The Spider Woman Strikes Back 1946 Written by Eric Taylor and directed by Arthur Lubin. Part of Universal's monster collection. I watched the Lino Lorber Blu-ray. Gale Sondergaard played the Spider Woman in the 1943 Sherlock Homes film The Spider Woman. This film isn't a sequel to that film but Universal hoped they could get sequels to this. They never happened.
Gale is the town's richest woman and she's got a lab in her basement where she robs younger woman of their blood to create a serum. Brenda Joyce plays a young woman who takes the job of Gale's secretary. Rondo Hatton plays Gale's man servant. It takes a while for Brenda to cotton on to her predicament but she manages to get away at the end.
Sadly it's barely average. Some say it helped kill off Universal's horror line. Universal didn't even put it out on Blu-ray. Lubin claims he hated the film, he didn't want to direct it, he was forced by his Universal contract. A lot of this background is covered by Tom Weaver and David Schecter on the audio commentary. That was almost more interesting than the movie. There's a nice making of featurette on the making of the movie.
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