FOLK HORROR FILMS ARE often characterised by deceptively idyllic landscapes, superstitions connected to ancient pagan mythologies, and the unnerving influences that these traditions can impose on people. It’s a terror that literally seeps from the soil in Piers Haggard’s Blood On Satan’s Claw, aka Satan’s Skin.
The 1971 cult classic shocker, set in 17th century England, hinges on the unearthing of a centuries-old, deformed and demonic skull in an isolated rural community, which turns its adolescent population murderous.
“I’d seen at school how cruel children could be to one another,” the film’s screenwriter Robert Wynne-Simmons tells . “I came to realise this idea that children could actually be villains [hadn’t] been looked at. They were always depicted as innocent. They are innocent in a way;
