cesare frugoni – Horror Ghouls

An American researcher named Alan Whitmore is sent to Budapest in order to check out what has happened to Professor Roth who seems to have gone awol. Once arriving in Budapest, Alan meets the attractive guide Genevieve, who takes him to meet the professor. The professor’s wife leads him inside to what appears to be a paranoid and nervous man, someone who may have found out more than he ought to have. Alan plans for a revisit later, only to find that the professor has now been murdered, hanging from the ceiling in a rope that is…laced with cobwebs? Strange…and creepy as hell. Alan, wants the help of his guide Genevieve who is very eager to offer it (and who is not the least bit suspicious at all, of course). He wanders around the streets of Budapest, and sometimes encounter strange locals who aren’t the most welcoming. And more people keep dying. He’s trapped in a web of murder and strange incidents, all seemingly related to some kind of old spider God and a cult worshipping it.

The Spider Labyrinth (Italian title: Il nido del ragno) is an Italian horror film from 1988, directed by Gianfranco Giagni in his feature film debut. And this obscure little film, which was very hard to come by until the recent years, is an oddball that combines giallo with cosmic horror and creature feature. And spiders, mostly of the fun, jittery stop-motion kind.

The Spider Labyrinth is one of those movies where everything surrounding the protagonist just always feels off. I mean, you do of course have the straight-forward key points in the plot, like the pretty love-interest lady who seems to be overtly friendly and is definitely very, very sus. And the paranoid professor who happens to die before revealing something important, and stuff like that. But it’s also the overall scenery and setting, where the protagonist is walking through suspiciously empty streets. There’s more atmosphere than logic, and this makes the entire movie feel a little dream-like. With the old deity-worshipping cult, the movie definitely goes for a bit of a cosmic horror/Lovecraftian vibe as well.

Many of the filming locations are gorgeous to look at, and the practical effects are fun. The puppet and stop motion effects have the needed charm. I also like the strange witchy spider-like vampire woman, whom we see murdering people every now and then, but most of all I was intrigued by the small, black ball that always appears right before someone gets murdered. It makes an icky squelching sound when hitting the floor, and always adds to the already weird, uncanny atmosphere of the whole film. What’s inside those balls, you might wonder? Well, you can take a guess.

The Spider Labyrinth is a bizarre little Italian occult monster flick, heavily relying on its surreal visual style and building up to a totally crazy ending. As mentioned it was for a long time very hard to find, but a few years ago Severin Films picked it up and released it on Blu-ray and DVD. The movie can also now be found on streaming in some places, including Tubi.

Director: Gianfranco Giagni
Writers: Riccardo Aragno, Tonino Cervi, Cesare Frugoni, Gianfranco Manfredi
Original title: Il nido del ragno
Country & year: Italy, 1988
Actors: Roland Wybenga, Paola Rinaldi, Margareta von Krauss, Claudia Muzii, William Berger, Stéphane Audran, Valeriano Santinelli, Massimiliano Pavone
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095728/

A married couple are being brought to an island, to explore a cave where there’s supposedly a “treasure“. Well, after some gory kill scenes (which is pretty much the only real gory scenes to be witnessed here) we realize that this opening was only set up so we could have some kill counts. Okey then, over to our main characters. We’re still in the latter part of the 1800’s, 1891 to be exact, where we’re introduced to some shipwrecked characters. A military doctor, Lieutenant Claude de Ross, and a group of convicts. After getting attacked by the mysterious fishmen we glimpsed in the opening scene, the remaining survivors washes ashore on what appears to be an uncharted Caribbean island. There, some more of them meet their unfortunate ends, and after fleeing through the jungle, Claude and the two last survivors meet a beautiful young woman named Amanda who warns them to leave the island. Uhh…yeah, I think they would if they could, lady. Soon they meet the villainous Edmond Rackham, who is obviously keeping secrets and knows everything about the alleged Fishmen. So does Amanda, apparently, when Claude spies on her one night where she goes into the water and feeds the fishmen some kind of strange milk-like liquid. While Edmond keeps acting more and more like a discarded James Bond villain, Claude eventually finds out the secrets of the Fishmen and the island.

The Island of the Fishmen is a horror film from 1979, directed by Sergio Martino. In 1981, approx. 30 minutes of footage from the original film was removed and replaced with new material for an international release by Roger Corman and his New World Pictures company, and this version of the movie was given the title Screamers. The original barely had any blood in it, while the Corman release decided to re-shoot new scenes which included the opening with the kill counts, to add some gore. They did a Shelby Oaks, in other words. Unfortunately, they didn’t just add some gore in Screamers: they also advertised the movie as something it definitely was not, providing a poster with graphics and taglines that promised a completely different film. “They’re men turned inside out! And worse…they’re still alive!“ plus “Be warned: you will actually see a man turned inside out“. Nope, that’s pure BS, and totally misleading. But that’s enough of the film’s troubled and fucked up production and release, let’s talk a little more about the film itself:

The version we have seen is the Screamers one, and it’s obvious from early on that the movie appears to be struggling with some kind of identity crisis: the opening scene which was shot for the American release pretty much promises a goofy gorefest. It’s not. Then we have the crazy scientist meaning well but inevitably creating something horrible, a damsel in distress, a sunken city, an over-the-top villain, and of course a golden treasure to be found. In this boiling voodoo pot there’s so many ingredients that it almost feels a little disorienting. What offers the most entertainment value here is, of course, the fishmen in their goofy B-grade costumes, with their entry often accompanied by what sounds like an elephant trumpeting…and no, they do not have trunks. The locations and settings are nice enough, with the jungle, dilapidated old house and underwater scenery. The characters are mostly quite bland, though, with the exception of Edmond Rackham. Whenever that guy’s on screen it’s filled with his villainry and cheesy smirk-talking.

Overall The island of the Fishmen aka Screamers is kind of ridiculous, but not to such a point that it becomes hilarious. A little slow at times, especially after seeing the crazy opening scene which, although fun, didn’t tie well in with the rest of the movie. It’s still got a certain B-grade charm to it, with an adventurous flair. A fine summer watch if you want an adventure-based movie with Humanoids from the Deep-like monsters, where Roger Corman got involved and the fishmen still didn’t become a bigger threat to the women than the men (I can imagine he really wanted to make some changes there, though…)

In 1995, Sergio Martino directed a made-for-Italian TV sequel, which was called The Fishmen and Their Queen, aka Queen of the Fishmen.

Director: Sergio Martino
Writers: Cesare Frugoni, Luciano Martino, Sergio Donati
Original title: L’isola degli uomini pesce
Also known as: Screamers
Country & year: Italy, 1979
Actors: Barbara Bach, Claudio Cassinelli, Richard Johnson, Beryl Cunningham, Joseph Cotten, Franco Javarone, Roberto Posse, Giuseppe Castellano, Franco Mazzieri
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081467/

Tag: cesare frugoni

The Spider Labyrinth (1988)

The Island of the Fishmen (1979)