THE SPIDERS PART 1- THE GOLDEN LAKE, PART 2- THE DIAMOND SHIP (1919)

Details

• Release Year: 1919
• Genre: Adventure; Classic
• Plot: Fritz Lang, one of Germany's greatest directors, turned down the opportunity to make 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' in order to direct THE SPIDERS ('Die Spinnen', 1919). This wonderful exotic adventure film in two parts ('The Golden Sea' and 'The Diamond Ship') was inspired by a world-wide vogue for serial thrillers, which also included 'The Exploits of Elaine' with Pearl White, and 'Les Vampires' by Louis Feuillade with Musidora as criminal mastermind Irma Vep.; ; Crime is an end in itself for the Spiders syndicate with arms of entrapment which spread across the wide world. Like Feullade's 'Vampires', Lang's THE SPIDERS is nominally headed by a respectable man, Dr. Telphas (Georg John), but is energized by a woman, the fantastically resourceful Lio Sha (Ressel Orla). Although only two of the projected four episodes were produced, there is plot and action enough for ten films. In the first episode, millionaire sportsman Kay Hoog (Karl de Vogt) heads for Peru in search of Inca treasure and a missing Harvard professor; however, his plans being overheard by Lio Sha, the Spiders mount a rival expedition to get the unbelievable treasure and the inexhaustible gold mine to be found beneath the Holy Sea. The Spiders, first seen in black body stockings and executioner's hoods, chase Hoog (for awhile the film becomes a Western with a thrilling gallop across south Mexico until Hoog providentially escapes in a hot air balloon), but in Peru, it is Hoog who rescues Lio Sha from near human-sacrifice on the altar of an Inca temple. But the unappreciative Spiders kill Naela (Lil Dagover), the Inca priestess Hoog has brought back from Peru to San Francisco, when he refuses to reveal the location of ta gigantic diamond.; ; In the second part of THE SPIDERS, Hoog pursues the criminals as they pursue the elusive diamond. The chase leads to a subterranean city of Chinese opio dens where Hoog is briefly captured, until he somehow escapes England in pursuit of the Buddha stone. The Spiders are led by a clearvoyant in India (!) to the same place, where an old map sends the rivals to a treasure cavern in the Falkland Islands. The chase still isn't over, but who would not want to find out the end for themselves?; ; Apart from 137 minutes of constant visual and narrative invention (the sets were designed by 'Caligari's Hermann Warm), this film contains trial balloons for striking episodes from Lang's later work, including motifs developed in 'Spies', 'Destiny', 'M', 'Metropolis' and 'The Nibelungen'.; ; Long before lost, the film was restored in 1978 by David and Kimberly Shepard and was reviewed on first screenings as 'comparable in importance to the rediscovery of a long-lost Picasso.' This edition, fitted with title cards drawn from original German censorship records, tints according to Lang's own instructions, and an original organ score by Gaylord Carter was digitally remastered for this edition in 1999.
• Cast: Carl de Vogt; Ressel Orla; Georg John; Lil Dagover; Paul Biensfeldt; Harry Frank; Friedrich Kühne; Rudolf Lettinger; Meinhart Maur; Paul Morgan; Edgar Pauly; Reiner Steiner; Thea Zander; Fritz Lang
• Director: Fritz Lang
• Runtime: 2:17
• Company: Image Entertainment
• Media Format: Movie