Reviews & Ratings for
The Spider Woman Strikes Back More at IMDbPro »

1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Good but nothing special, 25 January 2009

Author: dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

In name only sequel to the film Sherlock Holmes movie Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman. The plot here has a young woman staying at a house with a strange woman named Zenobia (played by Gale Sondergaard from the Holmes film)as a house keeper/companion. Unknown to the young woman is the fact that Zenobia is draining her of some blood every night to feed to her plants. Standard but somewhat awkward thriller isn't bad, but isn't anything special. The film feels like a program horror film where they just sort of threw elements together and hoped that they stuck. Is it a horror film or a pseudo-Holmes film? Its never really clear and the film suffers for it. The producers even went so far as to put another connection to the Holmes series by having Rondo Hatton as a mute Handyman, but he isn't given much to do other then look menacing.. Its good but nothing special.

2 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
The Spider Woman strikes back...in a film that has nothing to do with the first Spider Woman film., 17 June 2009

Author: The_Void from Beverley Hills, England

This film is not as well known as the earlier Universal flick The Spider Woman; and that's because this one isn't a part of the Sherlock Holmes series, isn't nearly as good, and actually has nothing at all to do with spiders. The plot focuses on a young girl that goes to become a nurse in a blind woman's house. However, it turns out that the woman is not really blind and is actually taking blood from the girl in order to feed it to her plant, which ties in with some plot about murdering cows. Aside from the fact that this film features Gale Sondergaard, I really don't see any similarity to The Spider Woman at all - she doesn't even reprise her role! The name, therefore, is just a cash-in on the success of the original. It's the sort of trick I'd expect from Italian films of the seventies and eighties, but not something often done by Universal studios! You can't blame them, though, as the film really does have no other selling points. It's a poor and rather dull tale. Nothing of interest happens for the entire duration, and I'm not surprised that it only runs for about fifty eight minutes. Overall, there's really no reason to track this film down - Sherlock Holmes fans will not be impressed!

4 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Decent, 28 February 2008
Author: Michael_Elliott from Louisville, KY

Spider Woman Strikes Back, The (1946)

** (out of 4)

Rare and forgotten Universal horror film has a nurse going to a creepy house to take care of a blind woman. The blind woman actually has her sight and is poisoning cows so that she can run the farmers off. Sound dumb? It's actually very dumb and the title is quite misleading, although I guess they were trying to cash in on the Sherlock Holmes film. This is the type of film where you keep waiting for something to happen but it never does. The performances are all rather dry as is the direction but it does move at a nice pace making the 57-minutes go by very fast. Jack Pierce is credited as the makeup artist yet there's no makeup in the film!

3 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Not what it appears to be., 22 April 2003

Author: lugosi2002us from Pennsylvania, USA

This movie promises to be a sequel to the Sherlock Holmes movie, "The Spider Woman". It isn't. True, Gale Sondergard is the villainess and "Spider Woman" is in the title, but that's where any similarity ends. It's not a horrible film, but it's disappointing to tease the viewer with the promise of something that isn't there.

Rondo Hatton plays a mute, deformed servant. Too bad that he was so exploited.

I do wish Universal had made this a true sequel to the Holmes film. It would have been more interesting.

2 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK (Arthur Lubin, 1946) *1/2, 28 April 2006

Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

Despite the title and the presence of two of Sherlock Holmes' most formidable nemesis (Gale Sondergaard and Rondo Hatton - hilariously named Zenobia and Mario respectively!), this is one lame film which has nothing whatsoever to do with one of the better Universal Sherlock Holmes entries. As a matter of fact, the story is weak, the premise far-fetched, the resolution predictable and the treatment uninspired! Besides, the fiery climax is clumsily executed and Hatton's fidgeting...er...sign language eventually gets on one's nerves! It's fair to say, then, that director Lubin fared much better with the other two 'horror' films he made for the studio - BLACK Friday (1940) and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1943), even if these weren't completely satisfying either...

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