Venom

After the grainy, low-budget VENOM aka THE LEGEND OF SPIDER FOREST, British director Peter Sykes landed a job for legendary British horror production Hammer for DEMONS OF THE MIND, with more money, bigger names and continuing the psychological-horror sub-genre, only VENOM is a lot more affective...

Mostly set in a tree-shrouded, shade-soaked, shadow-splintered forest where lovely Neda Arneric (a combination of Sarah Miles and Mia Farrow) plays Anna, a nature-traipsing wild girl with an enigmatic spider tattoo on her shoulder, following bland/handsome journalist Simon Brent around until he winds up, seemingly safe in a local tavern where, once back in the forest, he has more problems connected to a gang of muscularly rural locals liken to the 60's British thriller THE SHUTTERED ROOM, only these guys are no (and there really needed someone intriguing like an) Oliver Reed...

Making the only real problem of this otherwise decent gothic programmer the lack of anyone else charismatic enough beyond Anna or secondary seductress Sheila Allen, daughter of the resident doctor who's a Nazi that, as described in the summary, has created some sort of nerve gas using spider venom...

But all the scientific expository stuff happens so far along it really doesn't matter... making VENOM only really matter when centering on Neda Arneric's energetic prowess and sensually exploitive, ravaging beauty.

Simon Brent ("Softly Softly") stars here as Paul Greville, an artist / photographer on an outing in the Bavarian countryside. He becomes smitten with Anna (Neda Arneric, "Shaft in Africa"), a mysterious young beauty who really is something of a puzzle. He also finds locals who are deeply into superstition and who mostly prevent him from having a warm welcome.

It's best not to know too much about the story (concocted by Donald & Derek Ford, "A Study in Terror") going in, because then at least the viewer can be rightfully amused at the places that "Venom" goes. It doesn't mean that the story is airtight - far from it. But it does an entertaining job of utilizing "folk horror" elements and eventually introducing mad scientist tropes. Best of all is the excellent European atmosphere, although the music score (composed by John Simco Harrison) is simply wonderful, and the ethereal attractiveness of the Yugoslavian-born Arneric (just 17 or 18 at the time) is a real selling point.

The solid European cast also includes the sexy Sheila Allen ("Love Actually"), an effectively brutish Derek Newark ("The Blue Max"), Terence Soall ('Our Miss Pemberton') as the nefarious Lutgermann, Gerard Heinz ("The Fallen Idol") as the amiable Huber, and Gertan Klauber ("Top Secret!") as eager-to-please innkeeper Kurt. Brent is a reasonably engaging hero who refuses to be intimidated, although the antagonists do their best at keeping him in line. For example, he's tied up in the forest with a tarantula for company. The imagery and visuals are enjoyable: one of the hooks here is that spiders are part of the iconography of this region.

Overall, "Venom" supplies agreeable entertainment, somewhat along the lines of typical Hammer fare. Unsurprisingly, "Venom" director Peter Sykes went on to direct the Hammer pictures "Demons of the Mind" and "To the Devil...a Daughter".

It's probably best if one doesn't take this one too seriously. Otherwise, people may find themselves getting annoyed with the muddled tale being told.

Seven out of 10.

Before Tom Hardy comes along and ruins one of the most popular Marvel characters (Venom) we had another movie by the same title but no supervilliany is to be found here.

Venom otherwise known as Spider Venom otherwise known as The Legend of Spider Forest is a curious little tale that I suppose would be horror, but just barely.

It tells an absolute mess of a story that revolves around a painter visiting a small town, a mysterious girl who lives in the forest who the locals call the spider queen and a Nazi conspiracy to weaponize spider venom.

It all sounds fairly interesting but the delivery is awful, worse than I could actually put into words. Sure the cast are competent enough, but they can't save a movie with the writing quality of a Sharknado (2013) film.

Venom is one of those titles I get the impression IMDB do not have the full brief on. It claims this is UK made and filmed exclusively in England but the movie comes across dubbed, has some foreign cast and some of the scenery is certainly not British.

I really wanted to like this but by about the half way point came to the conclusion that simply wasn't going to happen (And I wasn't wrong).

It looks the part, it's well acted and the concept is there but the writing is so appallingly bad it leaves the movie DOA.

The Good:

Neda Arneric

Some very interesting ideas

The Bad:

Plot is an unfettered mess

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Men simply shouldn't wear scarves of any description

Released in 1971 (but not until '75 in the USA), "Spider's Venom" (aka "The Legend of Spider Forest" and "Venom") is a mystery/horror about an artist (Simon Brent) who stumbles upon a village with secrets in the Black Forest, Germany: A beautiful redhead (Neda Arneric) frolics the local woods and seemingly leads men to their deaths, but people in the hamlet only willingly speak of it in hushed tones late at night when the fires burn low. The tangled web includes lethal spiders, neurotoxin and mad Nazi doctors. Sheila Allen is also on hand.

The protagonist looks like an early 70's rock star (e.g. Jim Morrison) and I noticed an early 70's rock/prog rock soundtrack during the tavern sequence (think Jethro Tull or ELO). Arneric is a serious cutie and there's some tame, 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 (1972); he also directed Hammer's penultimate "To the Devil a Daughter" (1976) and, believe it or not, "The Jesus Film" (1979).

Unfortunately, the editing is amateurish, like a lot of 70's low-budget Euro flicks; it's just awkwardly done and takes you right out of the movie. Pictures like this make you praise Hammer Films in all their low-budget glory. Also, the DVD that I viewed (which is probably the only form of the movie available) had terrible audio and I could only make out about 50% of the dubbed verbiage; no kidding.

The film runs 97 minutes and was shot at Twickenham Film Studios, St Margarets, Twickenham, Middlesex, England with establishing shots of the Alps. WRITERS: Derek Ford & Donald Ford, with additional dialogue by Christopher Wicking.

GRADE: C

In an opening scene in black and white with a blue tint to it, a young man and woman skinnydip together, and then go into the woods for a little sex. A large shadow of a spider looms, and the man is attacked. The woman has a birthmark or tattoo of a spider on her. There's seemingly some full-frontal nudity in a longshot, and there is toplessness despite the PG rating! Later there's some sadistic beatings and whippings. The Legend of Spider Forest almost makes this sound like it's for kids: nope!

I watched this on a double-sided DVD as Spider's Venom (the other title is Virgin Terror). Unfortunately full-screen, and I had to actually zoom the picture out a bit since it went beyond the edges of the screen. Probably taken from a videotape rather than a film print, given a weird glitch about thirty-five minutes in. Additionally, the sound quality is awful - whoever did the transfer wasn't checking the levels and it's particularly bad when the music swells and some notes just become loud hums and there's pops and crackles. So "Miracle Pictures a Division of PMC Corp. - Delaware," thanks for releasing this, but what a terrible job you did!

After the opening scene, the picture turns to color. Paul, a photographer/artist drives into a small German village and he manages to take a photo of the woman with the spider marking that he calls a scar. However, his pictures are stolen. He's met with a mixture of friendliness and hostility at the local pub. The mill owner shares a bottle of wine with him, and tries to interest him in his daughter. He does in fact wind up in bed with her shortly later, where they have a vigorous session, though it isn't graphic at all.

Paul wants to find out who the young woman is, and the townspeople want him to leave. He knows that there had been some paintings, including a Bosch, that had disappeared during WWII from the church. He finds one by a fresh body in the forest, but they too disappear.

The villagers do speak some German that isn't subtitled (putting us in Paul's shoes, I guess). The girl with the spider mark also sings some song in German as well.

Eventually, the mystery is solved along with a bizarre bit of transvestism that adds nothing. Cue the big fire, so common in Gothic horror movies of the 60s and 70s. Not bad, but a better release is clearly needed for a real idea of the quality of the movie.