The Spider Woman (1944)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Roy William Neill

Writers:

Bertram Millhauser (screenplay)
Arthur Conan Doyle (story)

Release Date:

21 January 1944 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

Here is crawling death sent to Sherlock Holmes by the most fiendish killer of all...

Plot:

Sherlock Holmes has to solve a mystery about a series of suicides of known gamblers.

Plot Keywords:

Suicide | Sherlock Holmes | Spider | Entomologist | Shooting Gallery

Cast

Basil Rathbone	...	Sherlock Holmes
Nigel Bruce	...	Doctor Watson
Gale Sondergaard	...	Adrea Spedding
Dennis Hoey	...	Lestrade
Vernon Downing	...	Norman Locke
Alec Craig	...	Radlik
Arthur Hohl	...	Gilflower
Mary Gordon	...	Mrs. Hudson
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Sylvia Andrew	...	(scenes deleted)
Wilson Benge	...	Unspecified Clerk (unconfirmed)
Marie De Becker	...	Charwoman (scenes deleted)
John Rogers	...	Unspecified Clerk (unconfirmed)
Donald Stuart	...	Unidentified Character [AFI catalog name: Artie] (unconfirmed)

Also Known As:

Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman (USA) (review title)
The Spider Woman (UK)

Runtime:

63 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (certificate #9470)

Company:

Universal Pictures

Trivia:

The seventh of fourteen films based on Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson.

Goofs:

Factual errors: When the impostor posing as Matthew Ordway knocks a terrarium of black widow spiders onto the floor and Watson reaches for the gun among them, Holmes shouts "Stop it, Watson! Those insects are deadly!" Spiders are not insects, and Holmes, having just revealed Ordway to be an impostor on the basis of the man's lack of knowledge about spiders, should know this.

Quotes:

Sherlock Holmes: I'm sorry, Watson. The pleasures of the chase are no longer for me. I'm through with crime forever.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Fade to Black (1980)

Kiss of "The Spider Woman"

One of the best in Universal's Sherlock Holmes series, The Spider Woman dispenses, for the most part, with the overt WWII subject matter (which was also reasonably sparse in the previous outing, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death). The climax does make use of the image of Hitler and other Axis figures, but this was (aside from a brief mention in Dressed to Kill) the final direct war reference in the series. This bears mentioning because the film benefits strongly from the general lack of wartime subterfuge. Rather than battling Nazi agents, Rathbone's Sherlock is embroiled in a truly Holmesian mystery, surrounding several apparent suicides...which Holmes, naturally (and correctly), deduces to be homicides.

Though the opening credits proclaim "Based on a Story by Arthur Conan Doyle," The Spider Woman adapts (quite freely) major incidents from no less than five of Conan Doyle's tales...The Sign of Four, The Speckled Band, The Final Problem, The Empty House (also referenced in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon), and The Devil's Foot. False advertising, maybe...but the script (courtesy of Bertram Millhauser) manages to weave them all into a framework that makes for a fun and intriguing mystery.

Other assets include the performances, which are better than in some of the earlier films (though Rathbone and Bruce never disappointed), and the more sure-handed guidance of regular directer Roy William Neill...by this time, a vast improvement over the direction in his first Holmes outing, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon. It's also appropriate (if somewhat superficial) to note that Holmes's hairstyle, which changed for the better in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, thankfully does not revert in this one (nor at any time for the duration of the series) to the shambles that it was in the first three films.

All in all, one of the best made, and most entertaining, films in the Universal series. It doesn't quite rise to the heights of The Scarlet Claw, but it's easily one of the best.