The Spider Returns
| The Spider Returns | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
Chapter 10 |
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| 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. |
| Edited by |
Dwight Caldwell Earl Turner |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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15 chapters 300 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Spider Returns is a 1941 15-chapter 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 their 1938 serial The Spider's Web. The first episode runs 32 minutes, while the other 14 are approximately 17 minutes each.
Amateur criminologist Richard Wentworth, formerly the masked vigilante, The Spider, brings his former alter ego out of retirement for 15 action-packed chapters to help his old friend, police commissioner Kirk (Kirkpatrick in the pulp novels), battle a dangerous, power-obsessed maniac called The Gargoyle. This mysterious crime lord and his henchmen threaten the world with acts of sabotage and wholesale murder in an effort to wreck the U. S. national defense.
Columbia Pictures used their original serial The Spider's Web as the 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 being worn by Flash Gordon's longtime nemesis Ming the Merciless.
Both serials feature a dramatic wardrobe enhancement to the Spider's original magazine appearance: his simple black cape and head mask are over-printed with a white spider's web pattern and then matched with his usual plain black fedora. This striking addition gave the silver screen Spider an appearance more like that of a traditional superhero, like other pulp and comics heroes being adapted for the era's movie serials; it also made the serial Spider look less like the very popular Street and Smith pulp hero The Shadow, which also had been produced by Columbia and starred Victor Jory.
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