***Web of the Lovely Spider Woman in the Black Forest***

Released in 1971 (but not until '75 in America), this English flick is known by several names: "Spider's Venom," "The Legend of Spider Forest" or simply "Venom." It's a mystery/horror about an artist (Simon Brent) who stumbles upon a village with secrets in the Black Forest, Germany: A beautiful redhead frolics the local woods and seemingly leads men to their deaths, but people in the hamlet only willingly speak of the matter in hushed tones late at night when the fires burn low. The tangled web includes lethal spiders, neurotoxin and something else I'm not going to give away.

The protagonist looks like an early 70s' rock star, akin to Jim Morrison, and I noticed an early 70s' rock/prog rock soundtrack during the tavern sequence (think Jethro Tull or ELO). Neda Arneric is seriously fetching and there's some 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”; he also directed that studio's penultimate "To the Devil a Daughter" and, believe it or not, "The Jesus Film" (1979).

Unfortunately, the editing is sometimes amateurish and, worse, the storytelling is ambiguous with not enough human interest. With just a few key tweaks this could’ve been a memorable low-budget Euro mystery/horror, like a lot of the Hammer films. Also, the DVD that I viewed had lousy audio in which I could only make out about 50% of the dubbed verbiage. So, if you see it, make sure you utilize the subtitles, assuming they’re available and properly aligned with the voice track (which isn’t always the case).

It runs 1h 31m and was shot at Twickenham Film Studios, southwest of London, with establishing shots of the Alps.

GRADE: C