This 1970 British horror pic is just oozing with atmosphere. It takes place in England in the 1600s where life was harsh and the appearance of weird bones in a farmer's field sets off a chain of demonic activities when a group of farm children discover them. They then begin to worship a mysterious evil entity and start sacrificing other children to it. The music score is appropriate for the movie and there were some scenes that made my skin crawl (no pun intended). I would recommend this movie for connoisseurs of classic horror pictures where the characters don't act like total fools when confronted with evil. If you're squeamish, don't watch this in the dark.

It's a bit like Never Let Me Go, but instead of donating parts for others, it's Diablo's parts you grow, as you're young and quite untainted, the beast takes hold and gets acquainted, growing on you as you grow, the parts he needs to take a hold, having been ploughed up all broken, he's not much more than a token, but his powers of persuasion, quite soon leads to a pervasion, of youths rising up in rage, against traditions that have caged, all perpetually conditioned, brainwashed, pressured and conditioned. Alas, the patriarchy of middle aged men cannot allow this to take place and the rebellion is curtailed and quelled, sadly, but not for the first time and definitely not the last.

In 17th Century England a man ploughs a field and comes across the skeletal remains of something . Summoning a judge he tells him that the remains belonged to a fiend and takes the judge to the field only to find the remains have disappeared

This acquired a cult following in DOCTOR WHO fandom circa 1990 when the fan press revealed it contained a scene where Wendy Padbury ( 60s companion Zoe ) appeared topless in a scene . Knowing this no one bothered to ask about the rest of the film but the major problem was trying to track it down . It was a time before the internet and Britain was confined to four TV channels and despite Hammer horror movies being broadcast on a fairly regular basis BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW was made by an entirely different film company and no one could recall it being broadcast or released on video . In other words it became something of a cult film and a cult film no one had seen but it eventually turned up on Channel 4 a couple of times along with the occasional screening on satellite channels

It'd be all too easy to dismiss this a Hammer clone full of lowbrow thrills and historical hokum featuring witchcraft but this would be slightly unfair to the film whose central idea revolves around Satan trying to reassert himself on Earth by using a 17th Century English village as his bridgehead . Realistic ? Of course not but my disbelief was totally suspended for the entire running time . There's quite a few themes going on at the same time such as the abuse of authority , of scapegoating , sexual repression and sexual awakening and the hypnotic power of sexuality

Piers Haggard doesn't have a massive budget to work with but he does the absolute best with what he's got . Where he succeeds best is in the production design . This isn't the expensive looking interiors you'd find in a big budget historical movie but far more cramped and drab interiors befitting of the times which comes over as being totally realistic . The cast too are very good especially when you compare to these all too good looking and sassy teens we've seen over the decades in American horror movies . Their accents might be a bit too cod regional but this is a minor flaw . The ending itself might be a too silly for its own good where the supernatural comes to the fore but this is always the problem featuring the supernatural . Up until then the human aspects is enough to keep the story going in a horror film that remains something of a cult but perhaps deserves to be better regarded in horror circles