“It goes without saying that this project must be kept absolutely secret.”
Professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga) is a professor of languages. He is assisting on a project translating ancient tablets from a pre-Christian religion. He is sent to Budapest to find a colleague, Professor Roth, who has stopped communication. When he arrives he is met by the professor’s assistant Genevieve Weiss (Paola Rinaldi). She takes him to the professor’s house where he is first greeted by the professor’s wife Celia Roth (Margareta von Krauss). She warns him that the professor has been acting strange and not to pay attention to any of his ramblings.
Alan briefly speaks with the professor who is indeed acting paranoid. The professor gives him a small black notebook and a couple Polaroids that he says have important information in them. Later that evening Alan returns to the professor’s house. On his way back he is accosted by a stranger (William Berger). The stranger warns him that he must escape before it’s too late. Thinking the man is crazy Alan pulls away and continues on.
When he gets there he finds out that the professor is dead. The police and Genevieve are there. The police question him. He tells them that when he left the professor’s wife was still there. Genevieve says the professor was not married. Alan is confused. He returns to his hotel to review the information that the professor had given him earlier.
As he delves deeper into all the mysterious events things gets stranger and stranger. He begins to become a little paranoid himself. He becomes embroiled in a world of a strange cult that has been in existence for centuries. They are determined to remain a secret from the outside world. To ensure that they remain private they need to make Alan become one of them. Alan finds himself the target of the cult.
“The Spider Labyrinth” was released in 1988 and was directed by Gianfranco Giagni. This is definitely a horror film, although it takes a little while to get to the horror. On the way there is mystery and murder so you don’t mind the trip. There’s a lot about this movie that is downright creepy.
As far as Italian horror movies are concerned this one was better than I expected. Many remark about the Lovecraftian influences. The blending of the two subgenres together made the movie more of an edge of your seat movie. Both can be over the top at times but together it makes for a well paced and haunting horror movie.
The special effects were, for the most part, also better than I expected. I wasn’t real crazy about Wybenga’s performance, but otherwise the acting was fine. The dubbing sucked. The atmosphere, on the other hand, was typical Budapest. Everything there always seems mysterious and everyone is suspect. For some reason, to me, Budapest is where all spy novels and horror stories are born. It’s alien in some ways. It’s much easier to believe in monsters, cults and spies if it’s happening in Budapest.