WEB OF THE SPIDER

Klaus Kinski and Anthony Franciosa

WEB OF THE SPIDER (aka Nella stretta morsa del ragno/1971). Director: Antonio Margheriti.

While Edgar Allan Poe (Klaus Kinski of Slaughter Hotel) is visiting London, he is approached by an American reporter named Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa of Tenebrae). Lord Blackwood (Enrico Osterman) offers Foster money if he can spend one night in his supposedly haunted estate from which no one has ever returned. Once there, Foster meets two beautiful women: Elisabeth (Michele Mercier) and jealous Julia (Karin Field), who has a hankering for the former. Dr. Carmus (Peter Carsten) appears out of nowhere and shows Foster visions of what transpired in the past: the sexual intrigues of Elisabeth, her husband, William (Silvano Tranquilli), her lover Herbert (Raf Baldassarre), and, of course, the horny Julia. It slowly dawns on Foster that he may be in a house of ghosts, or worse, vampires ... 

Franciosa with Mercier

Web of the Spider begins in an intriguing fashion, but it soon becomes apparent that its mess of a script is a stew of barely coherent cliches that hardly holds together. By the final quarter you're just hoping it will hurry up and end already. The tenuous connection of Poe -- who only appears at the opening and the very end -- is almost insulting, as this has nothing to do with the writer, despite the creepy house and the screwed up family who inhabit it -- this is no Fall of the House of Usher. 

Karin Field

Franciosa gives a decent, if dubbed, performance, the other actors are all fine, and the film can be quite good to look at. The trouble is that the movie is so over-lit that the atmosphere evaporates and it becomes comical how bright everything is when you're in a house at night with a couple of candles (sometimes no candles), and there isn't much moonlight, either. Sure, you want the audience to get a look at the sets, the superior art direction, and the attractive color schemes, but a few realistic shadows wouldn't have hurt that much. For all the ghosts running around the house, the film never works up an especially spooky ambiance. The picture does have a satisfactorily ironic conclusion for those willing to stick around until the end. Antonio Margheriti also directed Battle of the Worlds and many other lousy movies.

Verdict: Watch Tony in Career instead. **. 

THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH

George Ardisson and Barbara Steele

THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964). Director: Anthony Dawson (Antonio Margheriti).

Near the end of the fifteenth century, Adele Karnstein is burned as a witch. She was accused of a murder actually committed by the Baron Kurt Humboldt (George Ardisson), who also murdered her older daughter when she confronted him. Some years later Kurt forces the "witch's" other daughter, Lisabeth (Halina Zalewska), to marry him, moving her into his castle. Then along comes a mysterious woman named Mary (Barbara Steele), who bears a striking resemblance to the dead sister, and with whom Kurt becomes obsessed. Becoming her lover, Kurt then importunes Mary to help him get rid of Lisabeth so they can be together forever. But Kurt may not be aware that there may be other deadly plots going on as well ... The Long Hair of Death is an interesting if imperfect film that comes off like a stretched-out episode of, say, Thriller, but it does make good use of medieval settings, tombs, secret passages, and the like, and there are certainly some effective sequences. Although this version has the actors speaking Italian (with sub-titles), most of the international cast are dubbed, meaning we don't get to hear Barbara Steele's great voice. The lead actors give more than adequate performances, and the rest of the cast includes such Italian horror staples as Laura Nucci [The Bloodstained Shadow] as the housekeeper Grumalda, Umberto Raho as Father Yon Klage, and Giuliano Raffaelli as Kurt's father, Count Humboldt. Steele and Raho were also in The Ghost.

Verdict: Low key but fairly absorbing Italian horror film. **1/2. 

BATTLE OF THE WORLDS

A manic Claude Rains

BATTLE OF THE WORLDS (aka Il pianeta degli uomini spenti/1961). Director: Anthony Dawson (Antonio Margheriti.

"It's a terrible, drawn-out agony for the whole world!"

How the great actor Claude Rains wound up in this Italian cheese ball is anybody's guess, but here he is -- and despite some justifiably hammy moments he's better than the film deserves. One could argue that Rains is giving Professor Challenger from The Lost World one more run, as his Professor Benson in Battle is a similarly rude, gruff scientist who is convinced he's always right. This time there are no dinosaurs [unfortunately] but a large astral body that is heading for the earth -- until it stops at 74,000 or so miles and begins circling the globe. For some reason it takes everyone more time than it should to realize that this satellite must have a governing intelligence behind its movements. In the meantime, there are some awkward romances going on, such as between Dr. Fred Steele (Umberto Orsini) and Eve Barnett (Maya Brent), although Mrs. Collins (Jacqueline Derval), who seems to have no other purpose than to serve coffee, keeps putting her hands all over the hunky doctor. But there are bigger problems when the "outsider," as the professor calls it, begins to send out flying saucers to attack earth spaceships. Battle of the Worlds isn't completely terrible -- Rains is always enjoyable no matter what he's in - but its budget precludes the film's developing some of its scenes and concepts with more impact. The spaceships seem to have been made for ten cents, but there are some effective enough sets for the climax, located on the alien world from which the saucers come. Ultimately it's like one of the lesser Star Trek episodes. With the exception of Rains and the busy Orsini, most of the actors had few other credits.

Verdict: Not quite a "terrible, drawn-out agony," but close. *1/2.