Venom

After the grainy, low-budget VENOM aka THE LEGEND OF SPIDER FOREST, British director Peter Sykes landed a job for legendary British horror production Hammer for DEMONS OF THE MIND, with more money, bigger names and continuing the psychological-horror sub-genre, only VENOM is a lot more affective...

Mostly set in a tree-shrouded, shade-soaked, shadow-splintered forest where lovely Neda Arneric (a combination of Sarah Miles and Mia Farrow) plays Anna, a nature-traipsing wild girl with an enigmatic spider tattoo on her shoulder, following bland/handsome journalist Simon Brent around until he winds up, seemingly safe in a local tavern where, once back in the forest, he has more problems connected to a gang of muscularly rural locals liken to the 60's British thriller THE SHUTTERED ROOM, only these guys are no (and there really needed someone intriguing like an) Oliver Reed...

Making the only real problem of this otherwise decent gothic programmer the lack of anyone else charismatic enough beyond Anna or secondary seductress Sheila Allen, daughter of the resident doctor who's a Nazi that, as described in the summary, has created some sort of nerve gas using spider venom...

But all the scientific expository stuff happens so far along it really doesn't matter... making VENOM only really matter when centering on Neda Arneric's energetic prowess and sensually exploitive, ravaging beauty.

The palpably flawed, but nonetheless entertaining 'Venom' remains a deliciously odd, avidly arachnophobe triggering Brit-horror curiosity. Partly shot in what handsomely appears to be the eerily bucolic Bavarian mountains, 'Venom' tells the bizarrely esoteric tale of the deadly mysterious man eating 'Spider Woman! This memorably malign mistress of multi-legged misanthropy is excitingly played with vulpine verisimilitude by the delectable starlet, Nada Arneric! An increasing number of libidinous young men have been inexplicably expiring whilst traversing the horror haunted forest. Are their obscure sudden deaths solely due to the dastardly machinations of the nubile nymph, Arneric? Or are there far more preternaturally sinister forces at work? 'Venom' even throws in a ubiquitously loony, medically deviated German scientist for some additionally lurid interest! Peter Sykes's mythologically muddled mishmash of hallucinatory 1970s Brit-horror kookiness brings a terrifyingly vivid meaning to the phrase 'better dead than web'!

Simon Brent ("Softly Softly") stars here as Paul Greville, an artist / photographer on an outing in the Bavarian countryside. He becomes smitten with Anna (Neda Arneric, "Shaft in Africa"), a mysterious young beauty who really is something of a puzzle. He also finds locals who are deeply into superstition and who mostly prevent him from having a warm welcome.

It's best not to know too much about the story (concocted by Donald & Derek Ford, "A Study in Terror") going in, because then at least the viewer can be rightfully amused at the places that "Venom" goes. It doesn't mean that the story is airtight - far from it. But it does an entertaining job of utilizing "folk horror" elements and eventually introducing mad scientist tropes. Best of all is the excellent European atmosphere, although the music score (composed by John Simco Harrison) is simply wonderful, and the ethereal attractiveness of the Yugoslavian-born Arneric (just 17 or 18 at the time) is a real selling point.

The solid European cast also includes the sexy Sheila Allen ("Love Actually"), an effectively brutish Derek Newark ("The Blue Max"), Terence Soall ('Our Miss Pemberton') as the nefarious Lutgermann, Gerard Heinz ("The Fallen Idol") as the amiable Huber, and Gertan Klauber ("Top Secret!") as eager-to-please innkeeper Kurt. Brent is a reasonably engaging hero who refuses to be intimidated, although the antagonists do their best at keeping him in line. For example, he's tied up in the forest with a tarantula for company. The imagery and visuals are enjoyable: one of the hooks here is that spiders are part of the iconography of this region.

Overall, "Venom" supplies agreeable entertainment, somewhat along the lines of typical Hammer fare. Unsurprisingly, "Venom" director Peter Sykes went on to direct the Hammer pictures "Demons of the Mind" and "To the Devil...a Daughter".

It's probably best if one doesn't take this one too seriously. Otherwise, people may find themselves getting annoyed with the muddled tale being told.

Seven out of 10.

SPIDER FOREST looks like it had some intriguing ideas in place prior to filming, but the final product is a crabbed and often hard-to-follow farrago with a light smattering of atmospheric moments.

A lovely young lady dwells within a European forest where super-venomous spiders roam, although she is, it seems, impervious to their deadly bite...her male lovers, however, aren't so lucky.

When a young artist takes lodging in the aforementioned locale, he becomes smitten with the mysterious spider-girl, pursues her, and becomes inadvertently embroiled in a covert Nazi experiment to create a highly lethal neuro-toxin.

Far too much going on, and quite sloppily presented. Whatever potential may have been in play here is sadly lost to mishandling of the material, mostly in relation to editing/continuity problems and a knotted-up tangle of a screenplay. Pity.

4/10

Peter Sasdy made a lot of films that were disappointing; Demons of the Mind and To the Devil a Daughter were two of the worst of all the Hammer films and House in Nightmare Park was not nearly as entertaining as it could have been. The Legend of Spider Forest is actually Sasdy's least disappointing film, but that's only because I had no expectations going into it. The film really does make little sense and while the fantasy elements of it might have lifted it out of the bottom of the barrel, they unfortunately don't. The plot has something to do with a mad scientist, a mythical 'spider woman' and some spider venom; there's a forest involved too. It actually gets off to an interesting start as we witness an interesting sequence taking place in a forest but the rest of the film is an absolute mess. It's far too easy to get lost in what's going on, and since the film is not very interesting, it's difficult to find the motivation to actually care what is going on - which kind of makes watching this film rather pointless. I guess this might appeal to people who like daft films that don't make sense, but everyone else can feel free to leave this one languishing in obscurity!