Spider labyrinth

An American professor of archeology Alan Whitmore is ordered by his superiors at his university to go to Budapest.He travels there to work with another researcher and stumbles into pagan worshippers of a giant subterranean spider monsters.A crazed demonic killer is slaughtering those who stumble unto the secrets of 4000 year old cult and there seems no way out of the labyrinth."Spider Labirynth" is an eerie and very stylish homage to Italian horror as well as the film with extremely dense Lovecraftian atmosphere of terror and menace.The use of colors in "Spider Labirynth" reminds me Dario Argento's brilliant "Suspiria" and "Inferno".The special visual effects by Sergio Stivaletti are gruesome and bloody and the suspense slowly builds up.9 out of 10.Along with Michele Soavi's "Deliria" definitely the best Italian horror movie of late 80's.

Professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga), co-ordinator on a project investigating a strange religious sect, travels to Budapest to retrieve a missing report where he becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, murder and occult activity.

Although its stylish cinematography, shocking violence and dreamlike atmosphere were undoubtedly influenced by Dario Argento's supernatural classics Suspiria and Inferno, and its narrative is eerily similar to Roman Polanski's under-rated occult horror The Ninth Gate, The Spider Labyrinth is no second-rate knock off: in my humble opinion, it is far a more accomplished work than either of Argento's celebrated movies, and it preceded Polanski's film by more than a decade.

Morphing slowly from a giallo-style murder mystery into a surreal Lovecraftian horror where ancient gods and their murderous followers secretly conspire to spread their evil around the globe, The Spider Labyrinth is a brilliantly crafted nightmare, tinged with a sense of paranoia and madness, packed with cool visuals, laced with eroticism, and topped off with several standout scary moments: appearances by a supernaturally strong, knife-wielding hag are guaranteed to send a shiver up the spine; a suitably freaky finale features some truly unsettling FX work from Sergio Stivaletti; meanwhile, fans of sexy Euro-babes are catered for by the lovely Paola Rinaldi as Genevieve Weiss, Whitmore's enigmatic (and frequently naked) contact in Budapest, and Claudia Muzi as hot hotel maid Maria.

As far as I know, The Spider Labyrinth still awaits an official DVD release, which I think is a travesty for such a fine film; until some enterprising company snaps it up and gives it the treatment it deserves, fans of bizarre Euro-horror will have to make do with the bootleg version that is available, a VHS transfer I believe, but still well worth getting one's mitts on.

The Spider Labyrinth, to my knowledge, has never had an official DVD/Blu-Ray release and that's a shame. Much of its power comes from its creepy visuals. The dialogue and a few plot developments don't always work, but there's no shortage of imaginative moments throughout.

A young man ravels overseas to see what the hold up is with a professor and finds the man incredibly paranoid to the point of stark raving mad. He's found murdered the next day and this leads to an investigation into the occult.

The Spider Labyrinth is similar in mood and story to some of Dario Argento's supernatural giallos and it also has a nicely paranoid feel like a Roman Polanski horror film. Maybe not everything works, but it's a journey worth taking.

This one starts off pretty slow. After a brief scene involving two boys playing, a man is sent to Budapest to investigate what is going on with a professor there who was supposed to have sent something. It starts to pick up once he gets there and meets the professor. The professor is a nervous man who slips him something once his wife leaves. The investigator says he'll come back later that night to talk more. When he does, the police are there, and it seems some of the people he met may not have been who he thought.

Clearly the movie had a budget. It has lots of locations, some nice special effects, and camera-work that involves cranes.

What seems initially to be a giallo movie (and arguably still is) becomes a bit more supernatural than is usual for that subgenre. There's a woman with enormous strength, an exhibitionist research assistant, an old man with a warning, spider-shaped scars, heavy rolling balls, and it just keeps getting stranger. Some good murder set pieces, and a totally bizarre climax. The ending was pretty satisfying.

A professor sent to Italy to check on a reclusive colleague finds himself in a world whose reality seems less and less certain. That's about all one needs to know about the plot. Most Italian horror is mood driven not plot focused. The Spider Labyrinth certainly owes a debt to Dario Argento. We have a mystery, a sect, a hotel with strange residents, and the unsettling feeling that the protagonist left reality behind the moment he stepped off the airplane. The world of the film is one of magic, just like in Suspiria or Inferno, yet the film does not fall into the trap of being a rip-off of those films. Only one scene, the murder of a maid in a room with hanging sheets, suffers from being overly familiar. Otherwise, the film has the feel of an Argento film without coming across as theft. While The Spider Labyrinth is not without problems (some hokey FX; an at times easy to predict plot), it seems more daring and evocative than Mother of Tears, Argento's last Three Mothers film. I am surprised by how little attention the film has gotten in the U.S. even with horror film fans like myself.