The Spider Labyrinth

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.

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!

Watching The Spider Labyrinth is like falling down a well that is somehow clean and meticulously lit, a deeply felt experience of atmosphere over logic, which is exactly why it sticks with you. It is a 1988 Italian film that feels less like a straight Giallo and more like a fever dream filtered through an Argento lens, something that got lost between the high Gothic horror and the impending home video boom.

The film's most successful element, truly, is the way it looks. The visual composition is gorgeous, managing to turn Budapest's actual, existing architecture into a character, a maze of imposing, cold, and mysterious buildings. Those scenes shot in the bathhouse and the catacombs, drenched in green and blue gels, they feel positively cinematic, delivering the kind of deep, oppressive mood you just do not see anymore. Director Lucio Fulci, who had a hand in the story, must have whispered a few tips about maximizing dread because the film is constantly building a sense of unease, even when the plot starts to wobble.

Roland Wybenga as Alan Whitmore is perfectly cast as the perpetually confused American, the quintessential outsider who is just out of his depth. He is reactive, which is what the role requires, but the performance that actually commands attention is Stéphane Audran as Mrs. Hukn, the hotelier. Every time she appears with that black cat, looking at Alan with something between profound suspicion and pure malevolence, the air in the room just drops. She has maybe ten lines of dialogue, but she anchors the whole mood of Old World secrets. Paola Rinaldi, too, manages to make Genevieve feel like more than just a lure, although I kept thinking about why her character persisted in posing so deliberately in the nude in front of her window; it feels less like seduction and more like an open challenge to the viewer, or maybe a sign that Alan is already dreaming.

The soundtrack choices work wonders, leaning heavily on synthesized dread and low, sustained tension that tells you something terrible is about to happen long before it does. Pacing is key here, and the film takes its time, allowing moments of discomfort to linger. I am still thinking about the scene where the woman is stalked through the sheet-shrouded room; the green light, the silent movement, the way the sheets turn the space into a shifting, confusing nightmare, it's a brilliant piece of visual staging. It reminds me a little of that scene in Dario Argento's Tenebrae where the razor is cutting through the rain-slicked pages, that same attention to set-piece dread.

But the moment that really sticks, the one I keep turning over, is the introduction of that small, black, rolling ball right before a murder. It is such an inexplicable, small detail, almost goofy, yet it signals the arrival of the toothy, knife-wielding witch figure, injecting a blast of pure, bizarre fantasy into the methodical mystery. It's what tips the film from 'European mystery' into 'full-blown cosmic horror'. The final, admittedly grotesque, appearance of the spider-baby deity, thanks to Sergio Stivaletti's typically amazing practical effects, is the glorious, pulpy payoff the mood has been building toward. It's weird, it's gooey, and it delivers that particular brand of Italian horror fantasy that is unafraid to go right over the top.

This is a film I recommend specifically to viewers who worship the atmosphere of Italian horror, particularly the early works of Michele Soavi and anything that embraces the surreal visual logic of giallo or cult cinema. People who prioritize mood and outstanding set design over airtight narrative coherence will connect deeply with this film. However, if you require a tightly plotted mystery where all the clues connect cleanly, you may find it frustrating or, frankly, just too strange to track. It's a beautifully realized, deeply flawed, and wonderfully unsettling piece of Euro-horror history.

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.