A Film Canon

If Spiders 1 fuses the serial and adventure films, then Spiders 2 is closer to proto-noir, clearest in the replacement of the Incan jungle with a dystopian urban backdrop that has two basic incarnations - the headquarters of the 'Spiders', elaborated into a confusion of dark, labyrinthine passages, which stand in the same relation to Feuillade's secret passages as the exotic trajectories of the earlier film (noticeably absent here); and an entire, alternate Chinatown buried beneath the Chinese Quarter, shrouded in perpetual night and only known to locals. Even the conclusion, which takes place in the Falklands, is condensed to another subterranean network. As this might suggest, the exoticism of Spiders 1 is proportionately intensified to a more typically noir xenophobia, most explicitly in a convocation that both brings the 'Spiders'' various ethnic constituencies together, and generalises them into a looming 'Asia', but most memorably in the revelation - and criminalisation - of their central plan: to recover a diamond stolen by the British, which will supposedly put an end to imperialist tyranny. That said, despite the figurative prominence of ships and sailing, the film's agenda ultimately takes an individualistic, rather than imperialistic, form, epitomised by the subtle transformation of protagonist Kay Hoog (Carl de Vogt), which ensures that his motivations are suffused with revenge, even when they apparently correspond to those of rescue, exploration and profit that drive the earlier film.