“When you drive a man to suicide, that’s murder.”
Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) is on holiday, in Scotland, with Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce). Back in London mysterious deaths are happening. They are being called the pajama suicides. Well known VIPs go to bed and sometime during the night rise up and commit suicide. To give him free rein on investigating the case Holmes fakes his own death. He believes that a woman, that Holmes calls a female Moriarty, is responsible. The men who died were all wealthy gamblers. Holmes secretly returns from the dead, and with Watson’s help, goes under cover as “Rajni Singh”, a one time wealthy Indian officer. He then shows up in London's gaming clubs.
Soon he is approached by Adrea Spedding (Gale Sondergaard). Her modus operandi is to find men short on money. She persuades them to pawn their life insurance policies. She then has them killed thereby collecting on the policies. Holmes’ plan is to set himself up as her next target. Holmes discovers that she uses a deadly spider, Lycosa Carnivora, in her scheme. The venom causes such excruciating pain that the victims kill themselves to end the pain. Holmes amasses other clues. A suitcase with air holes in it. A footprint of a child near an air ventilator. Investigating further he learns that a man named Matthew Ordway is well versed in the deadly spider.
So begins a cat and mouse game between Adrea Spedding and Sherlock Holmes
“The Spider Woman” was released in 1943 and was directed by Roy William Neill. This is the seventh of fourteen Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Although the story is an original one, it takes elements from at least five actual Doyle stories. Sondergaard is the first woman villain of the series.
The spider referenced in the movie is called the Lycosa Carnivora. There is no such species. The Lycosae are a genuine family of spiders, more commonly known as “wolf spiders”, but the specific Lycosa Carnivora does not exist. The ‘pygmy’ is actually Angelo Rositto, a white little person wearing blackface.
The creepiest part of the movie for me what the little kid “Larry” that Spedding brought to Holmes’ flat.
The death of Sherlock Holmes: Even though his Sherlock Holmes stories were successful, Doyle felt they were keeping him from more important work. As time went on Conan Doyle found himself more closely identified with Sherlock Holmes than with anything else he wrote. “I weary of his name,” he told his mother. He decided that Holmes must die. The question was how? Doyle wanted a dramatic finish for the great Sherlock Holmes. In 1893 he visited Reichenbach Falls in the northern Swiss Alps. The magnificent falls gave him the perfect place to stage Holmes’ death. “The Adventure of the Final Problem” was published in December of 1893 in The Strand magazine. People were so upset that more than twenty thousand of them cancelled their subscription to the magazine.