The most amazing thing about this flick is how straight it's played by all the principals. Even the rationale for the existence of the 'Black Widow' is made to seem credible, unlike all the pseudo-scientific babble that went into monster movies of the Forties and Fifties. And the cast is a pretty good one for the Seventies, with a good helping of mainly television celebrities of the era. You even have Sid Caesar on hand, not so much for comic relief, but there are humorous moments surrounding the need to keep his apartment building at a sweltering eighty five degrees. Which seemed kind of odd to me, since it looked like the story took place in the summer in Los Angeles, where the temperature would have hit that high pretty regularly anyway.
Now even if you're paying attention, things do tend to get a little murky around the relationship among the characters. Leigh (Donna Mills) and Laura Lockridge (Patty Duke) are introduced as fraternal twins by 'Granny' Lockridge (June Lockhart), but it turns out later that Granny is not their mother. You might catch a hint of this when 'Granny' mentions to the visiting Laura that she (Laura) might want to explain her relationship to her own daughter Jennifer (Rosanna Locke)! The teenager doesn't even know who her mother is! By the way, I'm using the name 'Lockridge' to describe these characters because that's what they go by in the movie, and not 'Lockwood' as appears in the credits. Between Lockridge, Lockwood, Locke and Lockhart, maybe it's an understandable mix up.
Cutting to the chase, it was a series of spider bites to the infant Laura Lockridge that turned her into the spider version of a vampiric werewolf with every full moon, targeting male victims with pick-ax style stabs to the chest, allowing the blood to be drained from their bodies. It was the intrepid investigation of private detective Mark Higbie (Anthony Franciosa) that uncovered the mysterious murders, with a little help from characters portrayed by Max Gail, Jeff Corey, and his google-eyed secretary Roz Kelly. Vic Morrow adds to the festivities as the dubious police lieutenant Gully Conti. A hint as to how the 'Black Widow' can be stopped is offered early on when it's mentioned that fire is the only way to go. That would have been the end of the story, except for young Jennifer's birthmark making an appearance in the closing frame, a tease that never earned this film a sequel.
Now even if you're paying attention, things do tend to get a little murky around the relationship among the characters. Leigh (Donna Mills) and Laura Lockridge (Patty Duke) are introduced as fraternal twins by 'Granny' Lockridge (June Lockhart), but it turns out later that Granny is not their mother. You might catch a hint of this when 'Granny' mentions to the visiting Laura that she (Laura) might want to explain her relationship to her own daughter Jennifer (Rosanna Locke)! The teenager doesn't even know who her mother is! By the way, I'm using the name 'Lockridge' to describe these characters because that's what they go by in the movie, and not 'Lockwood' as appears in the credits. Between Lockridge, Lockwood, Locke and Lockhart, maybe it's an understandable mix up.
Cutting to the chase, it was a series of spider bites to the infant Laura Lockridge that turned her into the spider version of a vampiric werewolf with every full moon, targeting male victims with pick-ax style stabs to the chest, allowing the blood to be drained from their bodies. It was the intrepid investigation of private detective Mark Higbie (Anthony Franciosa) that uncovered the mysterious murders, with a little help from characters portrayed by Max Gail, Jeff Corey, and his google-eyed secretary Roz Kelly. Vic Morrow adds to the festivities as the dubious police lieutenant Gully Conti. A hint as to how the 'Black Widow' can be stopped is offered early on when it's mentioned that fire is the only way to go. That would have been the end of the story, except for young Jennifer's birthmark making an appearance in the closing frame, a tease that never earned this film a sequel.