CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Zlatica
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
Originally, Fritz Lang, writer and director here, planned 4 Spiders movies, but the 95-year-old "Das Brillantenschiff" ("The Diamond Ship") turned out to be the last installment to the series of Kay Hoog going against the infamous criminal organization. I am okay with that as I certainly enjoyed the first film more than this one. The references about his lost love are not enough in here and, in general, in terms of story and emotion it does not really deliver in my opinion. At times, it feels like a weaker version of the first film, at other times, it felt like Hoog wasn't even the main character anymore. This second film went a bit longer than the first, namely 80 minutes for the version I watched. These numbers may differ though as, as usual with these very old films, all these restored version have different runtimes and the original was probably even longer as some of the parts were lost today. As a whole, this is among the weaker films I have seen by Fritz Lang. Sorry to see this did not reach the level of the first or fulfill its potential as a worthy sequel to the film from a year earlier. Not recommended.
Steffi_P
This is the second part of a planned quartet of films, which renowned director Fritz Lang chose to make in preference to the better-known Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Since his first two films are lost, these adventure flicks (which he also wrote) are the earliest glimpses we can see of his budding style. Please refer also to my comment on part one of The Spiders for more information and analysis.The first part of The Spiders had a plot that was flimsy and flexible enough to make any excuse for the next action set piece. Part two slows things down to a more realistic pace, and yet the plot is equally thin and literally holey. Whereas part one more or less continuously followed the exploits of hero Kay Hoog, part two is filled with digressions and minor characters, and is occasionally hard to follow. There are also some inexplicable gaps where a title card replaces action – for example when Hoog is captured in the underground city, we are told this rather than shown it. Missing footage perhaps, although there is nothing to suggest this is the case. As in part one, there is a great variety of locations, and Lang's imagination is constantly throwing up new ideas, but unlike the first part the action sequences are few and far between.Turning now from story to technical style, part two is largely set in interiors, which is all the better for Lang to get the angles right. You can see evidence of that angular, impersonal approach to shot composition that is there in all his pictures, even the B-movies he made in the 50s. Often, the arrangements appear to be simply for aesthetic taste, but here and there is method and meaning to it. Lang likes to show off the height or depth of an interior set, making his characters appear small. In many scenes the environment seems to be hemming the actors in and dictating their movements. Towards the end he shows the spider gang in small rooms with not much space between the camera and the back wall, emphasising their trapped position.But Lang's growing confidence with space is not enough to save The Diamond Ship. The first picture, in spite of its flaws, had a certain charm in its innocent and pure adventure. The sequel has all of the flaws and none of the charm.
Cineanalyst
This "Spiders" sequel, "The Diamond Ship", is just as ridiculous and sensational as the series's first part. The rich adventurer continues in his pursuit of the criminal gang, the Spiders, who are after a diamond that's linked with Asian independence, leading the protagonist into a world of espionage, kidnapping and to a subterranean Chinatown.Fritz Lang continues to copy other filmmakers, including Louis Feuillade. An early scene in this film is, I think, evident of Fritz Lang's poor direction at this early point in his career: the overhead shot of a bank robbery, with no ceiling, was done better by Maurice Tourneur in "Alias Jimmy Valentine" (1915). With Tourneur, it was an innovative, well-photographed scene, but with Lang, it's derivative and poorly done. It's the same with the rest of this two-part series; there's some technical skill, but it's all inferior duplication of other films and serials. Lang would become a great director, but that didn't begin here. And, German silent cinema would be one of the greatest periods in film history, but "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920) is still the beginning of that. "The Spiders" is merely what everyone else had already been doing... often better.
Athanatos
Unless you're into film history, stay away from this thing!The plot is slapdash. The hero blithely drops from a flying plane, onto the roof of a building. ("Oof!") A la Jack Armstrong, there's a completely unexplained escape. A homing pigeon finds its way to a moving ship at sea. Obscure clues are identified immediately against all odds while obvious clues go ignored for centuries. Poison gas conveniently appears ex machina. As in The Golden Sea, the pacing is haphazard.(Poor Ed Wood! How can we bash the guy when he probably learned his "art" from films such as this by Fritz Lang?)BTW, in this film, unlike in The Golden Sea, some of the characters amazingly don't look German (though for some reason our American hero very much dresses like a German; more so than in The Golden Sea); instead, the non-Teutonic Chinese are made to look like vermin.
