At the start of The Spider Woman, London is being swept by a rash of mysterious deaths, nicknamed the "Pyjama Suicides," in which wealthy men are leaping from buildings or putting bullets in their heads without bothering to change out of their sleepwear. When word of the crimes reaches Holmes (on a fishing trip in Scotland), he doesn't for a minute consider them suicides. He suspects there is something more to the crimes: "something monstrous and horrible," he tells Watson (Nigel Bruce), "something that drives these poor fellows to their so-called suicides. And when you drive a man to suicide, that's murder."
Watson urges him to confront the mystery, but Holmes begs off due to illness, and promptly collapses and falls into a raging river. Only for a few minutes is Holmes really presumed dead, for he soon reveals to his devoted assistant that he staged his death as a prelude to infiltrating the mystery of the Pyjama Suicides. From the beginning, he believes a woman to be the source of the crimes, "because the method, whatever it is, is peculiarly subtle and cruel -- feline, not canine."
"Poppycock!" responds the cynical Inspector Lestrade, "Feline, canine, quinine! When a bloke does himself in, that's suicide!"
Holmes's instincts are, of course, correct, and the trail leads to a swank gambling club (The Urban Casino) and the "female Moriarty" at its core: Adrea Spedding (Gale Sondergaard). Posing as a wealthy Indian, Rajnee Singh, Holmes loses his bankroll and exhibits signs of suicidal behavior. Ms. Spedding intervenes and tells him about a life insurance scam that will allow him to regain at least a portion of his fortune.
Holmes goes along with the plan, but Spedding quickly realizes Singh's true identity and begins to orchestrate his demise, first with a venomous spider, then with poisonous gas. Eventually, he is captured by Spedding's henchmen and tied behind a moving target at a shooting gallery -- the very gallery at which Watson is picking up a rifle and taking aim.
Although the opening credits say Bertram Millhauser's screenplay is "based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," The Spider Woman is actually an amalgam of ingredients from Holmes's adventures. Doyle enthusiasts have cited no less than five sources of inspiration for the eclectic script: the novel The Sign of the Four, and the short stories "The Adventures of the Dying Detective," "The Adventure of the Final Problem," "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot," and "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." The film was shot under the rather vague working title Sherlock Holmes in Peril.
Continuing the trend that had begun with Universal's Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), the filmmakers removed Holmes from the fog-shrouded London with which he was commonly associated. The degree to which they wanted to get rid of the old Holmes is revealed in the opening reel of the film, in which Holmes is killed off (or so the viewer is led to believe) and Watson promptly gives away Holmes's personal effects, including the signature Calabash pipe. When Holmes is resurrected, he is very much a modern man and never dons his deerstalker cap and Inverness cape.
The Sherlock Holmes that appears in The Spider Woman is very firmly rooted in the 1940s -- not just by the fashions and styles of automobiles, but in the climactic shooting gallery scene, in which the targets are effigies of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.
Even the studio seemed to want to distance itself from Holmes, omitting his name from the film's title (though The Spider Woman continues to be commonly referred to as Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman.
Rathbone and Bruce took a break during production to make a cameo appearance in the comedy Crazy House (1943, starring Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson). In the comedy bit, word is spreading like wildfire across the studio lot about the comedy duo's arrival. When Watson rushes in to inform Holmes (on one of the Spider Woman sets), the sleuth cuts him off. "I know, Watson. Olsen and Johnson are coming." How does he know? "I am Sherlock Holmes," he replies, "I know everything."
The Spider Woman opened to positive reviews for a series film of its ilk. "[The] series is becoming more and more Doyle-ish with each successive edition," wrote Variety, "Current production is an exciting and well worked-out adventure in the career of Sherlock Holmes which brings him as near death as [the] sleuth ever faced."
The Hollywood Reporter proclaimed, "It comes complete with a sterling set of characters and thrills guaranteed to satisfy the most demanding of the Baker Street regulars, and enough excitement to keep the ordinary movie-goer glued to his seat until the villain is snared and Holmes fades into a crowd, spilling philosophy, in search of a new adventure."
In the film's most bizarre twist, the deadly spider (species Lycosa carnivora) is unleashed in Holmes's bedroom by a carnival pygmy who has crawled through the ventilation ducts. Uncredited in the role of "Obongo from the Congo, the Prancing Pygmy" was Angelo Rossitto in blackface. A diminutive character actor best known as one of the vengeance-seeking carnival acts in Tod Browning's Freaks (1932), Rossitto was also familiar to the denizens of Hollywood, where he operated a newsstand for three decades.
Rathbone continued playing the modernized Holmes in six more Universal productions, while Sondergaard reprised her role just once, in the non-Holmes film The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946).
Director: Roy William Neill
Producer: Roy William Neill
Screenplay: Bertram Millhauser
Based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Cinematography: Charles Van Enger
Production Design: John B. Goodman and Martin Obzina
Music: Hans J. Salter
Cast: Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes), Nigel Bruce (Dr. Watson), Gale Sondergaard (Andrea Spedding), Dennis Hoey (Lestrade), Vernon Downing (Norman Locke), Arthur Hohl (Gilflower), Alec Craig (Radlik), Mary Gordon (Mrs. Hudson).
BW-63m.
by Bret Wood
