O Labirinto das Aranhas

This largely unknown Italian horror movie encapsulates the best of Italian horror. We've got Giallo elements, supernatural elements, surreal ambiance and a dark, sinister plot. Despite a lovely murder scene that takes place in the middle of a load of bed sheets, the first half of the film is largely rather uninspiring; but as the film moves on, it mutates into one of the most grisly assaults that I've ever seen from Italy. Many people that have seen this movie have labelled it a Giallo, and while the film does have it's Giallo moments in the first half - I'd put Spider Labyrinth in with the robust Gothic horror films such as Kill Baby Kill, Inferno and Suspiria before listing it amongst the likes of Solange and The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. The plot follows a professor who is sent to stay with a fellow professor for reasons that are always left rather vague. It's not long before his professor host ends up dead, and our hero is being plunged into a world of mystery and sinister cults, which all seems to focus around some strange 'fist-sized' black balls.

Italian horror is well known for not making a lot of sense and this film suffers from a screenplay that adheres to that 'rule'. The intrigue is generated towards the start mainly because of the fact that the film is so difficult to follow, but once the film enters it's more satisfying second half, these problems are somewhat resolved. Even while the film isn't making a whole lot of sense, however, it still remains interesting by way of its atmosphere. Atmosphere tends to be more important in this sort of film anyway, so the fact that this one relies on it is largely to its credit. The beautiful Italian locations are well shot and the lighting in the scenes indoors gives the film exactly the right mood. The underground scenes towards the end represent the film's strongest location shoots, and are one of the main reasons why it ultimately succeeds. The special effects look extremely cheap and are mostly stop-motion. However, they're really disgusting also, and the final scene; even though the 'monster' is a doll, really is nightmarish. Overall, I could easily understand anyone that doesn't like Spider Labyrinth; but it hit the nail on the head for me, and I definitely recommend it to my fellow Italian horror cinema fans!

In the late eighties, it seemed like the Italian film industry went full out to create an interest in their horror movies, resulting in cheeseball films like The Red Monks, Ghosthouse and Witchery. Fulci gave us House of Clocks (good), Aenigma (okay), Demonia and Sweethouse of Horrors (painful), and Lenzi had House of Lost Souls (good) and House of Witchcraft. You've Lamberto Bava's Graveyard Disturbance and Demons 3 The Ogre out there too, not to mention those Zombi sequels and Marcello Avalone's Spectres and Maya and etc etc. None of those are as effective or genuinely scary as Spider Labyrinth. Why, I'm not quite sure, but this film lacks the cheese factor of any of those films and seems to go all out for creating a surreal, creepy atmosphere.

In America, a company who are working on an international project have lost touch with a Professor Roth in Budapest, so they send one of their own, Professor Whitmore, out to Hungary to find out what's going on. He's driven to Roth's house by Roth's beautiful assistant, only to be warned by Roth's wife that he's been acting strangely. Roth himself does appear to be freaked out by something, and when alone with Whitmore, gives him some notes and Polaroid photographs and tells him to meet him later that evening.

Whitmore then goes to his hotel, run by a creepy lady and apparently full of strange residents who continually stare at Whitmore. He also discovers that Roth's assistant lives across the road and isn't shy about showing of her assets, if you know what I mean. Once he goes back to Roth he finds the man murdered (hanging from the ceiling by cobwebs), and that he never had a wife in the first place. That's bad enough, but the local policeman takes Whitmore's passport, so now he's stuck in a strange land.

He decides to do a bit of investigating and this leads to people (including William Berger) trying to warn him off, him getting lost in Budapest itself (where the city seems to deliberately get him lost), and a strange creature with a nerve shattering shriek going around killing people. I'll go no further than that plot wise.

What works here is the great music, cinematography, and the ending, which took me by surprise. There's no attempts here to connect with the youth eighties style by having youngsters in the film (like Ghosthouse or House of Lost Souls), no cheese (as in Witchouse), and some serious time has been spent making every shot creepy, to give you the feeling that every single person Whitmore encounters has something to hide. I see similarities with Argento in some respects, but this film unfolds a lot more slowly and there's not a drop of blood until 40 minutes in.

I'd never even heard of this film until last week, and I've been actively seeking out Italian horror for over fifteen years! It's available on Youtube in a blurry, Japanese subtitled version, so you can watch it for free, but this needs to be released on DVD. It's brilliant.

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.

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.

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.