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Poster for Kiss of the Spider Woman
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Released
1985 · FILM

Kiss of the Spider Woman

In a brutal Latin American prison, a steadfast journalist and a flamboyant dreamer must forge an uneasy alliance to endure relentless interrogation, where imagination becomes their only weapon against oppression.

“Once upon a time... in a tropical island far away, there lived a strange woman…”

Directed by
Hector Babenco
Written by
Manuel Puig, Leonard Schrader
Runtime
120 min
Drama
Streaming on
  • The Criterion Channel

Synopsis

The story follows two very different men who are forced to share a prison cell in Latin America. One is Valentin, a journalist being tortured for his political convictions. The other is Molina, a gay window dresser who passes the time by recounting romantic tales inspired by his memories of classic films.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 20

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Mauro AliceShot by Rodolfo SanchezScored by Nando CarneiroDesigned by Clovis Bueno

Box Office

1985 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 14× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$17.0M

Budget$1.3M
Worldwide gross$17.0M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Der Kuss der Spinnenfraude
  • Kuß der Spinnenfraude
  • El beso de la mujer arañaes
  • Le Baiser de la femme araignéefr
  • Il bacio della donna ragnoit

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