1947's BLACK WIDOW is well known among serial buffs. The titular "Black Widow" (Carol Forman) is the agent of an unnamed Asian power. Under the guise of a fortune-teller named Madame Sombra, she heads a spy ring devoted to ferreting out American military secrets, and defers only to her father, a fellow dressed like a Middle Eastern potentate. For some reason Republic became enamored of a device in which a villain repetitively sat in a chair or throne which somehow transformed or teleported him. In WIDOW the Widow's hideout includes a teleportation-throne by which the villainess' father teleports himself from his Asian home, purely to deliver some instructions or observations that could have been delivered via radio. The teleport-device is the only marvelous device used in the serial, and seems like it could be much more effectively transformed into a weapon than Sombra's other main device: a chair with a mechanical spider that pokes out and injects poison into its victims.
Whereas one might expect Sombra to be opposed by a federal agent or the like, somehow her opponent winds up being a detective novel-author, one Steve Colt (Bruce Edwards) and a lady reporter-tagalong (Virginia Lindley). But Republic serials are never long on ratiocinative elements, and most of the time Colt and his female ally merely stumble across the villains in the act of doing things, thus rendering Colt's supposed detecting-abilities nugatory. It doesn't help that actor Edwards is a bit of a stiff, though Lindley holds up her end, constantly teasing him about his fictional detective-writing.
Still, Forman's Black Widow is the central character here. She has no depth or personal traits, but Forman plays her as a serenely confident Dragon Lady, and thus dominates every scene in which she appears. The fight-scenes are decent if a bit programmatic.
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