VENOM (1971)
(AKA THE LEGEND OF SPIDER FOREST)
Label: Twilight Time
Region Code: A
Rating: PG
Duration: 88 Minutes
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Audio: English 2.0 LPCM Dual Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Peter Sykes
Cast: Simon Brent, Derek Newark, Terence Soall, Gerard Heinz, Gertan Klauber, Neda Arneric, Sheila Allen
Euro-cult curiosity Venom (1971) opens with a strangely mint-green tinted scene of a young woman named Anna (Neda Arneric, Shaft In Africa) skinny-dipping in a picturesque mountain lake with a young man. After splashing around flirtatiously she lures him to the edge of forest where they lay down begin to make love, only to be interrupted when a venomous tree-dwelling tarantula drops in on them from above, biting and killing the young man. Some time later a vacationing Brit photographer named Paul (Simon Brent) arrives in the area in a super-cool looking yellow Citroën 2CV. While touring the mountains he pulls over on the side of the road for a solo picnic where he encounters the enigmatic redhead Anna, the girl from the deadly opening credits sequence. Paul is instantly smitten by her and manages to snap a few pictures of her before she retreats back into the nearby woods, but not before he takes notice of a distinct spider-shaped scar on her left shoulder. Not long after Paul arrives at the inn where he is staying and inquires about the identity of the mysterious girl he saw in the forest. The innkeeper, who promptly warns him to stay away, informing Pail of the local folklore about the Spider Goddess who is said to haunt the nearby forests, a beauty who lures unsuspecting men to their death.
Paul is partially drawn into the mystery by his own curiosity, but he is also drawn even deeper when he is mistaken for someone else. How exactly the enigmatic Anna fits into all this was a bit muddle the first go around, that they more or less completely set fire to the spider goddess element certainly didn't please me either. On it's face the story doesn't seem to have a lot of moving parts but as I was watching it I was quite confused by it all. Which is not altogether weird when watching an obscure slice of Euro-cult to be fair.
I love the folkloric setting, the Bavarian mountains and forest are gorgeously shot and have the look of a fairy tale, which the film sort of starts off as. The tale is full of erotic PG-rated delights along with a fair amount of blunt savagery, but unfortunately the advertised spiders are few and far between. For all it's interesting elements the film is not all that well shot or assembled, perhaps because this was director John Sykes first stab at directing a film. He would later go onto direct a couple of decent Hammer horror entries with Demons of the Mind (1972) and To the Devil…a Daughter (1976). This earlier film is a forgotten bit of euro-cult that feels a bit slapdash and hurried along, but the script comes by way of brothers Derek and Donald Ford, the men behind the scripts for the Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper thriller A Study In Terror (1965) and the surprisingly nasty Peter Cushing oddity Corruption (1968), their penchant for the unsavory definitely creeps into this one as well.
Muddled though it may have been the climax of the movie is bonkers fun with Paul and Anna ending up at the lair of the Nazi scientist with a memorable if hurried along flesh-searing inferno that includes a mind-boggling tip of the hat to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho that had me howling in disbelief. I truly think this would have been a better film they had peeled back much of the extraneous kitchen-sink WTF-ery and focused in on the dark fairytale Spider Goddess elements, it would have been a better folk horror tale than the headscratcher that it is. . On the whole though the story is atmospheric and nutso enough that I was never bored, often confused, but never bored! The occasionally artful and moody cinematography combined with the lush Bavarian scenery, and ultimately wasted folkloric elements, were more than enough to keep me engaged right up the fiery end.
Audio/Video: Venom (1971) arrives on Blu-ray from Twilight Time in 1080p HD framed in 2.35:1 widescreen. I have never seen this movie before but I do know it has been available on DVD in some form. The source elements used for this HD transfer are inconsistent, at times grain looks well defined and the image is reasonably crisp with decent clarity, but that often gives way to unnatural looking grain structures with muddled blacks and poor detai. To my eyes this looks like a patchwork of maybe two or three 35mm source elements being used to reconstruct the film, perhaps utilizing pre-print 35mm elements along with a theatrical print to create an inconsistent celluloid quilt, but that is just speculation. There is also some fading and inherent softness evident, and what looks to be some errant source light bleeding into the left side during a particular scene. I never found it less than watchable though, it's just not the best source element. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA Dual Mono 2.0 with optional English subtitles. The track is clean and mostly free of hiss with a few exceptions, dialogue can be a bit flat, but the score from John Simco Harrison sounds quite good, it's a nicely dramatic orchestral score that has some intense moments.
Sadly there are no extras to be found on the disc, not even the once standard-issue isolated music track that was featured on nearly all the TT releases. Inside there is a 12-page illustrated collector's booklet with new writing on the film by Twilight Time's Mike Finnegan. The essay gives a detailed synopsis of the film, along with some quotes from director John Sykes about the making of the movie, and there's an assortment of still images and poster artwork for the film.
The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a 2-sided sleeve of artwork, it's not reversible but the reverse side features a scene from the film. I do believe this is one of the first two releases from Twilight Time since the brand was acquired by Screen Archive Entertainment, after the passing of Twilight Time's co-founder Nick Redman. Stylistically the wrap has significant differences as well. The long-running standard black and white logo on the spine is now a slightly different font, and the placement of the Twilight Time logo on the spine is also differently situated, so your TT collection won't have the spine uniformity you are used to seeing on the shelf. On the backside of the wrap the layout has changed as well, the placement of the images, credits, synopsis and quotes have been re-formatted, it's a small thing but notable and noticeable, especially for those who have been collecting TT for years, like myself.
Special Features:
- 12-Page Illustrated Collector's Booklet with writing on the film from Twilight Time's Mike Finnegan.
Venom (1971) is an interesting if not completely enthralling grab-bag of early 70's British horror. It's too bad the folk horror element is all but destroyed by a nutty Nazi scientist sub-plot, but it a fun enough euro-cult curiosity for me to give it a thumbs up and a recommend to the deep-diving cinema nuts who crave this sort of 70's lunacy.
More screenshots from the Blu-ray:
