This is the last Dutch language film Paul Verhoeven made before going on to make mainstream Hollywood films "Basic Instinct," "Robocop," and "Total Recall," among others. He sets the stage by opening this story with a black widow spider catching prey in her web before we meet Gerard Reve, an annoying self-centered writer with a morbid imagination. Gerard has been invited to be the guest speaker at a Literary Club meeting in sea-side town an hour or so from Amsterdam. Verhoeven lets us have glimpses of how Gerard's imagination twists reality. Asked if writers are a bit close to insanity he admits when he reads the newspaper "and it says 'boom' I read 'doom,' when it says 'flood' I read 'blood,' when it says 'red' I see 'dead.'" When he tells a story enough times he begins to believe it; "I lie the truth." He accepts an offer to be the overnight guest of the Club treasurer, a beautiful wealthy salon owner. As he gets to know her and learns her husband has died, he begins to imagine she is 'a black widow.' Is this his more of his reality twist or is she a murderess? This is a psychological drama and in recounting which of these old films have stuck in my memory, I figured out is my favorite gender. Looking at his body of work it is seems to be Paul Verhoeven's too, and he is a master in making us question our own understanding of reality. It's a nice change of pace from the usual Hollywood fare. I saw it in 1983 and it is a film that "stuck."
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