Hawkzino is back with another spider movie review… we’re going to need a bigger swatter, or maybe a rolled up newspaper. This time, it’s a movie that has been reviewed by Wrenage, Curse of the Black Widow (1977). Here we go with Hawkzino’s take on the movie.
Curse of the Black Widow (1977)
This is an interesting made-for-television movie that came out in 1977. In other news, I came out of my mum in 1977. Even I’m wincing at that one.
You know what else came out in 1977? Star Wars, so it’s no surprise that nobody remembers any other movie from that year. Well, maybe The Spy Who Loved Me, thanks to Carly Simon and the guy named after a shark, but that’s it.
Everything else had no chance (makes me feel sad for the rest), so it’s good to watch this one now as part of my giant spider series and give it the attention it deserves.
Side note 1: Wrenage already wrote an excellent article for this movie, so I will try to find a few additional things to say and not cover the same ground. Think of it as a companion piece.
Let’s face it: when it comes to spiders, black widows are the coolest. ‘Black’ because they are black, apart from a red hourglass marking on their abdomen, and ‘widow’ because the females eat the males after sex (still worth it). They’re not even that creepy looking, at least by arachnid standards.
When I was a child, the Black Widow possessed an almost mythical quality, the Most Dangerous Spider in the WorldTM. It’s not, of course, but what did I know? If I had seen this movie then (and my mum would have let me – it was the 80s), I would have been scared out of my mind. But I didn’t because I was watching Star Wars for the forty-eighth time.
Anyway, this movie uses the aforementioned characteristics of the Black Widow to craft its villain, who shows up in the opening scene. An alluring woman dressed in black (apart from a red hourglass marking on her abdomen, but we don’t see that until later) lures a man in a bar to his death by pretending she has car trouble. She calls herself Valerie Steffan and sounds like a comedy Nazi from ‘Allo ‘Allo.
Wait, Where’s The Spider?
Hold up, I hear you cry. Where’s the spider? I didn’t come here for no darn metaphors! Well, never fear, spider fans. Valerie Steffan isn’t just a representation of a Black Widow, she actually turns into one.
Nothing to do with genetic experiments, radiation, toxic waste, alien impregnation, a bad curry, or anything else that you might loosely associate with science or science fiction. The cause this time is a good old-fashioned curse. I guess the clue was in the title.
To help sell it, they have it explained by a Native American played by a Jewish guy. You could get away with that back then, as long as the actor spoke in a deep voice and wore bushy eyebrows.
The legend goes that the curse is passed down through the female line. It remains dormant until the woman is bitten by a spider. Just a regular one will do. Again…no radiation required. This unlocks spider mode, which, because of reasons, can only be activated on a full moon (infringing Werewolf copyright in the process).
Alas, the movie’s budget doesn’t stretch to show the full spider transformation. In fact, for most of the movie we don’t see the spider at all, just a weird look in her eye followed by the terrified reaction shot of her victims.
After the first kill, one cop says, ‘It looks like someone gave him a hug with a pair of pickaxes,’ which I thought was a clumsy but funny line. The dead man is called Frank. Next, we meet his fiancée, Leigh Lockridge, and her confusing family situation. I had to watch it a few times to get it all, but here it is.
The Tangled Web We Weave
Leigh has a twin sister called Laura. Their parents were in a plane crash when their mum was pregnant with them. The father died, and the mother gave birth to them on a mountain. Yes, this is a long story. Before they were rescued, by a genuine Native American no less, one of them was bitten by spiders (but which one!?).
They have a large family home, but neither of them lives there. Leigh doesn’t like visiting since her mum died in Rome, 12 years earlier. As well as losing her father, mother and now Frank, Leigh’s husband died a few years before by falling off a boat. There’s a pattern developing here.
At the time of Leigh’s husband’s death, Laura was going out with Frank, but presumably it fizzled out, and he later got together with Leigh before dying. Laura is now with a guy called Geoff, who blatantly comes onto Leigh in front of Laura. Later on, he turns up at Leigh’s house and shags her. It’s obvious that Geoff and Leigh used to be together, either before he got with Laura or behind her back. Later in the movie, he also meets the spider. You still there?
Two takeaways from this. One, the movie takes the ‘widow’ part of Black Widow very seriously, and two, these sisters ain’t loyal. Always screwing around with the other’s man. It’s a wonder they’re still talking.
If you thought the exposition was over, think again. An old woman lives at the family house, Olga, who was Laura and Leigh’s nanny when they were young. A young girl, Jennifer, also lives at the house. She calls Olga ‘Grandma’ and Laura and Leigh ‘auntie.’ I’m not sure who she thinks her mother is. It’s clear that Laura is Jennifer’s mother but they are keeping it secret for reasons that might be spider-related. Also, someone is being kept prisoner in the attic. I’ll come back to that later.
Side note 2: It’s really annoying that Laura and Leigh both have names beginning with L. I’m still struggling to remember who is who. It’s the number one sin of screenwriting in my opinion.
Higbie And Flaps
Next, we meet Mark Higbie, Private Investigator, who happened to be at the pub when Frank was killed. Leigh asks him to find Frank’s killer, and he says ‘How can I turn you down?’ in a mildly sleazy manner, but I don’t care because he’s got such a great voice. It’s so cool he could narrate movie trailers in the 80s.
Higbie’s assistant is one of those brash and annoying but kinda cute New York gals called Flaps (really). They bicker a lot, but she seems to genuinely care about him, and I wanted them to end up together, but that’s not how movies work. Leigh is an absolute bombshell who will almost certainly need rescuing by Higbie at some point, and you know how that ends.
The only hope for Higbie and Flaps (you’ve got to admit that’s got a ring to it) is if Leigh turns out to be the spider.
Side note 3: I was disappointed when they didn’t reveal why she was called ‘Flaps.’ I mean…I think I know, but I would like it confirmed.
Side note 4: Flaps is involved in a subplot with the coach from Grease, who plays a bail bondsman. Their businesses share a building and they fight over how hot the thermostat should be. Hilarity doesn’t ensue.
Side note 5: I just wanted to type ‘Flaps’ one more time.
Cunty And Rags
The cop in charge of the investigation, Lieutenant Conti (pronounced very clearly by Leigh as ‘Cunty’), threatens Higbie to not get involved with the case, like every police Lieutenant in the movies ever. But Higbie doesn’t listen, he’s a maverick, he’s gonna get to the bottom of this. He finds out that there have been three other deaths with the same injuries as Frank, and Cunty seems to be covering them up.
Another cop, Rags (that’s his name, the capital R was the giveaway), already believes the killer is a giant spider. Instead of just telling Higbie this, he sends him on a quest to find a guy who witnessed one of the murders and gets him to tell him.
The witness is an ex-boxer called Popeye (these character names are so awesome I’m going to have to forgive the Laura/Leigh misstep). Popeye runs a gymnastics studio and looks like an old-school strongman who wears leotards and picks up barbells with one hand. He’s bald and has a twirly moustache and everything. Anyway, it’s totally irrelevant, but I liked it.
Higbie then asks Leigh out on a date because he could ‘really use a few laughs,’ even though her fiancé just died. She accepts – who could turn down an offer like that? – and they end up double dating with Laura and her sexual predator fiancé, Geoff.
This guy won’t take no for an answer. When he asks Leigh to dance, he literally says ‘I’m not going to take no for an answer.’ Later that night, he turns up at Leigh’s place after Higbie drops her off and definitely doesn’t take no for an answer. I mean, she doesn’t exactly say no, but even if she had, he wouldn’t have taken it for an answer. You see the problem here?
Geoff’s Dead, Baby…Geoff’s Dead.
The good news is that Geoff turns up dead in the next scene, drained of blood, covered in spider web, you know the drill.
Even Cunty knows the score but he wants to keep covering it up. The reason for this is not because he is involved in some way, but because he doesn’t know how to tell the world that all the evidence points to a giant spider being on the loose.
It’s a fair point when you think about it. Just what the hell do you do with that information? It’s a career killer. Everyone will laugh at him or call him crazy, so he’d rather pin the killings on Leigh or Laura.
I mean, he’s not wrong about that either. All their men keep dying. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the common denominator. It’s likely that one of them likes to dress up in a black wig, fake a German accent for whatever reason and call herself Valerie Steffan.
Higbie then visits ‘the Indian’ (that’s what they call him), who rescued Leigh and Laura as babies. It’s another pointless side quest to fill time like the Popeye treasure hunt. That one took six minutes of screen time. This one is ten minutes, and the only new information we get is that the spider’s weakness is fire. You know, like every other living organism on planet earth. I guess we know how it ends now.
The next scene is a full minute of Higbie arriving back home, taking his coat off, turning on the lights and dicking about with the coffee pot in his kitchen, for no reason. He throws his milk away. One whole minute of this, which is an eternity in screen time. Flaps arrives just in time to jump-scare the movie back to life.
The Big Reveal
Flaps thinks Leigh is Valerie Steffan/Giant Spider. Higbie doesn’t want to believe it because he wants to fuck her without dying (I’m reading between the lines here – he doesn’t actually say that).
Higbie calls Laura, who confirms that Leigh was the one bitten by spiders as a baby. He doesn’t consider that this is precisely what a split personality spider-woman would say. Also, it isn’t clear why he didn’t call Leigh first. Anyway, Leigh is coming over to Laura’s house that night (Laura is staying at the family home) and did I mention that it’s the last night of the full moon?
After telling Laura to leave the house, Higbie and Flaps (I smell a spin-off detective series coming on) set out for the Lockridge family home. It takes them AGES to arrive, fourteen minutes of screen time to be exact, so they miss most of the third act. It’s a shame for them because it is batshit crazy.
Firstly, the big reveal. Laura is packing a suitcase to leave, but starts experiencing first-person hallucinations/flashbacks of her murdering people. She’s rolling around on the bed screaming, wearing a dressing gown that even your gran would say was frumpy. Then we cut to a hottie in tiny bra and panties.
It’s the same woman! Well, it’s Valerie Steffan, who is Laura in drag, who is a Giant Spider in drag. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, I can’t quite believe that at the age of *CENSORED* I am still being fooled by this. A director dresses their actress in frumpy clothes, Deirdre Barlow glasses and a ponytail and we’re not meant to notice how hot she is. And it works! It’s ‘plain Jane super brain’ all over again (a couple of references to look up in that paragraph for non-Brits– sorry about all the extra work).
Valerie dons a black wig and we get a glimpse of her dodgy hourglass birthmark, which looks more like a designer bush that’s crept way too high up her stomach. It looks like she’s smuggling caterpillars.
The Big Reunion
Leigh arrives at the house but cannot find Laura, so she snoops around and instead finds her mother, alive, in the attic. Valerie Steffan arrives and explains everything.
It turns out that their mother didn’t die in Rome 12 years earlier; she just witnessed Laura’s first spider kill, and it drove her insane. Laura has kept her locked away for over a decade, presumably so she doesn’t give the game away. But who would believe an insane woman’s rantings about seeing her daughter turn into a giant spider? It seems low risk, and much less work, to just let her talk.
Instead, Laura engaged in what must have been a CIA-level cover-up to keep her mother’s lack of death from Leigh. How did she manage to convince her that their mother was dead without a body? How did she fly a crazy woman back to America from Italy without Leigh or the authorities knowing? Did she stow her in the overhead luggage?
Once back home, she would have had to stage a fake funeral and enlist Olga’s help to keep her hidden. That must have been an awkward conversation, but it looks like it went well, seeing as Olga is a full collaborator and knows all about Laura’s alter-ego.
But there’s more. Laura’s first kill happened after Leigh stole her Italian boyfriend (I told you these sisters ain’t loyal). Laura managed to win him back but then he raped her and got her pregnant. This awakened her latent spider and she killed him, in full view of her mother. Laura then gave birth to Jennifer and palmed her off onto Olga as well!
The weirdest part is that Leigh doesn’t seem to know that Laura is Jennifer’s mother. Laura keeps her distance because she doesn’t want Jennifer knowing about her spider fetish, which is fair enough. But Leigh doesn’t know about that, so why would she participate in the lie?
The only conclusion I can draw is that Leigh is genuinely stupid and didn’t know about her sister’s pregnancy either. Overall, it was quite the conspiracy.
Mum Takes A Tumble
Where was I? Oh yes, I was talking about Leigh’s emotional reunion with her mother after all those years, thinking she was dead. Sad, but also joyous at the same time. Could this be the happy ending they both deserv-
Oh wait, she jumped out the window.
I shouldn’t laugh, but I laughed. Valerie turns into a spider and mum picks a window and leaves. I would too, to be fair. We are treated to an impressive shot of a stunt double falling three storeys, bouncing off roofs on the way down.
The filmmakers must have been so proud of it that the entire fall is shown in slow motion, but that just gives us more time to notice that it’s a large man in a dress and a bad wig who looks like Michael Myers if Michael Myers’ mask was his actual face.
Leigh gets cocooned and taken back to the spider’s lair in an old boathouse. Olga arrives to put an end to Laura but gets killed (never be a collaborator, kids). It is left to the late-arriving Higbie to rescue Leigh, burn the spider and save the day.
Flaps gives him a good luck kiss, and it comes across as a sad final effort to show that she loves him, but the look on her face tells you that she already knows the gesture is futile. A damsel needs rescuing, and in doing so Higbie will prove himself as worthy of her affections. She, in turn will feel grateful and will want to repay him in some way. You know how it goes.
End Credits Weirdness
So Higbie burns the spider, rescues Leigh, and gets to spend the epilogue at her beach house. Jennifer is living with Leigh now, which leads to a final sting as she plays on the beach. The camera zooms in on the twelve-year-old girl’s midriff as she stands in her bikini, and we see a full-screen close-up of the hourglass-shaped birthmark on her stomach.
The ENTIRE CREDITS SEQUENCE then plays out over a freeze-frame of the shot. It’s quite a tight shot so it’s not super weird, but it’s definitely not cool (and Hell no, I’m not posting a picture of it).
Epilogue: (of the review, not the film). I was wondering why Laura would call herself Valerie Steffan. It’s a very specific name that I figured must have an origin, but it is never explained. Then I realised that it could be an acronym. Here’s what I came up with:
- Valerie: Venomous arachnid Laura eats rapist Italian ex.
- Steffan: Spider that every fiancé fears at night.
Not bad, even if I do say so myself. Rating: 6 spider legs out of 8.