Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946)
IMDb meta-data is 59 minutes runtime, rated 6.0 by 160 cinematizens.
Genre: Horror.
Verdict: Olé!
Spider Woman is blind and decrepit and needs a companion to supplement her faithful servant Rondo Hatton who is a deaf mute. In a small town in cattle country she employs a series of young lady companions who read to her and then are required to drink milk before bedtime. Ah huh, but what about that milk, asked the fraternity brothers for whom it is a strange drink? The latest Companion finds Spider Woman at once both charming and formidable. Indeed. She is as welcoming as a crevice in a glacier, smooth, slippery, and deep. Once upon a time the Family Spiders owned the land to the horizon but time and tide has seen most of it sold.
Now cattle are dying and ranchers are selling and moving. Doc Adams comes to investigate and sits on the patio to do so.
Companion is edgy and soon enough…. Spoiler! She realises Spider Woman is not what she seems. Or rather is exactly what she seems: cold, ruthless, demented, Republican, blood thirsty, and crazy. But who would believe newcomer Companion when Spider Woman has spent years charming the simple locals. Companion frets. Beau comes to the rescue, despite the fact that Companion had rebuffed Beau’s interest earlier.
It seems Spider Woman, neither blind nor decrepit, dopes the milk, and then takes a blood donation from the sleeping Companion(s), until they are drained. (Pedants note that there is nary a word about where the corpses go.) She does this not just because she is mean, though she is, but she is also using the blood to create a mad-cow virus to drive off the local ranchers while through a shelf-company she buys their land for a pittance to recover the lost Spider Family Web Estate. She is starting to sound like some cabinet ministers I read about for whom public office is a private asset. Spider-Man is a boy scout compared to Spider Woman!
Sly, manipulative, dangerous, cunning, and sinister are the words that best describe the roles of Gale Sondergaard. She played Spider Woman in three disconnected film. It does not really matter. She dominates any movie with poise, enunciation, and steel. She had a career on the Broadway stage and only reluctantly gave that up to move to California when her husband got a job there. Once there her stage work prompted offers for films and off she went. In my book she is one of the all-time greats of the silver screen.
Rondo Hatton was a victim of poison gas in World War I trenches that led to the deformities that ruined and shortened his life. His brooding silence is pitch perfect. His life and career are described in more detail elsewhere on this blog. Search and ye may find.
Director Arthur Lublin kept things moving with few memorable scenes as when the ostensibly blind Spider Woman feeds her plants.