Inspired by Lovecraft On the reception of the work of the outstanding horror author of the XX century in world cinema, you can write a serious article. The famous writer was rediscovered and appreciated only decades after his death, and the films based on his works brought millions to their creators, spawning a number of franchises, the most famous of which is Reanimator.
However, this was the case in the United States. In Europe, however, Lovecraft was more often inspired, not directly filmed. His pantheon of ancient gods was the inspiration for Italian horror classic Lucio Fulci in such films as City of the Living Dead and The Seventh Gate of Hell. Here's Gianfranco Janyi's "Spider Maze" inspired by Lovecraft. For some, it will certainly seem boring, because the plot dynamics are replaced by a dark atmosphere of a terrible mystery that hangs over Budapest, where an American professor arrives to find out the cause of the mysterious disappearance of his colleague, who discovered the sacred book of an ancient cult.
The motives of the famous writer’s prose are too noticeable to be ignored or explained by chance. This is the main character, whether a historian or a linguist, whose whole life is subordinated to science, as well as the image of evil, which is already initially present in the world, being older than all religions and philosophies. One might say that Howard Lovecraft was somewhat Gnostic, for he was hardly convinced that a good god created the world. Rather, our universe is the product of Cthulhu or a smaller deity from his pantheon. So the artistic space of the little-known Italian director Gianfranco Janya gradually reveals its secrets, changing the picture of the world of the young scientist. He realizes that the usual reality is only a screen, and ancient beliefs are not a myth at all, but the terrible truth that people do not notice until then.
Howard Lovecraft was an absolute pessimist. His heroes were unable to cope with secret knowledge, and ancient secrets, like a terrible spider from the childhood memories of the main character, deprived them of their minds.
Interestingly, Gianfranco Jani literally reproduces an image from Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece Through Dark Glass. The main character is not only afraid of spiders, unable to overcome his childhood fear, but also gets involved in a bloody cult where obsessed people worship an unknown deity, appearing as a huge spider. The director was constrained by the budget, because the scenes of transformations are made not too qualitatively. On the other hand, special effects are already the most vulnerable part of any old film, as the technological progress does not stand still, and even the blockbusters of the past will seem naive from this point of view. For Janya, "Spider Labyrinth" in general was the debut made by him at a very mature age. Once Jani was an assistant to Italian masters Mauro Bolognini and Alberto Negrina, after which he found himself in the production of video clips. In the US, clipmakers are often attracted to the creation of blockbusters, which are easiest to make entertaining due to the clip aesthetics. And Jani prefers long shots to short ones, and creates an atmosphere of fear due to the detective plot and meek monitoring of the camera for the fate of his hero.
By placing the character in empty architectural spaces, the director achieves a sense of rock that haunts the hero. As a contemporary of the sunset of the Jallo, Jani skillfully chooses from the wreckage of the genre those elements that can make his film atmospheric. Therefore, a mysterious killer is introduced into the plot, who follows the hero on his heels, depriving everyone who can tell him anything about the cult. Moreover, the director tries to make the murder scenes aesthetic, partly inspired by the dark romanticism of Dario Argento, the most famous apologist of the “yellow” film.
Of course, something about Gianfranco Janya’s film seems inevitably secondary, as it echoes others’ styles and ideas to the detriment of one’s own. On the other hand, if at this time the whole Italian horror had not sunk into oblivion, unable to withstand competition with the American trendsetter, then perhaps Jani would have become another master of the terrible genre, instead of the departed Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci. But it so happened that the director had to go to television, where he worked all the 1990s, only at the end of the XX century, shooting his second and so far the last film.
Nevertheless, despite some secondary artistic techniques, the debut of Gianfranco Janya turned out to be quite interesting, which is worth watching primarily for fans of the American classic of terrible prose. It just so happened that European directors, Fulci, Janyi, and a number of others, better captured the Gnostic and eschatological undertones of the brilliant author, while American directors were more often content with purely external reproduction of Lovecraftian horrors.
7 out of 10