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From Britain came Venom, also known as Spider’s Venom and Legend of Spider Forest. The 1971 debut from director Peter Sykes (Demons of the Mind; To the Devil a Daughter), the film is a strange, uneven affair, set in rural Germany and telling the story of artist Paul Greville, who becomes ensnared Anna, a young woman who the locals claim to be cursed by a venomous spider. The truth behind the myth is a convoluted tale involving the Third Reich and superstition although it’s never dull and packs plenty of nudity and violence into the story.
‘Fear of Spiders’, the 1971 episode of Rod Serling’s television series Night Gallery, stars Patrick O’Neal as a pompous writer who is punished for his self-obsessive nature by his arachnophobia. It was based on a short story “The Spider” by Elizabeth Walter.
In Italy, Renato Polselli’s Nude for Satan (1973) led the way with a large – albeit not giant – fake spider with lurid red eyes and legs that didn’t move.
Kiss of the Tarantula (1975) released to UK cinemas as Shudder, was an effective, if unremarkable shocker. The film tells the story of Susan Bradley, a shy and isolated teenager who lives with her parents in a mortuary and collects tarantulas. When she discovers that her mother is plotting to murder her father, Susan uses her spiders to cause a heart attack and then goes on to use them to exact revenge on her tormentors.
Bill Rebane’s The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) is a real hoot. A throwback to 1950s big bug films, the movie is endearingly inept in all aspects – the giant spiders can be seen as static dummies mounted on cars, and the film is laughable in the extreme… but great fun if approached with the right attitude (and possibly a joint or plenty of booze!).
A couple of late ’70s TV movies continued filmmakers’ interest in arachnophobia.
Dan Curtis’ above-average 1977 film Curse of the Black Widow was a deliberately old-fashioned yarn, inspired by films like the original Cat People, in which twin sisters are mysteriously tied up with a series of strange deaths. One of them turns out to be a lethal spider woman, transforming into a supernatural giant spider!
The same year, Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo was a less interesting effort: very much a disaster movie, the film had South American tarantulas unleashed in California after a plane crash. It had potential but is unfortunately hampered by TV movie restrictions and proves to be mostly forgettable.
1977 also saw Kingdom of the Spiders, in which a stellar B-movie cast including William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling and Woody Strode in a tale of rampaging tarantulas, directed with efficiency by John ‘Bud’ Cardos. More a nature-gone-wild film than the more popular giant spider shocker, the film was nevertheless good fun. A 3D remake was announced in 2010 but has yet to appear.
A memorably icky scene from Steven Spielberg’s action-adventure classic Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) featured a horde of tarantulas on Alfred Molina’s character’s back.
Spiders played a part in three early ’80s Italian movies. Joe D’Amato’s Conan copy Ator The Fighting Eagle had muscle-bound Miles O’Keefe as the title character battling a spider cult that worships a giant tarantula amongst his many foes.
More effective was Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond. This 1981 shocker has many seminal splattery moments, but one of the least memorable is the scene where spiders advance upon a hapless victim and proceed to eat his flesh. The fake spider effects are laughingly awful, and the supposedly graphic images of flesh-tearing are a joke.
At least The Editor (2014), a deliberately retro Italian giallo spoof from Canada’s Astron-6 team, had the decency to use real tarantulas when they referenced The Beyond.
Meanwhile, overrated Riccardo Freda’s final directorial assignment, Murder Obsession (1981) features a nightmare sequence in which Silvia Dionisio’s character runs into a giant fake-looking web created by a rubbery inanimate spider.
In Wes Craven’s 1981 Puritan religious-themed shocker Deadly Blessing, Sharon Stone’s character is forced to eat a tarantula!
Less memorable was the 1983 Swiss film The Black Spider, based on an old legend about a pact with the devil which is reneged on. To take his revenge, the devil unleashes a spider to spread death throughout a village. And just to prove the international appeal possession story, in which a woman is plagued by dreams of spiders, and whose friends start to die in mysterious ways.
The entertainingly daft 1986 horror mish-mash Spookies features giant spiders and a mutated spider woman amongst its many monsters.
The Spider Labyrinth (1988) is a bizarre Italian horror film set in Budapest. An American professor travels there to oversee the translation of some ancient documents and encounters real-life spiders, fanged were-spiders with exceptional strength and finally a surreal spider god. The movie is somewhat muddled but benefits from its locations and some stylish shots.
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