The Spider’s Web * (1960, Glynis Johns, John Justin, Cicely Courtneidge, Jack Hulbert, Ronald Howard, David Nixon, Peter Butterworth) – Classic Movie Review 13,792

The Danzigers’ 1960 Technicolor comedy crime mystery thriller film The Spider’s Web, starring Glynis Johns, John Justin, Cicely Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert, is adapted from Agatha Christie’s 1954 stage play Spider’s Web.

Director Godfrey Grayson’s 1960 comedy crime mystery thriller The Spider’s Web stars Glynis Johns, John Justin, Cicely Courtneidge, Jack Hulbert, Ronald Howard, David Nixon, and Peter Butterworth.

An admittedly sprightly Agatha Christie story (based on her 1954 stage play Spider’s Web) played for laughs is unlikely to work and this film seems to prove the point, though admittedly the 1960s Miss Marple films with Margaret Rutherford are played for laughs and do work, so it is just all about whether you can do it or not. Here not. The tone is wrong. It plays like a stage drawing room comedy, and that really does not work.

Glynis Johns stars as ambassador’s wife Clarissa Hailsham-Brown, who discovers a body behind the couch in her drawing room and, before her husband comes home with important foreign visitors, convinces three house guests to help her hide it in a secret passage in their country house and baffle the police (Peter Butterworth as the befuddled inept police inspector, Anton Rodgers as Sergeant Jones). The corpse belongs to Clarissa’s stepdaughter’s unlikeable stepfather, so she is not that bothered about the body or who did it.

A cast of able farceurs, including husband and wife team Cicely Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert, seem lost in this whodunit concerning a mysterious corpse and upper-class nastiness. But it is main stars Glynis Johns and John Justin (as Henry Hailsham-Brown) who are really lost here, giving theatrical performances that would work only in a theatre and preferably seen from a long distance at the back of the stalls. Glynis Johns over-acts wildly, perhaps trying to compensate for the sluggish pace of the film. She does not cheer it up at all, and nor does Cicely Courtneidge’s over-acting. David Nixon is very creepy as the butler Elgin, who has clearly lost his marbles.

It stays stagey and set bound, running like a filmed amateur rep play.

The Danzigers are not quite on their rightful territory here, quintessential B-feature black and white folk filming in unaccustomed Technicolor. So, a prestige A-feature production gone awry.

Plus there’s a really irritating score by Tony Crombie to contend with.

The play is adapted by Albert G Miller and Eldon Howard.

Cast: Glynis Johns as Clarissa Hailsham-Brown, John Justin as Henry Hailsham-Brown, Cicely Courtneidge as Miss Peake, Jack Hulbert as Sir Rowland Delahaye, Ronald Howard as Jeremy, David Nixon as Elgin, Wendy Turner as Pippa, Basil Dignam as Hugo, Ferdy Mayne as Oliver, Joan Sterndale-Bennett as Mrs Elgin, Peter Butterworth as Inspector Lord, Anton Rodgers as Sergeant Jones, and Robert Raglan as Dr Berry.

The 1954 stage play Spider’s Web starred Margaret Lockwood, who also acted in a 1955 TV movie version, an hour-long excerpt from the play, performed before an invited audience from the Savoy Theatre. London.

It was remade as a 1982 TV movie Spider’s Web with Penelope Keith, shown on BBC Two on 26 December 1982.

Release date: November 1960.

A gracious, elderly Agatha Christie paid a regal visit to the set one day.

It is shot at the Danzigers’ New Elstree Studios.

The Spider’s Web is directed by Godfrey Grayson, runs 88 minutes, is made by Danziger Productions, is released by United Artists (UK), is written by Albert G Miller and Eldon Howard, based on Agatha Christie’s 1954 stage play Spider’s Web, is shot in Technicolor by Jimmy Wilson, is produced by Edward J Danziger and Harry Lee Danziger, is scored by Tony Crombie, and is designed by Norman Arnold.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,792

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