udar55 Dallas-based religion professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga) is sent over to Hungary when Prof. Roth mysteriously stops contact after reporting he founds some sacred tablets. Whitmore arrives in a strange little town, only to have the paranoid Roth hand him a secret black book and shoo him away. Hours later Roth is found hanging by his neck and covered in a giant spider web. This event sends Whitmore on a quest to find out what is going on, despite the warning from the local "you're doomed" crazy man (William Berger) to leave town. This is an interesting little Italian horror film with definite shades of THE WICKER MAN (1973). Debuting director Gianfranco Giagni creates some nice horror and suspense scenes with some stylistic nods to Argento. The plot is a bit flimsy when you really think about it (INVASION OF THE SPIDER PEOPLE?), but it sure looks nice. It also benefits from some atmospheric locations in Hungary, including an underground stone bath and creepy caverns.

OllieMugwump This combo of favourite Italian 'Giallo Supernaturale' aesthetic and Lovecraftian 'Wierd/Cosmic Terror' plot; "Il Nido del ragno/The Spider Labyrinth" deserves far more attention.Prof. Alan Whitmore; a standard Lovecraftian man of science (haunted by a childhood nightmare of being locked in a closet with a strangely sentient spider seemingly watching him from its' web), is co-coordinator of the 'Intectus Project' - which is studying a mysterious and ancient, world-spanning cult.Sent to Budapest, Hungary to recall data obtained by colleague Prof. Leo Roth, Prof. Whitmore is sent into 'the vortex of madness' as the hideous truth of his childhood nightmare spins a web of the greatest horror.My first knowledge of "The Spider Labyrinth" came from Travis Crawford's review in the 'Eyeball Compendium', as other reviewers here have pointed out this film is easily obtainable on 'boot-leg', but cries-out for a better DVD release.Gianfranco Giagni has certainly crafted a classic, beautifully merging the cinematic supernaturalism of Mario Bava ("Kill, Baby Kill!" and "Lisa and the Devil"), Dario Argento ("Suspiria" and "Inferno") and Lucio Fulci ("The Beyond" and "Manhattan Baby") with the literary plot-work of H.P. Lovecraft ("The Call of the Cthulhu", "The Whisperer In Darkness", "The Dunwich Horror", and the piece which inspired Lovecraft; Arthur Machen's "Novel of the Black Seal").

pumaye Not really bad Italian production of the late Eighties, with a story of an ancient religion of a spider-god survived till our days in a ghostly photographed Budapest. A few scenes are well done (like the death of a maid similar to one of the finest scene in Argento's Suspiria) or evocative (like the nightmarish underground voyage of the American professor in the spider nest, full of human remains), while the major faults of the movie are in the dialogues and in the fact that a good idea is wasted in a too derivative ending

Zar SPIDER LABYRINTH is a late Italian Horror film, obviously inspired by the classic works of Mario Bava and Dario Argento. However, this is a classic in it's own right. A young scientist travels to Budapest to investigate the reasons for unexpected problems with a top secret project. He soon becomes, ah, entangled in the web of a sinister society... Highly recommended.