Richard Conte stars in The Spider (1945), a noir-ish, by-the-numbers murder mystery from 20th Century Fox that also features Faye Marlowe as the quasi-femme
fatale, and teases us with a brief appearance by noir-legend, Ann Savage.
Chris Conlon (Conte) gets caught in the middle of a set up by his dodgy partner, Flo Cain (Savage), to sell info to the not-who-she-appears-to-be ‘Judith Smith’ (Marlowe) proving that her long missing sister was murdered. When Chris goes to pick up the proof, Savage ends up dead, and Chris, of course, goes on the run to find the real killer with the police close on his trail. Poor Chris has the typical noir hero’s luck in that every person he finds who could potentially help him gets murdered within minutes of his visit.
Given that the film runs just a quick 63 minutes, there aren’t quite enough characters to keep us guessing as to who the real killer is. Could it actually be sweet 'Judith', aka Lila Neilsen, who works as The Spider Woman, a phony mind-reader? Could it be her partner, The Great Garoone (Kurt Kreuger), for whom Lila’s sister was the original Spider Women before she suddenly (apparently) skipped town, breaking his heart? Or how about the every creepy Martin Kosleck (The Mummy’s Curse, 1944; The Frozen Ghost, 1945; House of Horrors, 1946) as Garoone’s business manager, Mihail Barak, who is always lurking in the shadows whenever one of the Chris’s leads is murdered? With a foreign name like Barak he must be the bad guy! And was Lila’s sister really murdered? Could all these new murders have something to do with her mysterious disappearance? Of course they do!
Fortunately, Chris has one thing working in his favour – his ever faithful assistant, Henry, played by the great Mantan Moreland using his patented scaredy cat act. Henry swallows his fear (reluctantly) to help Chris out – even if means smuggling Savage’s corpse out of sight of the police. Moreland's style of black-sterotyped humour has been criticized as insensitive, but Mantan carries it off with enough dignity that he is never the butt of his own schtick.
In a
better version of this movie, Moreland would have remained Conte's sidekick throughout the film,
just as he did with Sidney Toler’s Charlie Chan. Instead Mantan gets dropped halfway
in so that Conte and Marlowe can play cute with each other until their
inevitable clinch at the finish.
Given that Henry continually gets Chris out of one fix after another, I was disappointed that he got relegated to the sidelines so quickly. Ditto to Ann Savage’s brassy private eye who should have remained part of the action rather than being discarded just to get the story rolling. Savage had just finished making the now iconic film noir Detour (1945) with Edgar Ulmer over at poverty row studio, PRC, before starting her work on The Spider. Had the producers known what a classic that would become, I'm sure that Ann would have played a bigger part here. I would happily watch Savage playing a world-weary female version of Mike Hammer. And how could no producer not have thought of the teaming her with June Havoc in a Savage & Havoc – Crime Busters series?
The Spider doesn’t offer anything original in its plot or
script, but Conte has enough screen energy to hold our interest even when we
know how every scene will play out. All of the other players offer solid performances, with even the walk on character actors investing their roles with a spark - notably Jean Del Val and Ottete Vigne as the hotel manager and his wife.
The film
is capably directed by Robert Webb who keeps the action moving through its slightly dry, unsettling claustrophobic atmosphere. The Spider looks
much better than it has any right to thanks to the chiaroscuro black & white cinematography of Glen
MacWilliams who had previously shot the original Front Page (1931) and had been
Oscar Award nominated for Lifeboat (1944), directed by
Alfred Hitchcock. The introduction of Lila as the Spider Woman is particularly impressive and shows the creative team squeezing the most out of their modest production budget. And, I enjoyed the film's closing button that called back to the opening scene between Marlowe and Moreland, giving a symmetry to the film that I had not expected from it.
Conte made his Broadway debut in 1939 and became a
contract player with 20th Century-Fox in 1942, where he remained until the
1950’s. After featured performances in a series of ‘A’ pictures, he got his
first headline billing in The Spider playing the tough noir character
that he became noted for. Faye Marlowe (below left) only made eight films between 1945 –1955.
She is best remembered for her first film, The Lodger (1944), where she played the unsuspecting
girlfriend of Laird Cregar’s Jack the Ripper.
The Spider has been suggested to be a scaled down remake of the 1931 film of the same name by directors Kenneth MacKenna and William Cameron Menzies, but the two films have little in common, other than featuring a phony mind reading act. The mind reading gag would be a prominent plot point in the classic Nightmare Alley (1947), but it was already a common storyline in films like The Mind Reader (1933) and The Clairvoyant (1935). Finally, The Spider is unrelated to the pulp hero, The Spider, who had featured in two serials (1938, 1941) from Columbia, both starring Warren Hull in the title role.
Is The Spider Worth My Time? For a relatively low budget B mystery, The Spider will entertain you for its hour running time. It’s essential if you’re a completest for seeing the output of Richard Conte, Ann Savage or James Flavin (I almost am).
Availability: The film is in the public domain so watchable copies are up on Archive.Org and other on-line platforms.
THE SPIDER. Fox, 1945. Starring 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. Distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox
