The Spider Woman The Spider Woman The Spider Woman (alternatively titled Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman and Spider Woman) is a 1943 mystery film starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, the seventh of fourteen such films the pair were involved in. As with all of the Universal Studios films in the series, the film is set in then-present day as opposed to the Victorian setting of the original stories. This film incorporates elements from the novel "The Sign of the Four", as well as the short stories "The Final Problem", "The Adventure of the Empty House",
Basil Rathbone produced by Fox in 1939), were set in the late Victorian times of the original stories. The later installments, produced by Universal, beginning with "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror" (1942), were set in contemporary times. The first three had World War II-related plots. Concurrent with the films, Rathbone and Bruce reprised their film roles in a radio series, "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", which began in October 1939. Rathbone appeared in the radio series as long as the film series was active, but after the films lapsed in 1946, Rathbone ceded his radio part to Tom Conway.