I blame the parents myself.
The Spider Labyrinth (AKA Il nido del ragno, The Spider's Nest. 1988).
Dir: Gianfranco Giagni.
Cast: Roland Wybenga, Paola Rinaldi, Margareta von Krauss, Claudia Muzi, William Berger and Stéphane Audran.
The studly and incredibly tidy bearded Professor Alan Whitmore (Wybenga, the poor man's Jason Patric) is awoken from a terrifying dream where his younger (tho' no less attractive) self is trapped in a cupboard with a huge rubber spider by the tweet tweet of his fairly groove-some trim-phone.
His superiors (and priest) from the local community college where he works teaching illiterate no-hopes painting and decorating have summoned him to the office.
Hopefully he's not been touching up the sixth formers (again) or this could be a completely different kinda movie.
Luckily for him the meeting is totally devoid of touching, it seems that Doctor Kuhn, a scientist college of his currently working of something clever yet mysterious in Budapest, has failed to respond to anyone's phone calls and more importantly when anyone writes to him asking for an update on his work he sharply replies that the dog has eaten his notes.
Curious.
Geoff Priest and his pals want Whitmore to investigate.
Specs appeal.
Stopping only to grab a change of underwear and his pyjamas, Whitmore books himself onto the first available flight and soon finds himself in downtown Budapest. Waiting for him at the airport is Dr. kuhn's sexy librarian styled, pixie like assistant (and resident square jawed saucy strumpet) Genevieve Weiss (the star of pop wank U2's "All I want is you" video, Rinaldi).
Unfortunately for Whitmore (and us) there's no time for any of that sexy stuff because he has an urgent date with the dotty Dr. Kuhn at his spooky tenement flat that very hour so jumping into Genevieve's purring motor the pair zoom off toward the unknown.
Well I say unknown but it's a house a few blocks away.
Well, the lights are on.
Arriving at the Doctors house (and left in the lurch by Genevieve who's gone home to style her eyebrows or something) Whitmore is greeted by Kuhn's manly wife Helga (Audran, best remembered as Pauline de la Rochelle in Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story) who takes him to the Doctors study.
Tho' not in her full lipped German mouth.
Well not yet.
Anyway, back at the plot and it seems that Kuhn has gone a wee bit mental, seeing as he's taken to standing half dressed (and half cut) in his study spouting on about alternative gods and webs of deceit to anyone who's unlucky enough to be in earshot.
Which in this case is a very confused Alan, who really just wants the Docs notes so he can fuck off back to the States and his own bed.
"Ahm sorry hen, ah pished masel'!"
After what seems like hours of meaningless chat the Doc reaches into his pants and whips out of small diary which he excitedly thrusts into Alan's hands before whispering "don't tell the missis!" but before Alan can question this bizarre turn of events a black tennis ball smashes thru the window and Doc Kuhn wets himself before scuttling off to cry in the corner.
"Whit?"
Perturbed and a little aroused, Alan heads to his hotel for a slap up meal and a quick game of footsie under the table with Genevieve before retiring for the night but his plans are foiled by the appearance of the harsh faced old ginger woman (whose chat is as inappropriate as her skirt length) that runs the hotel and the fact that Kuhn hangs himself before they've even gotten to dessert.
Upon hearing the terrible news Alan rushes back to the Docs house only to be accosted by a fish breathed tramp (Berger from War and Remembrance) who drunkenly warns him to leave Budapest before it's too late and he too becomes embroiled in the local web of badness.
Hmmmm....I wonder if all these mentions of webs mean anything?
Things go from bad to very bad when Alan is first questioned (rudely) by a fat policeman, his stories of spooky tennis balls mocked and his passport taken 'for safe keeping' (or so the local coppers can have a laugh at his photo), humiliated Alan sulkily returns to his hotel to sit in the dark and smoke fags whilst brooding in a manner usually reserved for angsty teens.
All this sulkiness is soon forgotten tho' when he notices Genevieve in all her stocky glory dancing naked in her apartment which just happens to be directly opposite his room.
Alan quickly rings room service for some tissues and a Pot Noodle.
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
Stab her in the face obviously.
Stab her in the face obviously.
Wiping the single tear from his eye Alan crawls sheepishly into bed only to have his rest disturbed by a soft knocking at the door. It's the fairly attractive (if a little manly) maid named Maria (Muzi, whose IMDB entry features the keywords adultery, dancing, aerial-bombing and teenage boy for all you fact fans out there) who has come (but not literally) to warn Alan to go home now before he becomes trapped like a fly on a spiders web.
Hmmmm....
The chat (and anything else that may or may not happen when hotel maids turn up at your room at three in the morning) is cut short by Madam Ginger, who shoos Maria away before bidding Alan good night.
Surprisingly tho' she doesn't warm him about the screams he'll hear later as poor Maria is stabbed to death by what looks like Bonnie Langford (with pegs for teeth) on PCP.
If she had it would have saved him the uncomfortable chat he ends up having with her later about dead babies as he's searching the hotel for the source of the aforementioned screams.
Gratuitous staircase shot.
Hounded by the police, hassled by a tramp and with only the nude dance fixated Genevieve to help, Alan begins to investigate the mystery surrounding the strange town and the locals obsession with all things arachnid.
Oh and to discover why there seems to be a surplus of sticky tennis balls flying about.
"Laugh now!"
It's difficult to review Gianfranco Giagni's one and only foray into horror cinema without giving too much away because quite frankly Spider's Labyrinth is one of the most bonkers films to come out of Italy in the last thirty years, partly due to the fact that everything in the movie is played absolutely straight.
Which was probably really difficult for the camp as pants Roland Wybenga so fair play to him.
Childish innuendo aside, Giagni cut his teeth (but unlike Dario Argento, not his own fringe) directing for teevee (most notably episodes of the erotically charged series based on the Guido Crepax comic masterpiece Valentina) before moving onto music videos and finally giving us the magnificent Spider's Labyrinth.
Which makes it all the more upsetting when you realise he dropped from view just as quickly as he appeared.
Paola Rinaldi today:
You still would.
Twice.
You still would.
Twice.
Stealing from the best, Giagni takes a plot that is pure Lovecraft and filters it thru the classic Giallo template created by Mario Bava before adding a dash of Argento styling to create a movie that in many ways surpasses the sum of it's parts to become a classic in it's own right.
Plus it's got a big stop motion monster in it!
Which begs the question, why has hardly anyone been able to see it?
If I was Giagni I'd be travelling around the world banging on folks doors demanding that watch it.
Or at least asking someone very nicely to give it a proper DVD release, the only way of currently viewing the movie is as a DVD rip of the ancient Japanese VHS edition complete with hard-coded subtitles.
Which I guess makes it educational as well as entertaining.
This is what too much masturbation
can do to a man.
can do to a man.
And just think, if enough of us demand to see it Giagni might make a sequel which at the very least means that we can finally rid ourselves of the crushing disappointment we felt on discovering that his only other work of note was the dull as dishwater adaptation of Nino Filasto's novel Nella terra di nessuno (Nobody's Heart), a film thats only claim to fame is a scene where Italy's very own Kate Winslet, the horse-like Maya Sansa breast feeds a doll.
The rehabilitation of Gianfranco Giagni begins NOW!
No comments:
Post a Comment