This film about a black spider that symbolizes evil works well when focusing on the old 19th-century story by Jeremias Gotthelf but tends to stumble when framing that story with a modern tale of drug addicts and their problems (the black spider in another form). In a weak plot line, a group of drug addicts are doing without because of a crooked dealer, and in desperation they break into a chemical plant to get their hands on what they need, later escaping to temporary shelter in a farmhouse. While one woman trips out, she hallucinates the story of the black spider, set in the Emmental valley of Switzerland in the Middle Ages. At that time, a beautiful farmer's wife makes a pact with the devil: if he helps the men survive the excessive toil imposed by a tyrannical knight, she will give him a newborn baby. When the time comes to collect the child, the wife has the baby baptized right after birth, and the devil is foiled. In revenge, he sends a black spider into the village to spread pestilence and death -- until a brave soul manages to trap the spider and lock it away. This is the first time the black spider story has been filmed; there were two operas based on the story in 1936 (Heinrich Sutermeister) and 1949 (Willy Burkhard).
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