The Spider Woman Strikes Back is a 1946 horror film starring Gale Sondergaard. Even though the film has a similar title and the same actor in Sondergaard, the film is not a sequel to the Sherlock Holmes film, The Spider Woman. But it’s just as much fun!
Jean Kingsley (Brenda Joyce, Tarzan and the Amazons, The Enchanted Forest) goes to a small rural town to serve as a caretaker for a blind woman, Zenobia Dollard (Gale Sondergaard, Anthony Adverse, The Letter) who is the town’s richest person. Jean discovers that her sinister employer, with help from her servant Mario (the legendary Rondo Hatton, The Brute Man) used the blood of her former caretakers to create a poisons serum when mixed with spider venom. Jean’s blood is now being drained so Zenobia can feed her plants. Yes, we have a film with plants that drink blood! The purpose of this poisonous concoction is to create plant blossoms that kill off cattle on farms. The cattle are being killed to clear the land of farmers so that Zenobia can buy the land and have life as it once was for her. She doesn’t think much of farmers apparently. Hal Wentley(Kirby Grant, Ghost Catchers) is the hero who must save Jean from captivity whose life is in danger once she knows the truth about Zenobia!
While nowhere near the class of the Universal horrors from the 1940s, The Spider Woman Strikes Back is a harmless 59 minutes of a minor but still fun horror film. The cast hands in solid performances. Rondo Hatton is basically the same type of creepy character that he plays in just about every horror-related film that he was in. He also was in a lot of uncredited roles in non-horror films, such as The Ox-Bow Incident, In Old Chicago and Safe in Hell but was typecast playing creepy, murderous characters, particularly in his later films due to his looks.
The Spider Woman Strikes back receives a Blu-ray from Kino Lorber sporting a new 2K master. While there are some issues with softness and haziness throughout, most likely due to the source materials, I did find the image overall pleasing with decent whites, dark black levels, and excellent shadow detail, especially scenes of Rondo Hatton’s eerie face with director Arthur Lubin’s use of lighting for the film. He makes Rondo look as menacing as ever! The scenery has a lot of detail to it despite not being the sharpest of transfers. I still enjoyed the video presentation a great deal.
For the audio, Kino uses English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 for their Blu-ray and the lossless audio to me was excellent with crisp dialogue throughout. The score by Milton Rosen and action sounds are a bit more aggressive. I did not notice any age-related issues such as popping or hissing. English subtitles are available for this package.
This release has more extras than most of Kino’s current releases of films from the thirties and forties, which is a good thing. There is an audio commentary by film historians Tom Weaver and David Schecter who with great enthusiasm, provide a wealth of information of The Spider Woman Strikes Back. If you’ve heard Tom Weaver’s and David Schecter’s tracks on other releases, then you know what to expect.
This Blu-ray also has a ten-minute documentary called Mistress of Menace and Murder: Making The Spider Woman Strikes Back. This features interviews with Historian/Author C. Courtney Joyner, Make-Up Effects Artist Rick Baker, Filmmaker Fred Olen Ray, and others. This takes another look at this movie, Rondo Hatton’s horror character and Gale Sondergaard.
The other extra features theatrical trailers for The Spider Woman Strikes Back, The Mad Doctor, The Spiral Staircase, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, The Lodger and The Undying Monster.
While not the greatest horror film out there, The Spider Woman Strikes Back will certainly entertain fans of this genre. This Blu-ray release has solid audio and video quality and is packed with some cool extras to make this release highly recommended!
The Spider Woman Strikes Back
Director- Arthur Lubin
Cast- Gale Sondergaard. Brenda Joyce, Rondo Hatton
Country of Origin- US
Distributor – Kino Lorber
Number of Discs – 1
Reviewed by – David Steigman
Date –12/11/2021