Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Mark Turner One things has to be said for the smaller DVD/Blu-ray releasing companies. They are taking the time and putting the effort into putting out some long lost films in the most gorgeous looking condition that can be found anywhere. When these same films were released on video way back when the worst looking prints were found and a quick buck was made. Now time is being taken and the difference is visible with each new release. Some call it a niche market. I call it a labor of love.Garagehouse Pictures is just such a company and while their releases come out slowly they are done to perfection. I mentioned a while back their release of the film THE INTRUDER. Now they've released another film that is worth picking up for fans of horror films, especially those made in Italy.WEB OF THE SPIDER is a remake of the film CASTLE OF BLODD, the much loved black and white Italian production that starred Barbara Steele. Both films are directed by Antonio Margheriti under the pseudonym Anthony M. Dawson.The story revolves around a drunken Edgar Allan Poe (Klaus Kinski) telling tales in a bar for drinks while in England. In walks Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa), a journalist who has been seeking out Poe for an interview. They begin to talk about life, death and what happens after but while Poe believes in ghosts Foster does not. Poe and his friend Thomas Blackwood challenge Foster to put his money where his mouth is and suggest he spend the night in the castle owned by Blackwood.Foster takes the challenge and the three head to the castle. He's been told by Blackwood that no one has ever survived an overnight visit to the castle on this night as it is All Hallow's Eve. Foster scoffs at the idea of the supernatural and the trio arrive at the gate and the pair leave Foster to fend for himself. He gets through the front gate, walks through a cemetery in front of the estate and finds his way in.A quick walkthrough of the lower floors, a few passages played on a harpsichord and soon he finds himself face to face with Elisabeth Blackwood (Michele Mercier). She shows him around the estate, talking about things that have happened there. Forster is intrigued by this beautiful woman so much that he begins to fall in love with her.But as the night moves forward things begin to happen. Where once there were cobwebs and dust there is now a ballroom filled with guests dancing away the night. Elisabeth is now in the arms of her husband as Forster begins to witness the past before his eyes and learns that Elisabeth is not what he thought but just one of many ghosts in the house.As the night progresses Foster learns of what happened to each of the various apparitions he sees before him. Will he survive the night? Or is there some insidious reason that these wraiths have appeared before him, some need they have for him to continue on with their own survival? The movie is a classic styled Gothic horror film from the setting and costumes to the customs of the time, both past and present in the tale. The sets in use are wonderfully detailed and bring to life the story that unfolds. Not only that we're offered the film in a widescreen presentation, something that's been missing for some time.The acting is above what most would expect in a film with this sort of topic. Franciosa was an underrated actor who should have garnered better roles. Even so he put his all into the roles he had and it shows in this one. Mercier is equally up to the task matching him from their first scenes together to their last. And Peter Carsten as Dr. Carmus, a ghost who was once a visitor like Forster does a great job as well.Garagehouse Pictures is releasing this in the best version you'll ever be likely to find. The film has been fully restored and mastered from an uncut, domestic theatrical negative and it shows. The clear, crisp, clean image on view is amazing. In addition to that the film is loaded with extras that include an audio commentary track with George Reis & Keith Crocker, an audio commentary track by Stephen Romano, 2 German Super 8 movie digests, an Antonio Margheriti trailer reel, deleted scenes, an uncut Italian version of the film (non-high def), an art gallery, a collection of Garagehouse Pictures trailers and it features new artwork by Stephen Romano.Horror fans will want to add this one to their collections. Fans of Italian horror films will be pleased to finally have this film available in such great shape. It offers a sold evening's worth of entertainment and should please most. This is a great example of how good a movie was being made at the time.

kevin olzak In comparing this 1971 remake with its 1964 original, one immediately misses the presence of Barbara Steele, although in both titles the 'heroine' only makes her first appearance at the half hour mark. Director Antonio Margheriti must have felt the absence of color in "Castle of Blood," and really adds little else to this new version, with Michele Mercier's Elisabeth fleshed out to some degree, as we see more of her absent husband, barely seen in the original. All the plot elements are virtually identical, right down to the lesbian love scene, resulting in three corpses lying on the floor in roughly two minutes of lustful activity. It was definitely daring in 1964, but here is treated in such timid, predictable fashion that it loses all the bite of the original. The guest filled ball is the one sequence that adds more running time here, 106 minutes over 1964's 89, Elisabeth juggling multiple affairs while her husband is away in America, and both male and female lovers equally jealous to the point of murder. The main weakness in both versions remains the same, a skeptical journalist who doesn't engender audience empathy with his failure to discover what the audience already knows. I would recommend the black and white version with Barbara Steele over the color one, both of which aired twice on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater, between 1976-1982.

matheusmarchetti Antonio Margheriti's 1971 remake of his classic "Castle of Blood" has always been criticized for being inferior in every level to it's predecessor. While I do think "Castle of Blood" is a better film, "In the Web of the Spider" does not stand so far behind. Made on a bigger budget than the 1964 version, Margheriti does a good thing by taking a different aesthetic approach than the candle-lit B&W nightmare that is the latter, and instead lighting up the set with a nice range of deep blues and orange gels to show off the more elaborate locations. It also enjoys a better cast than the original, with a highlight being the presence of Klaus Kinski as Edgar Allan Poe. At first glance, he might not seem very right for the role, but he truly nails it in a absolutely maddening performance. They even made his role slightly larger than the original, by adding a superbly creepy introduction scene in a crypt that sets the tone for the rest of the picture. Albeit not as memorable as Barbara Steele, Michele Mercier (the protagonist from the Telephone segment of Mario Bava's "Black Sabbath") is a good replacement and she has great chemistry with Anthony Franciosa (Argento's "Tenebre"), even more so than Steele and Riviere in "Castle...". Also, I found the film to be somewhat more frightening than it's predecessor, specially towards the ending. The best example of which is the scene where Carmus descends into the crypt and coms across a corpse being reanimated. The effects used in the scene are more subtle, but all the more effective in my view. Riz Ortolani's score is rather uneven. There are some memorable tunes, particularly the hauntingly beautiful love theme and the song that plays during the ball sequence, but the rest is a routine and rather distracting orchestra piece intended to create a creepy environment, whereas there are more than a few scenes where I think absolute silence would've made it all the more effective. Still, it doesn't really ruin the picture, and as I've said, it wasn't all bad. The film's major problem is the fact that it's virtually a scene-by-scene remake of the original. Surely, there are some slight improvements, such as the shirtless, hunky ghost that was looked silly in the original is now dressed and more menacing-looking, and the ending is also more subtle and tragic. Still, these elements are only a very small portion of the piece, and while they do make a difference, the whole thing failed to impress me story-wise, because I knew exactly what was going to happen next in every scene. There are no big changes and/or improvements to make it essential viewing for those who have already seen "Castle of Blood", which is a pity really, since it does have some great assets and even surpasses the latter in some ways. Also, where "Castle of Blood" felt provocative and ahead of it's time with it's depiction of sex and lesbianism, "In the Web of the Spider" feels way too restrained and tame, specially for a film that came one year after "The Vampire Lovers", which dealt with some similar themes. The sole 'gore' scene we get to see is in the very end, and is restrained to a brief shot of blood flowing from Franciosa's wound. Mind you, I'm not a gorehoud, nor do I think violence is essential to make a horror film good, but in this case I think it was more than necessary, if only to make it stand out from the original. None of these cons stopped it from being a fun and atmospheric slice of Italian Gothic, but it makes me sad to give it a mere a 7/10. If you're a fan of this type of film and haven't seen "Castle of Blood" yet, I think you might better watch this one first, but otherwise I unfortunately can't go as far as calling it the forgotten gem of continental horror it could have been.

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) I recently found myself an original Italian widescreen print of this film that is gorgeous, and helps explain some of the negative user comments about it. Nella stretta morsa del ragno, as I have been taught to call it, is more than just a technicolor revisitation of Antonio Marghetti's CASTLE OF BLOOD. The problem is that he tried to make it much too more -- to explore the period detail in particular -- and in doing so the focus of the film became muddled.One of the aspects that made CASTLE OF BLOOD so remarkable was Marghetti's use of light and dark in such a calculated manner -- whenever Alan Foster strikes a match or lights a candle, it is an EVENT within the framework of the shot. In NELLA STRETTA, candles and matches become props to be carried around by characters to establish the sense of place & setting.Marghetti's greatest miscalculation, though, was in lighting his sets to show off the rich, exquisite detail his larger budget could afford. The result is a series of events that look like they were filmed on a movie set, not a nightmare playing out in front of our eyes in living black and white. On that plane of reasoning, NELLA STRETTA has more in common with Marghetti's VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG with Christopher Lee, which is all about color picture texture and the musical score. NELLA STRETTA also amps up the music, with a Robert Fripp-ish atonal guitar riff that pops up whenever something weird is about to happen. The film this becomes almost formulaic, and the suspense generated in CASTLE OF BLOOD becomes more of a slog to get to the good parts.And there is one really, REALLY good part: I still remember it scaring me so much as a kid I refused to go into our basement for weeks afterwards ... It is the segment when Dr. Carmus takes his little trip down into the Blackwood family crypt and finds something that should probably have best gone undisturbed.'Tis a pity, though, that an adventurous company like Blue Underground or Anchor Bay Entertainment doesn't resurrect and "restore" this bizarre, flawed but interesting bit of Eurohorror; With his widescreen shot compositions and color schemes intact, the Italian cut I found not only runs circles around the prints turning up on the Brentwood and Diamond DVD sets, but it does away with the "another film where every shot is a closeup" charge -- those closeups are the result of a widescreen image being chopped, reformatted and blown up to play back on television sets. And, as is evident in the latest DVD release by Diamond, some of the distributors looped, slowed down or even froze individual frames to cover up what little graphic luridness that Marghetti used and was deemed unacceptable.Yet right there we come to the meat of the thesis on why NELLA STRETTA MORSA DEL RAGNO will always be looked upon as less than a success -- it is too tame for the time period it was made in. The Italian print does include some very brief nudity and, like the Synapse DVD release of CASTLE OF BLOOD, spends more time establishing the illicit lesbian relationship between Elizabeth and Julia ... But it's nothing too thrilling, and by today's standards the whole affair has the shock effect of a good DARK SHADOWS episode.Yet it is worth checking out, especially if you are a fan of atmospheric 1970's period Eurohorror with a touch of the erotic. Timeless Video's VHS runs 94 minutes but has really awful color rot to the print. Brentwood's print from the CIRCUS OF DEATH and TALES OF TERROR box sets runs about 96 minutes and looks a bit better, but not much. For the present, the version to go with for US buyers is to be found on Diamond's double bill DVD with CIRCUS OF FEAR, runs about 98 minutes, has a somewhat richer color range and much better quality audio, and for it's budget line price you really can't beat it.I give WEB OF THE SPIDER/NELLA STRETTA MORSA DEL RAGNO *** out of ****, but only because I have a soft spot for it, and still feel the hair rise up on my neck whenever Dr. Carmus lights his candle and goes looking for that breathing sound .... shiver!