Monday, August 05, 2019

Movie review - "The Spider Woman Strikes Back" (1946) *1/2

Disappointing horror film despite the presence of Gale Sondegaard and Rondo Hatton. The Spider Woman was great in Sherlock Holmes but Universal struggled to use her in this spin off - it was hard to get a fix on her character. You know she's going to be bad because she's Sondegaard.

Her plan's convoluted - performing experiments to create a death serum that kills cattle and.. drives people off their land??? Boring! The character's not driven by anything interesting, like say love which drove Dracula or loneliness which drove Frankenstein's monster.

Brenda Joyce and her male co star Kirby Grant are dull (why not give him a proper job? Why not combine him with the Dept of Agriculture guy?). So is the subplot about unexplained cattle deaths. I mean you don't watch a horror film to be about reclaiming land.

Lazy climax with Sondegaard setting fire to the house. This was just crap.

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