The Spider Woman (1944) - film review

Just as London is being plagued by a series of pyjama suicides, Sherlock Holmes falls into a river and drowns whilst holidaying in Scotland.  Dr Watson can hardly believe his eyes when, a few days later, Holmes returns to his lodgings in Baker Street.  The sleuth reveals that he staged his death to flush out the individual who is behind the fake suicides.   He deduces that the culprit is a woman who preys on vulnerable men.  Disguising himself as an Indian prince, Holmes lures the murderer, Adrea Spedding, and discovers her modus operandi.  She persuades men who are short of money to pawn their life insurance policies, which her associates cash in after their hastily arranged deaths.  But just how does Miss Spedding drive her victims to suicide?  To answer that question, Holmes must gamble his life...

For fans of the world famous fictional detective, one of the joys of the Sherlock Holmes films made by Universal Pictures in the 1940s is watching out for the references to the original Conan Doyle stories.  The Spider Woman is a particular delight since it has a cornucopia of references, ranging from The Sign of Four to The Speckled Band.  It even manages to lift Holmes’s supposed death from The Final Problem, alas without the addition of Professor Moriarty.  This bulimic pillaging of past stories may appear gratuitous but the borrowed ideas are so skilfully woven together that you might easily think the story was entirely original.

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are on fine form as the master sleuth and his amiable sidekick, although both are pretty well eclipsed by Gale Sondergaard, who makes an unforgettable villainess – cold, beautiful, seductive and far, far deadlier than the male.  Sondergaard made such an impact that a subsequent film she starred in was titled The Spider Woman Strikes Back to capitalise on this fact, even though it had absolutely no connection with this, or indeed any, Sherlock Holmes film.

The Spider Woman has plenty of lighter moments, which range from the astoundingly erudite (i.e. the Mendax Flagranti joke) to the childishly burlesque (e.g. Watson about to rip the facial hair off an inoffensive professor whom he has mistaken for a disguised Holmes).  Whilst this is all good fun, it is actually the many excursions into darkness that are more memorable – Holmes being menaced by a gigantic spider, Holmes and Watson being gassed by a deadly sweet wrapper, and, best of all, the suspenseful denouement in the shooting gallery (which looks as if it might have been directed by Alfred Hitchock).   With its mix of humour, intrigue and thrilling set pieces, to say nothing of its atmospheric photography and design, The Spider Woman is easily one of the best entries in the series.

© James Travers 2009

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