Although it doesn't have a particularly strong ending, The Black Belly of the Tarantula has some prime suspense to offer. It is a prime example of what you get when you mix the stylishness and darkness from a Giallo with a bit of grimy Poliziotteschi police procedure. The kills are very sadistic, as the victims are first paralysed, then killed with a knife, while awake and still able to sense what is happening…unable to resist. For some reason, this seems worse to me than most of the gory kills that are so prevalent in this genre.
Anyway, The Black Belly of the Tarantula is well worth a watch…especially for Giallo fans.
Review by BronsonBlockedParent2022-05-29T05:53:34Z— updated 2023-01-14T18:48:18Z
The Black Belly of the Tarantula is is a fairly boring giallo. The title alludes to wasps that paralyze insects, then lay eggs inside them - which is real, by the way; we even get to see stock footage of this in the movie - even though they call it a tarantula, it's actually just a spider.
A real, coked-up tarantula does make an appearance in the same scene, but it's only to push a pointless plot thread that a victim was involved with drugs.
I didn't like this movie, but I'll give it credit for giving us a real detective as the lead character, instead of some schmo playing gumshoe. We do briefly have Paolo playing vigilante, but that idiot gets thrown off a building, resulting in a very unintentionally-funny death.
Pros: 1. There's a nice amount of nudity in the movie. 2. The killer stops to pet a kitty in one scene.
Cons: 1. The kills are far too tame. 2. There are moments of forced humor that just fall flat. 3. The characters are one-dimensional.
This movie, like others with similar bad writing, needs to have a doctor explain the killer's motive to us, at the end - because it would make zero sense otherwise.