Review of Curse of the Black Widow

Peculiar but entertaining and strangely compelling TV-horror from the 70's, directed by one of the masters of the era – Dan Curtis – and revolving on an atmospheric albeit terribly grotesque basic premise. The dead bodies of multiple strong, handsome and successful males are discovered completely drained of all bodily fluids and with two giant chest wounds. They're always seen last in the company of Valerie Steffan, a dark-haired and dark-eyed beauty. Since the police investigation leads nowhere, one of the victims' fiancée hires private detective Mark Higbie to investigate. He may not be Carl Kolchak – from Curtis' popular movie franchise "The Night Stalker" – but with the help of some inside police sources and previous witnesses, Higbie finds out the murders are committed exactly like a black widow spider kills and consumes its preys. So we have a giant life-sized spider woman walking around, that's already quite fantastic, but wait until you hear the explanation of HOW this lady obtained her curse! I always like a little bit of far-fetched imagination in my horror movies, but the development of "Curse of the Black Widow" is a tad bit too much. Still, if you manage to switch off all your normal brain functionalities, the film is a good and enjoyable piece of TV-horror, with only a couple of moments of slowness. Obviously not recommendable to people with arachnophobia, since there are quite a bit of cameo appearances by hairy little eight-legged critters. The spider-kills and Valerie's metamorphosis are pretty cool, but unfortunately too brief. First her eyes turn orange and glassy and we see how she observes her victims through a maze of beady little eyes. I always had a weakness for this particular special effect, regardless of how cheesy and stupid it is. It also features in plenty of bee movies. "Curse of the Black Widow" is slightly overlong with an extended climax and one too many plot twist in the last 10-15 minutes. I really don't understand why Dan Curtis only showed a couple of brief shots of the impressive and massively constructed spider monster at the end. It looked really cool.