violent.) The Judge seems to be referencing James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of James II, who was exiled in Europe following the Glorious Revolution.
The Judge’s toast to the exiled Catholic king
James II was the last Catholic monarch of England, and the Judge’s dry toast to his son, who claimed the title of James III though never had ownership of it, anchors Satan’s Claw’s narrative as taking place during the reign of William III. James II’s reign had been defined by conflict over the King’s perceived elevation of Catholicism; in the 1689 Bill of Rights that accompanied William III’s ascension to the throne, and established the constitutional monarchy (in which the powers of the Crown are limited by law), the exiled James II was accused of “endeavour[ing] to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of the kingdom.” The Glorious Revolution was in fact the tail end of a century that had seen various ideological shifts–in religion and in general politics. The tension between Catholic and Protestant had played out throughout the century, but there were also other radical traditions, such as the actions of the Levellers and the Diggers during the 1640s and 1650s, who attempted to advance the rights of the working classes oppressed by church and state.
Witchfinder General, Tigon’s model for Satan’s Claw, had explored the methods employed by witch-hunters such as Matthew Hopkins; some of these are alluded to in Haggard’s film, despite Satan’s Claw offering a contrasting suggestion that its diabolical fiend is real. Steadfastly denying the existence of the supernatural, Reeves’ Witchfinder General bases its premise on the common interpretation of Matthew Hopkins’ motivations: that despite his protestations otherwise (in his 1647 treatise “The Discovery of Witches”), Hopkins was an opportunist who saw the potential to line his pockets in a divided England (Lewis). Reeves depicts him as such, showing Hopkins to be a man who takes a perverse delight in not only making a pretty penny, but also torturing young maidens and exploiting them for his own sexual gratification.
In his methods, Hopkins was influenced by the techniques of Catholic witch-hunters, particularly the outcome of the Lancaster Witch Trials of 1612. Investigated by William Harvey (Charles I’s physician), the Lancaster Witch Trials set a benchmark that physical proof of making a covenant with the Devil was required for a successful prosecution for witchcraft, following from a comment in the Catholic monarch James I’s 1599 treatise Daemonologie: making his victims renounce their baptism, the Devil “gives his marke upon some secreit place of their bodie, which remaines soare unhealed.” Hopkins also took his methods of interrogation from Daemonologie, which suggested sleep deprivation, “pricking,” “walking,” and “swimming” as tools for identifying those who had made pacts with the Devil. “Swimming,” in particular, was based on the notion that witches, who had by making a covenant with the Devil renounced their baptism, would float when “swum” in a body of water. (If they drowned, of course, they were innocent of witchcraft; but that didn’t bother a good capitalist like Hopkins.)
In Satan’s Claw, we see the fallout from these methods. As the community disintegrates, the physical proof of the covenant with the fiend is evidenced in the patch of “satan’s skin” that appears on members of the coven. Most memorably, a patch of this skin, matted with beastly fur, is cut by the village doctor from the thigh of Margaret (Michele Dotrice). Prior to this, Margaret has been rescued by Ralph from a group of villagers who have attempted to “swim” her to prove she is a witch. Here, Haggard invites the viewer to see the villagers as monstrous and Margaret as the victim of their hatred of the “other.” “If she sinks, you done ’er murder,” an indignant Ralph shouts at this crowd when he stumbles across this scene.
By contrast with Matthew Hopkins, who uses the aforementioned methods against an utterly manufactured “threat,” the Judge’s approach to combating the very real supernatural evil that threatens to engulf the rural community is rather different: he leaves the village, deliberately giving the fiend’s influence the space it needs to grow, before returning at an appropriate time to cut it out. His absence creates a vacuum of power–with no clear, assertive authority–that enables the fiend’s influence to spread. When Peter rides to London to tell the Judge about the events in the village, Peter suggests that the villagers believe that “witchcraft has returned.” “It is more than witchcraft,” the Judge tells him. “I am ready to return. But understand, I shall use undreamed-of measures.”
On his return to the village, the Judge observes that “This parish is diseased,” and he uses hounds to hunt the fiend’s worshippers (“These dogs know how to tear the Devil’s heels”). “But sir, many are afflicted. Innocent folk may be ’urt’,” Ralph protests. “Leave me to judge who is innocent,” the Judge tells the young man with all the conviction of a true authoritarian. It is a sentiment that is all-too recognisable within the context of twenty-first-century attempts to combat extremism: the notion that collateral damage is an acceptable cost for the eradication of a radical ideology. Soon after, the Judge is shown interrogating Margaret in a barn. Her confession is exacted under torture: “I do not wish to harm you but I will hear the truth,” the Judge tells her, adding that “I have one mission here: to destroy your practises.”
As Haggard has said, with the Judge’s return, “Right must be done and be seen to be done” (Audio). At the climax, the Judge leads a small group of villagers to the ruined church where the fiend’s followers are practising their final rite, removing patches of “satan’s skin” in order to allow the fiend to assume its complete form. In a series of New Wave-esque still frames and slow-motion shots, the Judge advances upon the fiend (which hops around in a manner that is simultaneously unnerving and pathetic), piercing it with a huge broadsword. The Judge holds it aloft and lowers it into the flames of the bonfire around which the fiend’s disciples have been performing their rites. The camera holds on the Judge’s face, the flames of the bonfire flickering in front of it. Haggard ends the film on a judicious use of a frozen frame: Wymark’s face, mostly covered by the flames lapping in front of him, but his left eye (and only the left) visible, framed by the fire, connecting him visually to the fiend’s one-eyed skull that Ralph discovered in the earth in the film’s opening.
The final shot of the Judge’s eye through the fire
That the eye of the Judge, framed by the flames, echoes the appearance of the fiend’s eye in the ploughed earth ends the film on a quiet note of ambiguity, leaving the viewer questioning the Judge’s role. An equivalence is established between the influence of the fiend from the furrowed earth and the influence of the Judge from the metropolis: both are forces external to the community that disrupt and disturb by their presence. Wynne-Simmons has claimed that “The idea was that this old religion emerged […] and was being put down by such as The Judge character, very violently and very vehemently – and you couldn’t tell which was the worst really” (Touching). For Wynne-Simmons, the film’s final shot suggests “that he himself is as much a devil as the one he destroyed” (Touching).
“My friends, we go about the most fearful business,” the Judge tells those who are gathered around him during the film’s final sequence: “Only the most strict discipline will save us in our hour of trial.” The Judge’s final action is not heroic but ambiguous, and with the focus in the mise-en-scène on the oversized broadsword, with its hilt that resembles a huge gilded crucifix, it becomes an act of religious cleansing that is ritualistic in its fervour: a final blow against the Old Religion but also a metaphor, perhaps, of the end of the Stuart line of Catholic monarchs and the establishment of a passive constitutional monarchy, as the country moved out of a century of religious and political turmoil. Blood on Satan’s Claw may be interpreted as a criticism of this new era of de-fanged authority. Severe discipline and authority is needed, the film suggests, to quell “troublesome” ideologies–but at what cost?
Works Cited
Audio Commentary. Piers Haggard, Linda Hayden, and Robert Wynne-Simmons. Blood on Satan’s Claw, DVD, Anchor Bay UK, 2004.
The Blood on Satan’s Claw. Directed by Piers Haggard, Tigon British Film Productions, 1971.
Lewis, Paul A. J. “Kissing the Devil’s Arse: Witch-Hunting in Eurocult Cinema, c.1968-1976.” The Film Magazine, 29 October 2020.
Rigby, Jonathan. English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema. Reynolds & Hearn, 2000.
Simpson, M. J. “Interview: Piers Haggard” (2003; 2008). Cult Films and the People Who Made Them, 21 November 2013.
Touching the Devil: The Making of Blood on Satan’s Claw. Directed by Simon Sprackling, Forbidden Territory Films, 2003.
