Arthur Conan Doyle was a very intelligent man. His Sherlock Holmes stories were not just entertaining, but the mysteries were intelligently constructed and his characters exciting and multidimensional. The Sherlock Holmes stories made by Universal from 1939 through the 1940s were NOT intelligently constructed and the characters were simply caricatures. In the original stories, Watson was quite bright and sometimes helpful. With Nigel Bruce, on the other hand, he's so brain-addled that you wonder how anyone this stupid could become a doctor at ANYTHING!!! As for Holmes, while the Basil Rathbone version is interesting to watch, he's often rather stupid himself. Because of this, these Universal films are a tad repellent to folks who read and enjoyed the actual Sherlock Holmes stories. As for me, I'm a HUGE fan of the stories but watch these Universal films and try to pretend the characters are NOT Holmes and Watson...just two dummies.
In "The Spider Woman", once again the story seems to have been written by a lemur. Holmes and Watson are dumb and parts of the plot simply betray that the writer didn't bother doing ANY research before writing the story! For example, a bunch of murders are occurring by folks bitten by poisonous tarantulas. The problem is that a tarantula's bite is no stronger than a bee sting...and idiots writing this and "Dr. No" obviously never consulted a text book or an entomologist. Also, the writer took bits and pieces from the Conan Doyle stories but artlessly tossed them together in a haphazard and ineffective manner--such as Holmes' faked death which really made little sense and this story element was VERY quickly and inexplicably abandoned. Also stupid was Holmes visit from the Spider Woman...and the brilliant detective clearly was a dunderhead in taking this psychotic killer so lightly.
Overall, it's yet another exciting to watch but really stupid Holmes film from Universal. Written by an idiot and often illogical.
In "The Spider Woman", once again the story seems to have been written by a lemur. Holmes and Watson are dumb and parts of the plot simply betray that the writer didn't bother doing ANY research before writing the story! For example, a bunch of murders are occurring by folks bitten by poisonous tarantulas. The problem is that a tarantula's bite is no stronger than a bee sting...and idiots writing this and "Dr. No" obviously never consulted a text book or an entomologist. Also, the writer took bits and pieces from the Conan Doyle stories but artlessly tossed them together in a haphazard and ineffective manner--such as Holmes' faked death which really made little sense and this story element was VERY quickly and inexplicably abandoned. Also stupid was Holmes visit from the Spider Woman...and the brilliant detective clearly was a dunderhead in taking this psychotic killer so lightly.
Overall, it's yet another exciting to watch but really stupid Holmes film from Universal. Written by an idiot and often illogical.