Sherlock Holmes in The Spider Woman

Delightful cat-and-mouse exchanges between Rathbone and Sondergaard and a great World War II propaganda ending in a shooting gallery highlight this fun mystery-chiller.

Worth watching for the tête-à-tête involving Mr Holmes and Andrea Spedding, in which they both revel in calling each other's bluff, and Dr Watson mistaking Adam Gilflower as Sherlock in disguise (even I was tricked for a moment!). One feels that, if given enough time, Andrea and Sherlock could become the best of frenemies; but, alas, the Spider Woman cannot help but attempt to murder Mr Holmes in an a seemingly ridiculous but ultimately cunning way.

As Holmes movies go, this one has one of the more outrageously implausible plots, but it's also an unusually action-packed and energetic one and I enjoyed it partly due to it's rampant absurdities. The carnival-set climax (another big plus) has the single dumbest plan to kill Holmes in the whole series.

I'm surprised by the amount of trouble Sherlock Holmes gets in with The Spider Woman (1943). Almost none of his genius plans works out, and comes across "what was the point"?! Made for a unique challenge for the famed detective, but I'm not sure I appreciated it when it made so little sense. Still a ton of fun as always with these Basil Rathbone Holmes.

At last a cool one. Goldfinger of the series.

One of the most fun outings I've seen from the Rathbone Homles series. It's got humor, suspense, a great villain unfortunately the climax is too drawn out and relies too much on chance. A solid effort non the less.

One of the better Rathbone Sherlock films.

just spot on for what i hope for when i put one of these old sherlock holmes films on. rathbone is great as always, bruce's watson is still comic relief but he's given a chance to show a tiny bit of emotion and actually helps solve the mystery. the showdown at the end was great. sondergaard was a great foil for rathbone and the best of the holmes villains i've seen after watching about 5 or 6 of these so far.

Pygmies Watson, Pygmies

First solid Rathbone Holmes I've seen. There it isn't much of a whodunnit, but a 'howdshedoit?'. It's a pretty goofy answer, but the film makes the titular Spider Woman so cunning that it's irresistible to watch. The finale in the shooting gallery is fantastic.

Gale is so hot in this.

Although the 'mystery' is solved fairly early the rest of the film places us squarely in Holme's shoes as the fun of it becomes playing The Game itself. Highly recommended and perhaps too often overlooked.

A curious Sherlock Holmes film that borrows from several of Conan Doyle's other short stories and mashes them together to form a new one. It's entertaining enough, and only an hour long, but it's fairly forgettable really. Sondegaard makes for a good villain, and the climax at the funfair is pretty good, but nothing else stands out as particularly notable or interesting.

Ho-hum entry in the series.

Lively episode in the modernized series, which packs in several suspenseful episodes borrowed from a variety of Conan Doyle originals.

Zestful, superior Holmes.

Amusing but what makes this movie is Sondergaard. She does a great job of stealing every scene she's in and makes a real foil to Sherlock Holmes. The mystery is relatively creative, but everything else is not very good.

While not necessarily the best Rathbone/Bruce movie, it's certainly one of the best written. A very witty film indeed!

A hodge-podge of original material and elements from several classic Doyle stories. Short on mystery, it's more of a cat-and-mouse game, playing out much like a 007 story, or an episode of the campy "Batman" show. The wartime flavor to the climax is an interesting touch. This time around Watson isn't as much of a buffoon as in other installments in the series, though the scene with the entymologist is painful.