THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK (1946)

I recently caught up with this rare Universal chiller from the mid-forties. I've been curious about THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK (1946) for years and not simply because of its exploitative title. In fact, the best reason to see this difficult to find movie is lead actress Gale Sondergaard. She's an amazing cinematic presence both beautiful and alluring with a voice like creamy, melted butter. She can be both soothing and scary, often in the same scene or the same line of dialog! Although she is mostly forgotten today her talent was well acknowledged by Hollywood during her career. The same year she made this film she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for her role in ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM (1946) but her career was crippled during the period of the Red Scare when she was lumped in with her Black Listed husband Herbert Bieberman. She returned to the screen in the late 1960’s but she was relegated mostly to television work.  

This film has been very difficult to see for years but eventually my podcasting partner Troy and I will have to cover this as a part of our series of shows on the 1940’s Universal horror output. At the pace we’re going through those film it will years before we get to THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK but I wanted to go ahead and check it out as soon as I could. The only way I could find see this difficult to see film was a rather dodgy print on YouTube. This is far from the best way to see the movie as it seems to have been taken from a battered 16 mm print and to be at least one or two generations removed from that source material as well. If there is a better option for watching this one I’d be happy to know.

Everyone should know that, regardless of the title, this is movie is not a sequel to the earlier Universal Sherlock Holmes film THE SPIDER WOMAN (1943). I have to say that I really enjoyed the film but it was clearly trimmed down to its short running time from a longer length. I suspect the movie was meant to be closer to 70 minutes than to the 60-minute mark that it barely squeaks under. One of the telltales of this is that the narrative leaps forward rather awkwardly at least twice as the story unfolds. The most obvious of these being the incredibly awkward moment were suddenly all cards are on the table between the antagonistic characters in the movie with no previous discussion as to what was happening. 

Also, I think that the print available to see on YouTube might be a little short of even the 59-minute official running time! It clocks in at around 57 minutes and 50 seconds. Some of this shortening is most certainly from the loss of a few feet of footage here in there from some rather obvious spices and print damage. Coupled with the editing down of the film from its initial supposed length it makes for a less then smooth viewing experience at times. That's not to say that I didn't like the movie (because I did) but it was clearly compromised on its initial release and that is a shame.

There's so much to like in this creepy little film and I'm going to encourage people to seek it out. Of course, I would love for Universal to make it easier to see this movie as I don't think it has even been released on VHS much less any digital format. This is a film that I think would benefit very much from the restoration and shine necessary for a high-definition release.