Venom

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

In an opening scene in black and white with a blue tint to it, a young man and woman skinnydip together, and then go into the woods for a little sex. A large shadow of a spider looms, and the man is attacked. The woman has a birthmark or tattoo of a spider on her. There's seemingly some full-frontal nudity in a longshot, and there is toplessness despite the PG rating! Later there's some sadistic beatings and whippings. The Legend of Spider Forest almost makes this sound like it's for kids: nope!

I watched this on a double-sided DVD as Spider's Venom (the other title is Virgin Terror). Unfortunately full-screen, and I had to actually zoom the picture out a bit since it went beyond the edges of the screen. Probably taken from a videotape rather than a film print, given a weird glitch about thirty-five minutes in. Additionally, the sound quality is awful - whoever did the transfer wasn't checking the levels and it's particularly bad when the music swells and some notes just become loud hums and there's pops and crackles. So "Miracle Pictures a Division of PMC Corp. - Delaware," thanks for releasing this, but what a terrible job you did!

After the opening scene, the picture turns to color. Paul, a photographer/artist drives into a small German village and he manages to take a photo of the woman with the spider marking that he calls a scar. However, his pictures are stolen. He's met with a mixture of friendliness and hostility at the local pub. The mill owner shares a bottle of wine with him, and tries to interest him in his daughter. He does in fact wind up in bed with her shortly later, where they have a vigorous session, though it isn't graphic at all.

Paul wants to find out who the young woman is, and the townspeople want him to leave. He knows that there had been some paintings, including a Bosch, that had disappeared during WWII from the church. He finds one by a fresh body in the forest, but they too disappear.

The villagers do speak some German that isn't subtitled (putting us in Paul's shoes, I guess). The girl with the spider mark also sings some song in German as well.

Eventually, the mystery is solved along with a bizarre bit of transvestism that adds nothing. Cue the big fire, so common in Gothic horror movies of the 60s and 70s. Not bad, but a better release is clearly needed for a real idea of the quality of the movie.

Released in 1971 (but not until '75 in the USA), "Spider's Venom" (aka "The Legend of Spider Forest" and "Venom") is a mystery/horror about an artist (Simon Brent) who stumbles upon a village with secrets in the Black Forest, Germany: A beautiful redhead (Neda Arneric) frolics the local woods and seemingly leads men to their deaths, but people in the hamlet only willingly speak of it in hushed tones late at night when the fires burn low. The tangled web includes lethal spiders, neurotoxin and mad Nazi doctors. Sheila Allen is also on hand.

The protagonist looks like an early 70's rock star (e.g. Jim Morrison) and I noticed an early 70's rock/prog rock soundtrack during the tavern sequence (think Jethro Tull or ELO). Arneric is a serious cutie and there's some tame, tasteful nudity. I favor the haunting backwoods European mood. It was directed by Peter Sykes, whose next film would be Hammer's "Demons of the Mind (1972); he also directed Hammer's penultimate "To the Devil a Daughter" (1976) and, believe it or not, "The Jesus Film" (1979).

Unfortunately, the editing is amateurish, like a lot of 70's low-budget Euro flicks; it's just awkwardly done and takes you right out of the movie. Pictures like this make you praise Hammer Films in all their low-budget glory. Also, the DVD that I viewed (which is probably the only form of the movie available) had terrible audio and I could only make out about 50% of the dubbed verbiage; no kidding.

The film runs 97 minutes and was shot at Twickenham Film Studios, St Margarets, Twickenham, Middlesex, England with establishing shots of the Alps. WRITERS: Derek Ford & Donald Ford, with additional dialogue by Christopher Wicking.

GRADE: C

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'!

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.