Kiss of the Spider Woman received a huge ovation after the screening at the Cannes Film Festival in June 1985. William Hurt won Best Actor and Hector Babenco was nominated for the Palme d'Or.

Even with the great word of mouth at the Cannes Film Festival, it was still difficult to find a distributor. The picture was finally picked up by Island Alive, an independent company founded in 1983 by Chris Blackwell, who established the indie record label Island Music, and FilmDallas, a venture capital company put together by Sam Grogg, director of the USA Film Festival.

Kiss of the Spider Woman opened in July 1985 in New York at a single theater where it earned $109,000 in its first week. Word about the film started to spread, thanks to largely rave reviews, and soon it was seeing wider distribution around the country, even outside the urban markets where it was most likely to do well. The distributors were ill equipped to handle the international demand for the film once word got out about it.

"I don't like the film. I hated the way it was done. But I love the reaction of the audiences. So I'm starting to like the film because when I saw the reaction...I was extremely surprised because they had succeeded in conveying exactly what I wanted. So I would like to complain, but I cannot." - Manuel Puig, author of the source book, somewhat cryptically soon after the picture's release

In an interview with National Public Radio, William Hurt related a story about how he and a female companion, during a day off from shooting on Kiss of the Spider Woman, were abducted at gunpoint by several men in Sao Paulo. According to Hurt, the gunmen told them to face a wall, execution style, which he refused to do, resulting in a brief shouting match, after which all of the abductors simply left the scene. He told NPR he did not report the incident to the production company for fear it would cause filming to be shut down.

When William Hurt arrived to see the film at Cannes, he didn't have the right credentials and security would not let him in. Finally, Hector Babenco and others came to his rescue and got him into the screening.

According to Burt Lancaster's biographer, Kate Buford, because of his heart condition and triple bypass surgery, which forced him out of this production, he also had to drop out of the lead in Gorky Park (1983). Buford says the role went to William Hurt, which would have been ironic, but other sources insist Lancaster's abandoned part was to have been that of the American businessman played by Lee Marvin, which seems more likely.

Executive producer Francisco Ramalho's first name is spelled wrong in the credits of Kiss of the Spider Woman.

The mother of costume designer and cast member Patricio Bisso appears briefly as Leni Lamaison's maid in the Nazi movie.

Molina's friend Greta (Patricio Bisso) appears later in the story, after Molina has been released from prison, performing a number in drag at a gay club. He appears to be dressed as a parody of Sonia Braga as Leni Lamaison in the Nazi film fantasy, and he sings a more up-tempo version of the same number she does, "Je me moque de l'amour," composed by the film's scorer John Neschling with lyrics by producer David Weisman and Manuel Puig, author of the book on which the movie is based.

Puig's novel begins with Molina's description of Cat People (1942), one of the crowning achievements of Val Lewton's horror unit at RKO, but the filmmakers could not get the rights to use scenes from the movie.

A native of Argentina, Hector Babenco had been making films in his adopted country of Brazil since 1973, but he was unknown in this country until the unexpected success of Pixote (1981), a hard-hitting look at the desperate life of a ten-year-old street kid in Sao Paulo. Kiss of the Spider Woman was his first film in English. Its great success enabled him to direct the Jack Nicholson-Meryl Streep film Ironweed (1987). His next picture, At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991), a story of Christian missionaries in South America with a largely American cast, was not a success, and he returned to Argentina and Brazil, eventually turning out other critically acclaimed films such as the prison drama, Carandiru (2003).

Producer David Weisman's eclectic career began as a designer of film posters in Rome (including Fellini's 8 1/2, 1963) and creator of the title sequence for Otto Preminger's Hurry Sundown (1967). As producer, his projects prior to Kiss of the Spider Woman included the offbeat portrait of former Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick's last days, Ciao Manhattan (1972); the Japanese-American co-production cobbled together from several Samurai movies, Shogun Assassin (1980); and a low-budget drama about orphans on the run, Growing Pains (1984). Despite the success of Spider Woman, his cinematic output since then has been somewhat limited and closely connected to this film and the Sedgwick story. His next project (although uncredited) was Hector Babenco's subsequent film, Ironweed, starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, followed by Spike of Bensonhurst (1988), an indie by Warhol director Paul Morrissey, and Naked Tango (1990), an Argentine-based period drama written and directed by Spider Woman scripter Leonard Schrader. Since then, he has produced and directed three documentaries about the making of Spider Woman, included on the DVD release, and directed another Sedgwick documentary, Edie: Girl on Fire (2010).

Leonard Schrader (1943-2006), who adapted Puig's novel for the screen, was the brother of Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980) and directed American Gigolo (1980) and Affliction (1997), among many others. The two brothers collaborated on Mishima (1985), and Blue Collar (1978). They were raised in a strict Dutch Calvinist family where they were not allowed to see any movies as children or teenagers. Leonard didn't see his first film until he was in college in the 1960s.

Sonia Braga began her career in Brazil on stage in a production of the hippy musical Hair in the late 1960s. She made her film debut in 1968 and had her first big success on television in the series Vila Sésamo, her country's version of Sesame Street. She became known internationally for the hit comedy Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1976). Since Spider Woman, she has appeared in a number of U.S. and South America films and television shows, including stints on the series Sex and the City and Alias.

Memorable Quotes from KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN

MOLINA (William Hurt): She's... well, she's something a little strange. That's what she noticed, that she's not a woman like all the others. She seems all wrapped up in herself. Lost in a world she carries deep inside her. But surrounded by a world of luxury, a sumptuous boudoir.

MOLINA: Perfect figure. Classical features. But with these big green eyes.
VALENTIN (Raul Julia): They're black.
MOLINA: I'm the one who saw the movie, but if that's what you want, big black eyes.

MOLINA: No matter how lonely she may be, she keeps men at a distance.
VALENTIN: She's probably got bad breath or something.
MOLINA: If you're going to crack jokes about a film that I happen to be fond of, there's no reason to go on.

VALENTIN: Don't talk about food. ... I'm serious, no food and no naked women.

MOLINA: You can appreciate a good story.
VALENTIN: And easily spot a cheap one.

MOLINA: If you've got the keys to that door, I will gladly follow, otherwise I will escape in my own way, thank you.
VALENTIN: Then your life is as trivial as your movies.

VALENTIN: Molina, you would never understand.
MOLINA: What I understand is me offering you a bit of my lovely avocado and you throw it back in my face.
VALENTIN: Don't act like that! You sound just like a...
MOLINA: A what? Go on, say it. Say it. Like a woman, you mean. What's wrong with being like a woman? Why do only women get to be sensitive? If more men acted like women, there wouldn't be so much violence.

MOLINA (crying): If you don't stop, I will never speak to you again!
VALENTIN: Stop crying! You sound just like an old woman!
MOLINA: It's what I am! It's what I am!
VALENTIN: What's this between your legs, huh? Tell me, "lady"!
MOLINA: It's an accident. If I had the courage, I'd cut it off.
VALENTIN: You'd still be a man! A man! A man in prison! Just like the faggots the Nazis shoved in the ovens!

MOLINA: Do what you want with me because that's what I want. If it doesn't disgust you.

MOLINA: The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you'll never feel unhappy again.

VALENTIN: Promise me you'll never let anyone humiliate you again.

VALENTIN: I love you so much. That's the one thing I never said to you, because I was afraid of losing you forever.
MARTA (Sonia Braga): That can never happen now. This dream is short, but this dream is happy.

compiled by Rob Nixon