The Memory Hole Cinematic Crusades: Black Belly of the Tarantula

Crusade 1 Movie 3 – Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971)

Language: English audio dub with English subtitles

Runtime: 1h 29m

First mannequin sighting: 24:12

Mannequin Count: 26

Mannequin Boob Count: 21

Meatball Marinara Salad Count: Still 0 :( :(

MPM (Mannequins Per Minute): 0.26 (pathetic)

WARNING: There is real and in-depth insect-on-insect murder in this film as well as the killing of insects by humans.

This movie is about detectives tracking down a killer who uses excessively long acupuncture needles to paralyze their victims before murdering them. This is much more of a detective movie than anything.

This movie begins with a woman getting a massage, softcore porn style during the credits. It takes forever because… Italy.

It is suggested that she fucks the blind masseuse off camera and the estranged husband catches her via a private eye photo. He beats the crap out of her while she denies the photo is real.

Later that night, a prowler shows up at the house and murders her, but not before stabbing her with a very long needle. The scream she emits when the very long needle goes into her neck is surprisingly horrific and the gore is pretty good for a 70s movie.

If I end up liking this movie, I’m gonna be mad. (Don’t worry friends, I didn’t).

The killer wears these strange semi-translucent gloves that give the hands beneath the appearance of being plastic.

Maybe the killer is a fucking mannequin?

Detectives arrive and processes the murder scene. They question the husband after they find the photo. He denies knowing about it. Clearly, they’re setting up the red herring of the husband being the killer.

But if that were the case, this movie would be absolute trash, which it is, but not for this reason.

Speaking of trash, ever just throw out an entire whole body in one garbage bag? Our killer has. Hefty Hefty Cinch Sak.

A bunch of boilerplate detective bullshit ensues while we are presented with several candidates that may potentially be the killer. Like you eventually have so many options to choose from, it may as well be the McMurder extra value menu.

In the only situation involving mannequins, a woman is being stalked by the killer. For some reason she’s in a room in her own house with a bunch of mannequins and she becomes disoriented by her own mannequins and falls all over them and they ‘attack’ by falling on her.

They really held back on the mannequins this time, waiting an excessively long time (for a Giallo) to show them. One naked female mannequin falls on her and from another angle it is shown to be the killer fully dressed, with a knife, attacking her just off camera, which again gives me hope that the killer is actually a mannequin.

The film is not without its charms. There is an hilarious (to me) scene where a guy falls to his death from a rooftop. It’s clearly a dummy and the overdubbed scream is completely over the top.

I may or may not have watched this scene several times.

This movie also contains the cringiest piece of human interaction I’ve ever seen in any movie, possibly ever.

At a spa, a woman is swimming in the pool and the waiter brings her cigarettes to her. He holds the pack out to her with one sticking out and she repeatedly jumps to try and get it in her mouth like a spastic dolphin. She fails and they fall into the water, ruined and the waiter just leaves.

In the final murder attempt, the now clearly human killer has the detective lured to the spa while they go to murder his wife. During this, the killer ruins their own element of surprise.

How, you might ask?

Well they simply must stop and pet the potential victim’s cat first, causing the cat to meow a bunch and alert the victim. This killer is inept and I’m amazed they got away with more than one murder. The killer still ends up paralyzing her. The detective shows up and they struggle.

The detective beats the shit out of the killer, the wife ends up being fine and making a full recovery. Credits roll.

Fuck this movie.

Fuck this movie for being incredibly convoluted. This is the kind of movie that carefully lays a series of potential killers at your feet and then the killer ends up being a random piece of shit that was unrelated to anything except that he was a jealous incel.

But mostly, fuck this movie for screwing us all on the mannequin count. I’m deducting an entire 1 mannequin from the score for not even making mannequins the primary focus of the movie and giving me false hope that a mannequin was the killer.

And last but not least, - if you enjoyed this review at all, please consider joining the Terror Talk Patreon. It’s less than one of your fancy vanilla bullshit coffees per month with the side benefit that you get to talk and watch movies with the usual suspects on Discord while helping keep independent creators working on the things they love and that you enjoy. 

Drum Roll: This was NOT the movie I was looking for.

Rating: 1 out of 5 mannequins.

And Now For What I Learned

1.      Telephones in 70’s Italy were fucking weird.

2.      Claiming to your husband that the photo of you with your lover is photoshopped predates photoshop.

3.      If you’re examining forensic evidence photos, it’s acceptable to use a machine to blow up a photo and zoom in on the dead woman’s breasts.

4.      Don’t keep a room full of mannequins in your house. Nothing good will ever come of it. After they tire of you playing dress-up, eventually, they will come for you.

5.      Strangling a mannequin doesn’t prevent you from being stabbed from behind with a long needle.

6.      When it’s not satisfying your fetish to put mannequins in your movie, also put pictures of mannequins in your movie. That will sort you right out.

7.      Make sure you sell your existing furniture before you buy new furniture, so that you’re left without any for a while.

8.      If you want to smuggle cocaine, just ship it in the box with a tarantula. Customs will just let it pass. Also, the spider likes it because it gets high AF on the plane.

9.      When you can’t catch the suspect on foot, a random person will just run them over for you in their sportscar.

10. Don’t put your victim’s entire body into one trash bag. The trash man won’t be able to lift it and it will be discovered immediately.

Notable Quotables

Mr. Zani: ‘You’re no nymphomaniac. Whore is much more like it.’

 Officer: ‘Don’t forget me. Don’t forget the catapult.’

Yours In Mannequin Uprising,

Ice

If you want to suggest a movie for me to review, drop an email at terrortalkpodcast@gmail.com