| The Spider Returns | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | James W. Horne |
| Produced by | Larry Darmour |
| Written by | Morgan Cox Lawrence Taylor John Cutting Harry L. Fraser Jesse Duffy George H. Plympton Screenplay and history based on the pulp magazine character created by Norvell Page |
| Starring | Warren Hull Mary Ainslee Dave O'Brien Joseph W. Girard Kenne Duncan Corbet Harris |
| Music by | Lee Zahler |
| Cinematography | James S. Brown Jr. |
| Editing by | Dwight Caldwell Earl Turner |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | May 9, 1941 |
| Running time | 15 chapters 300 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Spider Returns (1941) is a Columbia movie serial based on the pulp magazine character The Spider. It was the fourteenth of the 57 serials released by Columbia and a sequel to its 1938 serial The Spider's Web. The first episode runs 32 minutes; the rest are about 17 minutes each.
Contents |
Amateur criminologist Richard Wentworth was formerly the masked vigilante, The Spider. Wentworth brings The Spider out of retirement to help his friend, police commissioner Kirk (Kirkpatrick in the pulps), fight a dangerous maniac. This new enemy is The Gargoyle, a mysterious crime lord who threatens America with sabotage and wholesale murder in an effort to wreck national defense.
Columbia used The Spider's Web as a basic template for many of its early serials: the daring hero and his assistants adopt disguises to battle an exotic, secretive villain and his lawless gang. In The Spider Returns, The Gargoyle wears robes which would not look out of place on Flash Gordon's Ming the Merciless.
James W. Horne, who had co-directed the first Spider serial, was in complete charge of the sequel. By this time Horne was filling his serials with tongue-in-cheek melodramatics, ludicrous fight scenes (in which the hero fights six men and wins), and ridiculous-looking machines. For this reason, action fans often dismiss The Spider Returns as an inferior serial, but it is one of Horne's best, and a worthy sequel. The Spider does take on half a dozen henchmen at a time, but doesn't always come off best. Despite an unfortunately silly TV-camera contraption (with flailing robotic arms), Horne keeps the action fairly straight until the last chapter, when he inserts some obvious humor (two henchmen, exhausted from fistfighting, haphazardly swing at each other and collapse).
The action-filled screenplay employs a typical serial formula of fistfights, gun battles, explosions, and car chases, not forgetting secret weapons, death traps, and hairbreadth escapes as The Gargoyle tries to get hold of some secret plans. The Spider serials are unique in that The Spider is also sought by the police with the same vigor that he is sought by criminals. The one real difference between this and the first serial is that the police know Wentworth is Blinky McQuade and work with him a number of times.
Dave O'Brien, who had performed The Spider's acrobatic stunts in The Spider's Web, now has a full-fledged second lead as Wentworth's assistant. This appearance led to a starring role in Columbia's serial production, Captain Midnight. Only three of the main participants in The Spider's Web -- Warren Hull, Kenne Duncan, and Dave O'Brien—are on hand for the sequel.
Source:[1]
| Preceded by White Eagle (1941) |
Columbia Serial The Spider Returns (1941) |
Succeeded by The Iron Claw (1941) |