"Black Widow" is one of my favorite films, much underrated, in my opinion. Teresa Russell plays a beautiful, chameleon-like and psychopathic woman who keeps recreating herself. Deborah Winger plays a seriously smart but un-selfconsciously frumpy federal agent obsessed with murders she believes are being committed by Russell's character. Both actresses do fine jobs, but Winger has the superior performance. The two women are at once fascinated with and frightened of one another. They have a semi-erotic mutual attraction, which I view as reflective of the strange relationship that good and evil have within each of us. The plot takes some complicated turns, but the viewer is rewarded by at least good (if not excellent) performances by all actors, and beautiful Hawaiian settings. The resolution moves a bit quickly, and it actually took me several times before I digested it all... but it's easy to get the basic story bottom line. The glam and the backdrops add to the ambiance. The depth of the interpersonal relationship is implied rather than shown. It has little bit of everything. Love, passion, lust, lesbian overtones,murder, mystery and intrigue.Overall, a great suspense movie of the "femme fatale" variety that is currently an under-explored area of film storytelling. Since about 1990, we have been in the age of the male dominated screen persona which makes a lot of Hollywood's offerings too cookie-cutter. Filmmakers could learn from "Black Widow". The female point of view is equally worth exploring as its male counterpart. For some reason, female centered stories are often characterized as not being universal. Which seems strange when you consider that 55% of the world's population is female.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

When I saw 'Black Widow' in a theater in the '80s, my first thought was: This seems just like the great Noire novel 'The Eye of the Beholder' (1980) by Marc Behm. That book was made into a tolerable French movie in 1983, directed by Claude Miller; then an American-made remake in 2000 with the same title as the novel, starring Ewan Mcgregor. I confess I could only bear 5 minutes of the Mcgregor version before hitting the remote. (Not your fault, Ewan!) The plots in 'Widow,' the novel, and the Mcgregor version are similar: a solitary detective (Winger's part) tails a female serial killer; the former getting ever more involved with his/her quarry as they traverse the landscape and time rolls by. It's an unusual detective plot that would need a very delicate director to make it work. Hasn't happened yet.Two things I still remember of 'Widow': (1) Serial killer Theresa Russell's self-hating meltdown in her car, just perfect; and (2) the filmmakers' taking advantage of an actual erupting volcano in a Hawaiian scene. Alas, the volcano steals the scene.

Style over substance. Mood over plot. A director in love with his lead actresses. You can level many accusations at BLACK WIDOW, but a good film it isn't. Sure, it has potential; a decent set-up for one, and a first half hour that looks like it's really going somewhere. Sad, then, that the potential is wasted with a narrative that stalls and ends up going nowhere.The idea of a serial killer who murders a string of husbands for their inheritance is a solid one, and BLACK WIDOW bolsters it with a decent cast: Theresa Russell's icy blonde bombshell is a forerunner to Sharon Stone's femme fatales, while Debra Winger's dogged cop is just quirky enough to be interesting. Kudos for getting all those notables in too: Terry O'Quinn as the superior, Dennis Hopper and Nicol Williamson as potential victims, a nicely sleazy role for James Hong.But somewhere along the line the film loses its way. Instead of concentrating on building the suspense and developing a cat and mouse game between cop and killer, the writer and director become fixated on another kind of relationship between the two women, so much so that all the tension dissipates and it all becomes incredibly boring. There's no danger, no reason to keep watching. Even the twist ending does nothing to improve things. As a contrast, I recently watched the Hitchcock rip-off FINAL ANALYSIS, and despite the clichés it was ten times better than this because it remembered what it was throughout: a thriller, first and foremost.

Black Widow spiders are, I suppose, as famous as they are out of their curious habits and perverse naturalistic tendencies insomuch upon reproducing with a male of their species, they proceed to consume the male. Does the male know what awaits them? Is it a little like a bee knowing that should it sting something, it will die? Are they each and all as oblivious to the female's threat as they always have been? Perhaps there's just a perverse set of intelligentsia trapped within the male that has them damn-well know what awaits them post sex, it's they just that they enjoy the sensation of going through with it before encountering doom so much that is doesn't bother them. Regardless, it will all sound rather improper to some and will put others off sitting through a feature entitled "Black Widow" upon finding out it's about a woman whose numerous husbands, of ridiculous wealth, show up dead just in time for said woman to inherit what it is they possess.But then there would be a mite of ill applied presumption about these people. Certainly, an unheralded 80's film from a director, whose previous work was the remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice, entitled "Black Widow" sounds like the sort of sleazy seduce-fest that happens to have an unnatural preoccupation for sex and death, usually in that order. The proof in the eating of this particular pudding is far from which its cover and reputation alone allude. For here is a film about a woman hunting another woman, that is to say a law enforcer seeking a criminal. Additionally, here is a film whose preoccupation with cause, effect and criminal procedure relegates men to that of bit parts and murder victims while promoting these female roles to the forefront so that may battle one another and essentially out smart the other. Here is a film sharper than one would think and Black Widow cuts a decent investigative piece.I suppose the thrill is always in the 'how' we're going to nail her, not 'who' we're going to nail when one tackles these sorts of films. We open on a private jet that the woman on board would never have afforded in half a dozen lifetimes, never mind her own here and now. She is the widow to a recently deceased and she's come to make it a bit of a habit in recent times to casually be informed of her husband's passing before blurting out some crocodile tears and marching on in life. In co-ordinance with the paragraph's opening statement, it's fairly obvious that the woman had something to do with the deaths of these people – it's just that the evidence column is too bare. We're aware that all this money and riches have suddenly entered this woman's life after a recent marriage, but clueless if we can unravel it as much more than mere coincidence.Cutting to the other important female named Alex (Winger), we observe a woman who works for her keep and stays within the law. Alex, a data analyst with the Department of Justice whose name is in turn ambiguous in regards to its gender, breezes into work one day and batters away any doubt over her theories that what this woman is doing is the obvious – that is to say, hopping from rich husband to rich husband and doing away with them silently once its confirmed their cash is hers upon death. As she looks further into the stories, it's revealed that she herself hapless with other men and relationships in general – something that seems embarrassing to her, something that needs to be tiptoed around. The central idea, then, comes to form a backbone to a film whereby a woman becomes besotted with a woman who happens to bounce from man to man with a sickly ease. While there is little question over Alex's sexual orientation, the investigations appear to open her mind to new things in this regard before essentially rendering her one of what the killer is in the first place: someone bounding around the world, infiltrating certain circles and then garnering that perverse glee once bodies have hit the floor and those left standing are all the more richer for it.In beating away the sexual advances of her male co-workers and changing her name to the more (in comparison to Alex) provocative "Jessica" once the film's reached the state of Hawaii, the film essentially depicts a charged exodus of someone becoming more and more engulfed in the life of a seductive killer than it does take the easy way out and revel in the depravity of the more standardised erotic thriller. It would be true to say that a lot of the infectious energy born out of the earlier investigative stuff is missed once we reach Hawaii, where scenes shot beside swimming pools and such provide most of the titillation, but Black Widow is a solid and often engaging film which has a decent stretch of engaging content in it.