Spider Woman
                                                                                                                    
Director: Roy William Neill
Year: 1943
Rating: 7.5
This is the seventh in the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes films and is in my opinion perhaps the best so far. At only 63-minutes it clearly lands in B film territory, but it really should have been longer. There was so much more room for the duel to the death between Holmes and the Spider Woman. An even match with her perhaps a few points ahead till the anti-climatic ending. She deserved better. They really needed to jazz that ending up. But all that comes before that is great writing from Bertram Millhauser who also wrote the scripts for Sherlock Holmes in Washington, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, The Pearl of Death and The Woman in Green. He takes a few ideas from various Doyle's stories and incorporates them into his script. There are a number of great scenes; some comical, others suspenseful. Making the villain a ruthless and charming female is brilliant. Holmes pays complements to her by comparing her favorably to Moriarty. Doyle had Irene Adler, but the Spider Woman is evil while Adler was just doing what a woman must to survive.



Men are killing themselves on a regular basis. All in locked rooms by jumping to their deaths. The English call them the Pyjama Suicides, pajama with a Y. Holmes and Watson are up in Scotland fishing the rapids when Holmes falls in and is swept away and is declared dead. Taken of course from his fall into the Reichenbach Falls in the story, The Final Problem. He has of course faked his death, but it sets up a wonderful scene at Baker Street when Watson and Lestrade are lamenting his death and then their reaction when Holmes reveals that he is still alive. He feels certain that the suicides are connected and behind it must be a woman because only a woman could be so cunning. "Because the method, whatever it is, is particularly subtle and cruel. Feline, not canine.".



He sets himself to be her next victim by disguising himself as an Indian army officer on the verge of bankruptcy. Into his trap purrs Adrea Spedding. She is played by Gale Sondergaard who made a career in film by playing the villainess. There was something dark and forbidding about her. This is probably her most famous film role though before entering film, she had been very successful in the theater. Her husband, director Herbert Biberman was one of the infamous Hollywood Ten who went to jail and she was blacklisted. She tries killing Holmes three times, all nicely staged but the one with the Renfield like child chasing a fly is really creepy. The child actor is Teddy Infuhr, who had bit parts in dozens of films. One other actor of interest is Angelo Rossitto who plays the pygmy. A little shy of three feet high, he had a lengthy career from Freaks to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. When he didn't have an acting gig, he ran a newsstand.