Way Misunderstood Film

I've said it before and will say it again: In it's original unedited Italian & French versions, WEB OF THE SPIDER is a masterpiece of Gothic Italian horror. Sure, it doesn't come close to being as experimental & important of a film as DANSE MACABRE, but on it's own and when viewed in it's original form widescreen it's as fine an example of the genre as you can find. What happened is that the filmmakers deliberately set about making a film that would exist at different lengths in different markets, and the truncated version prepared for English speaking audiences is not representative of the ultimate vision of the film. The surviving home video version readily available on cheapo DVDs are also a fullscreen pan and scan TV print shrunken down to 16mm and transferred from a print that had all of the color nearly rotted out of it by neglect & was edited for TV broadcast: It's a shadow of the movie that Margheriti had in mind, and a crummy presentation of the film he ended up with.

When people give this film poor marks what they are usually doing is giving the home video version poor marks, which is understandable: After you've seen the full length Italian or French versions shown in the widescreen ratio the English version is more or less unwatchable. Which isn't to excuse the weaknesses of the film, it's nowhere near as successful as DANSE MACABRE, but it's also nowhere near as lousy as it's detractors may suggest, and unfair (!!) that these judgments were made based on what is easily one of the worst home video transfers ever executed for English speaking audiences.