BY HANK REINEKE
When Kino Lorber announced in April 2021 that a Blu-ray
of Universal’s The Spider Woman Strikes
Back (1946) was scheduled for issue in autumn I was, to put it mildly,
over-joyed. It’s not that The Spider Woman Strikes Back is a great
film – it most certainly is not – but it’s long been a missing entry on home
video, a film of great interest to collectors of Golden Age horror. The studio has chosen, time and again, to
re-master and re-offer the classic and iconic “Universal Monsters†in nearly
every conceivable home video format and creative packaging. Too often these releases would be at the
expense of the studios less famous genre titles as the still unissued Ghost Catchers (1944), and The Cat Creeps (1946).
In the course of this disc’s ten-minute featurette, Mistress of Menace and Murder: The Making of
The Spider Woman Strikes Back, author C. Courtney Joyner notes the film was
essentially the “last gasp†of Universal’s low-budget B-unit. Or as one commentator puts it, an opportunity
to “burn out the contracts†of actors still on the lot. The studio’s A-list franchise ghouls of the
1930s – Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy – had since been reduced to appearances
in B programmers during the years 1940-1945.
Seeking to freshen things up, the studio engaged in a
“desperate attempt… to create another horror franchise.†Their first attempt came with their Inner Sanctum series, each supernatural
mystery featuring Lon Chaney Jr. in a starring role. The studio also cynically brought aboard
non-actor Rondo Hatton, a real life victim of acromegaly, as a hulking brute in
such productions as The Pearl of Death,
The Jungle Captive, House of Horrors and The Brute Man. Uni-contracted actress Gale Sondergaard had
made a splash as the icy and sinister nemesis of Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock
Holmes in the studio’s The Spider Woman
(1944) and many thought a return of the villainess was worth considering.
In March of 1945, Hollywood newspapers were reporting
that Universal had indeed contracted Sondergaard to appear in a proposed series
of Spider Woman films. The Los Angeles Times predicted the “Spider
Woman is expected to become as much of a fixture as those other horror
protagonists, Dracula, the Monster of Frankenstein, and the newly created
Creeper.†The Los Angeles Daily News noted one difference:
Sondergaard’s Spider Woman “will not resort to grotesque makeup, but will
accomplish her diabolical deeds as a charming sophisticate.â€
Technically speaking the Spider Woman that Strikes
Back is not the same Spider Woman who tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes a
year earlier. Sondergaard is no longer
playing the role of villainess Adrea Spedding. She’s now Zenobia Dollard, a blind woman of wealth who lives alone in a
creepy mansion house with her frightening mute servant Mario (Rondo
Hatton). Dollard, we soon learn, appears
to have a lot of trouble keeping her string of nursemaids in employ. They all tend to disappear a short time
following their hiring.
The latest nursemaid sent to tend to Dollard’s needs is
the lovely and charming Jean Kingsley (Brenda Joyce). Kingsley begins to suspect that the strange
goings-on at the manor house might not only have something to do with strange
goings-on in town but with the mysterious onset of her own illness. This being a Universal horror picture, it
isn’t long before Kingsley stumbles upon a secret brick-wall basement
laboratory outfitted with a steamy greenhouse. It’s here that Dollard extracts poisonous venom from a vampire-like
plant brought “from the jungles of Central America.†One has to assume that Roger Corman’s far more
famous and spoofy Little Shop of Horrors
was at least, in part, suggested by the scenario of The Spider Woman Strikes Back.
Though early reports suggested Ford Beebe (Night Monster (1942) and The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1943) would
serve as associate producer and director of The
Spider Woman Strikes Back, his name was soon scrubbed. Arthur Lubin was signed to helm the feature, directing
from a script and original story by Eric Taylor (The Phantom of the Opera (1943) and Son of Dracula (1943). Lubin
had been knocking about the film industry since the early 30s, having recently
scored with a number of successful Abbott and Costello comedies and the recent
Claude Rain’s version of the Phantom of
the Opera. He had also, not coincidentally,
just finished working with Sondergaard on Universal’s Night in Paradise.
Though all the makings of a good chiller are present here,
there’s simply something off about The Spider Woman Strikes Back. The film seems longer than its fifty-nine minute
running time (never a good sign). The
actors and actresses are blameless, doing what they can with the material in
this mostly thrill-less thriller. Sondergaard is at her devilish best working and plotting amongst her
poisonous botanicals, but there’s evidence that several key sequences that would
have enhanced the storyline were clipped from the final print.
The trade ads for the film would ballyhoo the Spider
Woman as the “Mistress of Menace†and “Queen of a 1000 Crawling Killers.†One theater owner in Louisiana practically
dared patrons to attend: “We cannot accept responsibility for teeth
broken from chattering, curls lost when hair stands on end, chilled spines,
jitters, nightmares or any other conditions brought about†from seeing The
Spider Woman Strikes Back. Sondergaard would later dismiss the film as a lesser effort, appalled
that Universal had exploited Rondo Hatton’s tragic disfigurement as a box
office draw. When she first encountered Hatton
on set, she thought his elongated skull and swollen facial features were the machinations
of Jack Pierce’s makeup department.
It’s a tragedy that Sondergaard wouldn’t find much work
in Hollywood as the 1940s drew to a close. Her absence from movie screens was not due to performances, but politics. The actress found herself named as a
Communist sympathizer in the pages of the career-wrecking Red Channels. Though
Sondergaard was a politically active liberal, her biggest “crime†was one of
association. Her husband was director
Herbert J. Biberman, a progressive writer-director-producer who later was
imprisoned as one of the notorious “Hollywood Ten.â€
In March of 1951, Sondergaard too found herself in
Washington D.C., summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities
Committee. The actress invoked the Fifth
Amendment, refusing to cooperate or disclose or disparage the names of friends
and colleagues. She defiantly interrupted one line of Congressional questioning
by asking, “May I say something about [this committee’s] branding as subversive
every progressive or liberal organization? I find that shocking.â€
Sondergaard would pay a price for her unwillingness to
cooperate with the inquisitors. She was
effectively put her out of work in Hollywood for two decades, with even the
Screen Actors Guild cowering and refusing to lend support. In 1956 she returned to Washington, telling
the committee that the absence of acting offers post 1949 “has not been
accidental. I think rather that it might
be construed as blacklisting.†The
actress would disappear from film work for a twenty-years following her
appearance in the MGM drama East Side,
West Side (1949).
She tried to salvage her career with roles in regional
theater, but here too Sondergaard found obstacles. No sooner than her appearance in a
“Plays-in-the-Park†production would be announced, that a campaign to cancel her
participation would follow. Though she
would return to work in 1969, mostly on television dramas, Sondergaard, now age
seventy, found roles and opportunities scarce. Sondergaard would pass away in 1985, age 86. The Los
Angeles Times would note in her obituary Sondergaard was the first actress
to be awarded an Academy Award for a supporting role. The paper would also describe the actress, ironically,
as “Hollywood’s reigning female villain†of the 1940s.
This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu ray edition of The Spider Woman Strikes back is
presented here in a 1920x1080p with an aspect ratio of 1.37:1, dts sound, and
removable English subtitles. The set
also includes the aforementioned featurette Mistress
of Menace and Murder: the Making of The Spider Woman Strike Back which
features comments and back stories from the like of actor-archivist Bob Burns,
cult filmmaker Fred Olen Ray, special effects wiz Rick Baker and
writer-documentarian Ted Newsom. The set
also features the audio commentaries of film historians Tom Weaver and David Schecter. This release rounds out nicely with the
film’s original theatrical trailer as well as a sampling of titles from Kino’s
catalog of 1940s horror and mysteries: The
Mad Doctor, The Spiral Staircase, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, The Lodger and
The Undying Monster.
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