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:

Revealing mistakes: Holmes studies a 'low, rambling structure' in a photo to determine if the scene is really India. The picture appears as dots as it should under magnification--except a flag, on which is written 'Sun Valley.' The flag is clearly inked on.

Quotes:

Sherlock Holmes: [Describibg Andrea Spedding as she is being arrested] A remarkable woman! Audacious and deadly as one of her own spiders!

Movie Connections:

Spin off The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946)

Holmes in modern day

When Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson moved from 20th Century Fox to Universal, they left the Victorian era and entered wartime Europe. This film, "The Spider Woman," is based on the Conan Doyle story "The Speckled Band." Holmes fakes his death in order to investigate some diabolical murders that appear to look like suicides, hoping to force the criminals out into the open. He disguises himself as a Mr. Singh and appears at a gambling club, where all of the victims had played. There he meets his adversary (Gale Sondergaard) and, as he tells Watson, "the game's afoot."

This is an excellent entry into the series. The big finale takes place at a carnival shooting game where the targets are Mussolini, Lenin and Hitler, so the writers got their propaganda in. Rathbone is a great Holmes, and the character of Watson as essayed by Bruce comes off quite well. The way the part was written in the serial often made Watson seem like a buffoon, and Holmes was at times unattractively condescending to him. That seems absent here.

Very good.