Fri 19 Jun 2015
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE SPIDER (1945).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[7] Comments
THE SPIDER. Fox, 1945. Richard Conte, Faye Marlowe, Kurt Kreuger, Martin Kosleck, Mantan Moreland, Ann Savage. Written by Lowell Brentano, Anthony Coldeway, Irving Cumings Jr., Scott Darling, Jo Eisinger, Fulton Oursler and Ben Simkhovich. Directed by Robert D. Webb.
No, I never heard of it either, but when I saw it on a cheap DVD at Cinevent and glommed that cast, I had to go for it.
The Spider isn’t all that memorable, but it does offer a fine bunch of thespians trouping cheerfully through the banality. Conte is a sharp, wise-cracking PI, Faye Marlowe the mysterious female client who (as usual) is not what she seems, Mantan Moreland (in a bigger-than-usual part at a major studio) plays the comic-relief assistant, as only he can, and Ann Savage, that bitch-queen of the B-movies, is ideally cast as a vicious and venal double-crosser.
There’s also a bit of effective New Orleans atmosphere (everyone seems to be sweating) and a neat red-herring turn by Martin Kosleck, but I’m afraid that’s where the film runs out of redeeming qualities.
Spider is strictly a noir-by-rote, with perfunctory shadows, routine femmes fatales, a suave obvious killer, standard-issue PI and the thick cops typical of B-movies.
There’s also a shadowy figure who seems to have nothing to do all day but follow Richard Conte around and kill whoever he talks to. Director Webb tries hard to make it look sinister, but the more we see of this dark presence, the more it looks like The Phantom Blot.
Story? Well, Faye Marlowe has information that her missing sister may have been murdered, but the mysterious woman who holds the evidence wants her to have Richard Conte pick it up for her — don’t bother asking why, because the writers apparently never thought much about it. In time-honored tradition, the person with the vital clue dies before our hero can get it, leading to a chase around New Orleans (and the Fox backlot) with Marlowe, Conte and the shadowy killer constantly jockeying for position.
Okay, The Spider isn’t a terrible film, and if you’re in the mood it can even be mildly entertaining. But the chief mystery for me was how it took eight (count’em) eight writers to stamp out such a boiler-plate story.
June 19th, 2015 at 6:04 am
Richard Conte was certainly an ideal actor to play a hardboiled private eye in a noir mystery; too bad this one doesn’t sound like a good representative of the genre.
June 19th, 2015 at 10:53 am
I don’t try to watch movies like this expecting too much, and I’m usually not disappointed. I think I’d enjoy this one. It is one I’d never heard of before.
June 19th, 2015 at 10:55 am
From IMDb, the full slate of writing credits:
Lowell Brentano … (play)
Anthony Coldeway … (uncredited)
Irving Cummings Jr. … (additional dialogue)
Scott Darling … (as W. Scott Darling)
Jo Eisinger
Fulton Oursler … (play) (as Charles Fulton Oursler)
Ben Simkhovitch … (uncredited)
June 19th, 2015 at 11:56 am
Let me see if I’ve got the breakdown:
Fulton Oursler and Lowell Brentano wrote the original play;
Jo Eisinger and W. Scott Darling got the screenplay credit, with Irving Cummings getting an “additional dialogue” nod;
Coldeway and Simkovich were Fox’s “script doctors” working anonymously.
In the old studio days, it was entirely likely that the screenwriters worked entirely separately, unless they were a regular team; if so, you’ve probably got five separate writers all hacking at the same story, maybe in different directions.
No doubt, the original playwrights (Brentano and Oursler, the only ones who actually worked together on the thing) never had any say in anything once they sold the rights.
Anyway, that’s Old Hollywood … which, come to think of it, isn’t that much different from New Hollywood …
June 19th, 2015 at 12:03 pm
Mike, That’s the way I had it mapped out, too. I wonder whether if you looked into it, you’d find that most movies, now and then, had just about as many hands in the broth.
June 19th, 2015 at 4:38 pm
I liked the only film seen here directed by Robert D. Webb: a Western called “The Proud Ones” (1956).
An impression: Webb is utterly obscure and has rarely if ever been studied or written about.
June 20th, 2015 at 5:13 pm
Max Brand has his name on very few films, yet he was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood as he as the best screen doctor in the business, his office at MGM always crowded with other writers. Scott Fitzgerald was another screen doctor as was Hammett. William Goldman had few credits pre BUTCH CASSIDY … but was the hottest screen doctor of his day long before BUTCH.
With a film like this the plethora of writers usually means they could not get a filmable script and everything was scrapped for the last script but the Guild insisted everyone get credit even if not a word they wrote hit the screen.