"The Black Belly of the Tarantula" Reviews/Discussion - 2011 Horror Challenge: Day 26

[Chad]

The Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971) Selected by SethDLH

IMDB ENTRY

NETFLIX WATCH INSTANTLY

These "October Horror Movie Challenge" threads are for the discussion of the films in the 31 FILM SUBSET.

MAIN THREAD | LIST THREAD

The plan is for everyone to watch this film on the October day in the thread title, and to start discussing it the morning of the following day.
You may start discussion early if you want, but the preferred plan is for this to be as much of a group exercise as possible, with all of us viewing it "together" and discussing after.

Of course, you are totally encouraged to participate in these threads even if you haven't watched the movie on the designated day.
Even if you haven't watched it in years, or are not participating in the Horror Challenge, please feel free to chime in.

Spoiler tags are unnecessary in here, so if you have yet to see the film BEWARE OF SPOILERS.

OHMC7 HOME

[Trevor]

Great premise, seemed technically sound, but I was fairly bored throughout. Storytelling seemed bland, and the lead actor put me to sleep.

Perhaps I was just over tired. Worth another watch someday most likely.

[Mondo Kane]

Originally Posted by Trevor

Great premise, seemed technically sound, but I was fairly bored throughout.

That actually seems to be my reaction to many giallos I've seen lately.

Can't be too sure since I didn't fully catch the final conversation of the film (Recieving Trevor's fatigue, maybe?)
But:

Spoiler:

Was it said that the killer lived? If so, at least that's one factor that sets this apart from other giallos

Also, anyone know if Barbara Bach speaks any other language? As was the tradition in Italian films, english-speaking actors always spoke their lines in english. But Barbara's dialogue hardly ever matched her lips.

[rbrown498]

Someone is killing women by first injecting them with a paralyzing venom then stabbing them. Who could it be, and why are they doing it? I found this really good-looking Italian/French co-production (with a great score by Ennio Morricone) to be oddly uninvolving. I think that my problem with it is that the audience is put on the same footing as the detective, which means that we (and he) have no idea who's doing the killing or why. Because of this, the film becomes a string of murder set-pieces that weren't visually interesting enough to keep my attention from wandering. (Another debit was the film within the film wherein an entomologist identified what looked to be a garden spider as a tarantula. What a keen scientific mind HE had! And while I'm at it, I was disappointed that Barbara Bach only showed up long enough to be introduced, then promptly killed. I also expected "Yakety Sax" to start playing every time the gay guy that worked at the spa was onscreen.) Some may find that keeping the audience in the dark as to the rhyme and reason of the killings is a good thing (after all, it certainly worked for Psycho), but rather than drawing me into the film, it served instead to distance me from it.

[Undeadcow]

Originally Posted by Trevor

Great premise, seemed technically sound, but I was fairly bored throughout. Storytelling seemed bland, and the lead actor put me to sleep.

Perhaps I was just over tired.

You were not overly tired. They wasted a good premise. The lead actor was not good enough to carry the film and it came across remarkably dry and narrow for a movie with such a cool setup.

Is it too late to switch back to Embodiment of Evil?