By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the 1977 superhero flick and TV series pilot The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Nicholas Hammond, David White, Thayer David, Lisa Eilbacher and David Pataki.
Even by Marvel Studios standards, Spider-Man: Brand New Day – the fourth in the Tom Holland series based on the comic book powerhouse’s most instantly recognisable character – has been a hit of mammoth proportions, raking in even more cash than even the most astute and foresighted commentators could have predicted. And with The Marvel Cinematic Universe listing and limping considerably over its past few underwhelming entries, that’s just the shot in the arm that Marvel Studios needed.
Whenever a new, technically polished, CGI-laden Spider-Man flick is released, some inspiration-starved TV critic or internet smartarse will pull out a clip from an old, technically antiquated Spider-Man movie or TV show to get a few cheap yucks. Yawn! The Japanese Spider-Man from the late 1970s is a regular butt of jokes, as is the late 1970s US TV series The Amazing Spider-Man starring Nicholas Hammond as the superhero and his alias Peter Parker.
Lampooning “old stuff” or “bad stuff” is a particularly lame and obvious route to laughs (Mystery Science Theatre 3000, for instance, go fuck yourself), and it usually forgoes a crucial point: at the time, this stuff was often and actually pretty cool. So, sure, Spider-Man: Brand New Day mostly looks amazing, but in the late 1970s, so did the network TV show, with its process screens, in-camera stunt work, and other forms of special effects trickery. Plus, in the late 1970s, The Amazing Spider-Man was pretty much all that hardcore comic book fans had (along with Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk and some substandard Captain America telemovies) in terms of live action superhero entertainment.
So, as hi-tech, superhero whiz-bangery floods cinema and TV screens today, we decided to go way back to 1977’s The Amazing Spider-Man (also released as just Spider-Man), the TV movie which first aired on major US network CBS on September 14, 1977, and served as the kick-off point for the subsequent short-lived series, which ran for just thirteen episodes. The TV movie was a major ratings winner, and was also released theatrically in some international territories.
Penned by TV regular Alvin Boretz and directed by wonderfully named telemovie titan E.W Swackhamer (who helmed the exemplary Night Terror, amongst many others), The Amazing Spider-Man is fairly faithful to Marvel Comics lore, and features an engaging central turn from Nicholas Hammond, who at the time was most famous for his winning performance as Friedrich Von Trapp in 1965’s The Sound Of Music and as the guy who told Marcia Brady “something suddenly came up” in a classic episode of The Brady Bunch. More recently, Hammond enjoyed a scene stealing role as film director Sam Wanamaker in Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood, and is now an honorary Aussie after his longtime down under residency and relationship with local acting legend Robyn Nevin.
Though older than he is in the comic books, the TV series Peter Parker still retains the character’s defining down-to-earth qualities, even sneezing and navigating his allergies all through the telemovie. “I liked the idea of taking a fantasy hero and making him believable as a person,” Hammond has said of taking on the Peter Parker role. “I made it clear going into it that I wasn’t interested in doing something that was just a camp joke.”
1977’s The Amazing Spider-Man is, to put it simply, very good. Hammond is utterly charming in the lead role, and the telemovie moves briskly through the Spider-Man origin story, as science student and aspiring photographer Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider, and then quickly develops spider-like abilities, with new super strength, heightened danger awareness, and the ability to crawl up walls. Super smart and technically proficient, Parker also later throws together his own spider suit and then creates his web-slinging wrist shooters too. The crime fighter Spider-Man is born!
With the low budget obviously in mind (and perhaps influenced by some of the mood and feeling of the time), writer Alvin Boretz and director E.W Swackhamer sensibly opt not to dip into Spider-Man’s famed rogue’s gallery for a villain, but instead devise their own, in the entertainingly creepy personage of Edward Byron (wonderfully essayed by character actor Thayer David, best known for his appearances on the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows), a self-help guru who also dabbles in microwave mind control. As members of New York’s high society inexplicably rob banks and engage in various acts of public misbehaviour (all under Byron’s control), Spider-Man springs into action.
The Amazing Spider-Man is jammed with highlights. The practical stunt-work is truly impressive, and the old school special effects work boasts abundant charm. Two scenes in which Spidey faces off against a trio of martial artists are stand-outs, and the pacing of the very 1970s plot (culminating in a mass mind-control suicide for ransom, with more than a few echoes of notorious cult leader Jim Jones) is relentless, aided to no end by the punchy synth-and-guitar-heavy score by Johnnie Spence.
The supporting cast is terrific, with David White (Larry Tate from Bewitched) a yelling, screaming delight as Daily Bugle boss J. Jonah Jameson, and Michael Pataki even more gruff and grizzled as cigar-chomping Detective Barbera. Lisa Eilbacher (An Officer And A Gentleman, Beverly Hills Cop) makes for an engaging romantic interest, and though there’s no sign of the important Uncle Ben subplot, Jeff Donnell does appear as a rather inconsequential Aunt May. Watch out too for Seinfeld’s Uncle Leo, Len Lesser, as a henchman of Edward Byron’s.
Cannily mixing Peter Parker’s upbeat antics with its surprisingly disturbing mind control plot, The Amazing Spider-Man is a great example of how much could be achieved without the aid of CGI and millions of dollars in budget. The following TV series (double episodes of which were compiled into the international theatrical releases Spider-Man Strikes Back and Spider-Man: The Dragon’s Challenge) was equally entertaining, and was at the nucleus of earlier-era superhero storytelling.
Availability: The Amazing Spider-Man is very easy to find online in good condition, and there are second-hand DVDs floating around the, ahem, web too.
