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/
