Beware the Black Widow (1968)

An absolute obscurity, Beware the Black Widow (1968) makes for a befuddling watch - while he title might imply that it is some kind of crime or horror movie, the credits immediately roll out to an awful theme song that instead suggests that it is actually a comedy.  But this immediate upending of viewer expectation is the hallmark of this ultra low-budget production - its black and white photography suggests film noir, (not to mention its hard bitten reporter protagonists), yet most of the 'action' takes place in burlesque bars with plenty of topless strippers on hand, suggesting sexploitation.  The latter elements also mean that, every so often, everything stops for another burlesque number - but it isn't a musical either.  It's a weird combination that never really satisfies and certainly never really settles into anything really coherent: the crime elements simply aren't exciting or creepy enough, the nudity is tame and distinctly non-erotic, the musical numbers awful and the overall execution flat and uninvolving, with a wooden cast stumbling through their stilted dialogue against a background of cheap and poorly lit sets.  

It isn't as if the scenario doesn't have potential - two reporters try to get to the bottom of a series of murders in New York which have seen Mafia soldiers stabbed by an assailant dressed in traditional Italian widows' garb - but it is so poorly executed.  The script's structure, involving a lot of flashbacks and a lot of characters recapitulating plot points and lots of repetitive scenes and dialogue, ensure that that film never picks up any pace, let alone is able to build up any atmosphere and tension.  By the time it reaches its anticlimactic finale in an unconvincing Chinatown shop run by an unconvincing Chinaman, it is hard to believe that only seventy two minutes have gone by.  Yet, like many such movies, it exerts a strange, appaled fascination whilst it is playing - it seems to challenge the viewer to believe that it really can be this bad.  In terms of style, it most reminded me of early sixties 'nudie' films like House on Bare Mountain or the Olga series, but a lot less fun than the former and, despite its best efforts, far less sleazy than the latter.  The most surprising thing about Beware the Black Widow is that it was made as late as 1968, when even low budget smut was generally far more explicit and far better staged.  It feels like a relic from at least a decade earlier with its sparse sets and lifeless direction.  Director Larry Crane, (who was also responsible for the awful theme song), put out a number of similar low budget sex movies 1967-69.  Several, like this one, were written by William M Berger.  Neither seems to have any subsequent screen credits.