cinema history class: the blood on satan's claw

UPDATED: Quote corrected

Session: Mark of the Devil Rip-Off Month, Week 2
Movie: The Blood on Satan''s Claw (1971)
Directed by Piers Haggard

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
In the 17th century English countryside, the children of a town are falling under a satanic spell that threatens the fabric of society. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
The big problem with BoSC is that there was a certain incoherence to it. I could kind of follow the action and understand what was going on (or so I thought). But I didn't see it as telling a particularly strong story, and there were a lot of things that didn't make sense and questions that were unanswered. After we watched, Keith filled in a lot of the missing parts. That kind of helped us to understand the movie, but it's generally not good if, after you see a movie, you need someone to explain what you just saw.

So, I (and, actually, everyone in the class) missed one major angle of the movie -- that Satan's acolytes are putting his body back together using their own body parts. Knowing that would have made a lot of the events and dialogue make more sense.

A large part of the reason, as Keith explained it, was that the movie went through some rewrites with -- how to put it? -- quality control that was less than stellar. At one point it was going to be an anthology with three shorts. In combining them, no one took enough care to make sure that there's sufficient exposition.

Another failing in the movie is the inconsistent use of language. In some parts, everyone is talking in "thou"s  "thine"s and "thee"s, presumably because it's set in the late 17th century.* In other parts, the language is more contemporary. The inconsistency was jarring.

All that said, I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I should have. A lot of the sequences had me on the edge of my seat, despite the fact that, for a lot of the time, I didn't really understand how the scene fit with the greater whole. The acting was impressive. Most notably, Tamara Ustinov, as Rosalind Barton, is very convincing in the oart where she has freshly lost her sanity. It's just too bad that that thread of the story was dropped and never picked back up.

Ratings:

Me: 8

Dave: 9

Ethan: 7
Joe: 9.4

Sean: 1 out of 4

Former Boss' Reaction:
To let y'all know, someone who used to be my boss says he will not watch movies made before 1980 -- except for Star Wars. I try to touch base with him about the movies we saw in class, and ask if he'd be interested in seeing them.

My former boss is not interested in this, as it was made before he was born. So was I, but that's another matter. He also said that he really trust's Sean's opinion. His officemate admonished me to not be silly, noting that "there's no such thing as Satan's claws."

Bechdel:
The Blood on Satan's Claw passes the Bechdel test. At one point, when Margaret is stuck in a bear trap, she and Angel have a conversation about plans for the night's ceremony and the state of the mob that's chasing them.

*I'm no linguist, so I have no idea if this language was appropriate for the period.