Cinema has often warned us about spiders. They crawl into bathtubs, dangle above our heads, and sometimes mutate into skyscraper-sized monsters in 1950s B-pictures. But rarely has a film tangled itself into such a hopeless web of tedium as Peter Sykes’ Venom (1974), also known by the more exotic title The Legend of Spider Forest. If you hear that title and expect gothic thrills, prepare for disappointment. This is not Cat People. This is not even Arachnophobia. This is a film about Nazis, nerve gas, and arachnids, stitched together with the kind of logic that suggests the screenwriter had his brain replaced with a wasp’s nest.
The Spider Goddess That Wasn’t
The film begins with Paul Greville (Simon Brent), a man on holiday in Bavaria—because where else do bad horror films set their supernatural nonsense? He stumbles across a girl in the forest named Anna (Neda Arnerić), who has a spider-shaped mark on her shoulder. The locals whisper that she is the “spider goddess,” responsible for a string of violent deaths. This should be tantalizing. Unfortunately, it’s delivered with all the enthusiasm of a parish newsletter about bingo night.
Anna isn’t actually a supernatural being at all. She’s the daughter of Dr. Lutgermann (Terence Soall), a Nazi war criminal who has been experimenting with spiders to create a deadly nerve agent. So instead of an eerie, mystical horror about an ancient goddess of the woods, we get Nazis with pet tarantulas and a script that looks like it was found inside a box of stale biscuits.
Nazis and Arachnids: Not a Match Made in Horror Heaven
The reveal that Anna’s father is a war criminal hiding in the forest with jars of venom is meant to shock. Instead, it makes you wonder whether he was rejected by The Boys from Brazil casting call. Dr. Lutgermann has created the legend of the spider goddess as a cover for killing intruders. Yes, really. When suspicious hikers vanish, the villagers shrug and blame a mystical deity, while in reality they’re being poisoned by weaponized spider spit. One imagines the Nazi high command rolling in their graves—not from guilt, but from embarrassment at the sheer lack of villainous ingenuity.
Simon Brent, Wooden Adventurer
Simon Brent, as Paul, carries the movie with the screen presence of a damp sock. He reacts to forest legends, corpses, and spider attacks with the same glazed expression, as though he’s auditioning for the role of “background tourist.” His chemistry with Anna is flatter than a Bavarian pancake. If romance is supposed to bloom between them, it must be taking place offscreen, perhaps in an entirely different movie.
Neda Arnerić at least brings some mystery to Anna, though saddled with dialogue like “It is my fate” and “Beware the forest,” she sounds less like a doomed heroine and more like a fortune cookie that’s gone feral.
Horror Without Horror
The problem with Venom is not its absurd premise—after all, horror thrives on absurd premises. The problem is that the film has no pulse. It creeps along with the lethargy of a spider after a long winter. The deaths are bloodless and uninspired. Spiders crawl. Nazis sneer. People walk through forests. At one point, a house catches fire, which ought to generate excitement, but the flames have more energy than the cast.
Peter Sykes described the film as “more of a romantic fantasy with horror overtones.” That’s one way of putting it. Another way is: “a horror film that forgot to include the horror.”
The Web of Production
To be fair, the film looks better than it deserves. Shot at Twickenham Studios and on Bavarian locations, the cinematography gives us misty woods and gothic interiors that hint at a better story. Sykes admitted to being influenced by Murnau’s Sunrise, which is rather like a man who paints stick figures claiming Michelangelo as his inspiration. The bones of atmosphere are here, but the flesh is missing. Instead of tension, we get long, meandering conversations punctuated by the occasional spider cameo.
The irony is that Venom was Sykes’ directorial debut, and he would go on to make far better films (Demons of the Mindfor Hammer, among others). That this film earned him a career says less about its quality and more about how desperate British horror producers were in the 1970s.
Nazis, Nerve Gas, and Unintentional Comedy
When Dr. Lutgermann is finally undone by his own spiders, the climax collapses into accidental farce. He fumbles his jars of arachnids, sets fire to his house, and dies screaming while his daughter looks on in horror. It should be tragic. It should be terrifying. Instead, it’s like watching an eccentric uncle burn down his shed after a beekeeping experiment gone wrong.
Anna, of course, rushes back to save him—because why not show sympathy for your Nazi scientist father?—and the film ends not with catharsis, but with the audience’s relief that it’s over.
Performances from the Web
Sheila Allen as Ellen and Derek Newark as Johann do what they can with their supporting roles, but their chief function is to act suspiciously in taverns and deliver exposition about the “spider goddess.” Terence Soall, as Lutgermann, chews scenery with gusto, but he’s still a Nazi villain whose master plan is basically “spiders will do my dirty work.” Even Bond henchmen had more ambition.
A Title Too Good for Its Own Movie
The cruelest thing about Venom is that its titles—The Legend of Spider Forest, Spider’s Venom—promise pulp thrills and gothic chills. Instead, we get talky nonsense, cheap melodrama, and arachnids that seem only half-interested in participating. The film’s legend is purely in its marketing; the movie itself should be preserved only as an object lesson in wasted potential.
Final Verdict: Squash It
Venom weaves a web, all right—a web of tedium, clichés, and missed opportunities. It dangles the promise of gothic horror, then drops the audience into a pit of half-baked Nazi melodrama. It is not terrifying, not romantic, not even amusingly camp. It is simply inert, like a spider that’s already been sprayed with Raid.
If you want forests, go watch The Blair Witch Project. If you want spider horror, try Tarantula! or even Kingdom of the Spiders. If you want Nazis, The Boys from Brazil awaits. But if you want all three—Nazis, spiders, and forests—Venomwill convince you that some combinations should never crawl out of the screen.
The locals in the film whisper of a spider goddess who kills intruders. The real legend is that anyone survived watching Venom without dozing off.
