The Spider Woman Strikes Back *** (1946, Gale Sondergaard, Brenda Joyce, Rondo Hatton, Milburn Stone, Kirby Grant, Hobart Cavanaugh) – Classic Movie Review 3446

This 1946 in-name-only sequel film sees Gale Sondergaard re-creating her popular role from 1944’s The Spider Woman. But this horror thriller follow-up has no relation to the original, with Sondergaard playing a completely different character. 

Director Arthur Lubin’s 1946 in name-only sequel film The Spider Woman Strikes Back sees Gale Sondergaard re-creating her popular role from 1944’s The Spider Woman (aka Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman). But there the resemblance ends. This horror thriller follow-up has no relation to The Spider Woman, with Sondergaard playing a completely different character, though it is a similar role.

In The Spider Woman, Sondergaard’s character is named Adrea Spedding but this time it is Zenobia Dollard.

Brenda Joyce co-stars as Jean Kingsley, who soon pays for her foolishness in asking the apparently blind spooky old Zenobia Dollard (Sondergaard) for a job in a remote country house. She goes to work as live-in caretaker for the woman. First she’s nearly scared out of her wits by deaf-mute Mario the Monster Man (Rondo Hatton). Then she is drugged so that Sondergaard’s Zenobia can experiment on her insects at night. Zenobia drains some blood from her every night to feed her strange plants.

There is an eerie atmosphere and a few shocks though no real surprises in Eric Taylor’s exotic original screenplay. The film remains amusing though, thanks to the menacing Sondergaard, the Universal studio’s careful production, and Arthur Lubin’s painstaking direction.

Also in the cast are Milburn Stone, Kirby Grant, Hobart Cavanaugh, Norman Leavitt, Tom Daly and Lois Austin.

It has a running time of just 59 minutes. It was released on March 22, 1946.

It was intended by Universal to be the first in a series of films featuring The Spider Woman, like their Dracula and Frankenstein series, and was the second time they spun off a horror series from a character in their Sherlock Holmes movies, the first being The Creeper (also Rondo Hatton) from The Pearl of Death in the 1946 horror film House of Horrors, released on 22 February 1946.

The cast are Gale Sondergaard as Zenobia Dollard, Brenda Joyce as Jean Kingsley, Kirby Grant as Hal Wentley, Milburn Stone as Mr Moore, Rondo Hatton as Mario the Monster Man, Hobart Cavanaugh as Bill Stapleton, Tom Daly as Sam Julian, Norman Leavitt as Tom, Guy Beach as Cal, and Horace Murphy as Angry Older Rancher.

Ruth Robinson, Adda Gleason, Lois Austin, and Eula Guy had their roles cut from the release.

Brenda Joyce (February 25, 1917 – July 4, 2009) went on to be Tarzan’s mate Jane in five movies, starting with Tarzan and the Amazons (1945) and ending with Tarzan’s Magic Fountain (1949), after which she quit films.

Gale Sondergaard was married to director Herbert Biberman, and supported him when he was accused of communism and named as one of the Hollywood Ten in the early 1950s. She moved with Biberman to New York City and worked in theatre.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3446

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