Spidey, the Night Stalker: Revisiting 1977’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’
At this point in time, it’s hard to imagine more than three or four years going by without a Spider-Man movie. This year has produced zero films featuring the web-slinger and yet three films centering on heroes or villains that have aided or fought him over time. X-Men and Blade before it had created the Marvel blockbuster boom, but in 2002, Spider-Man cemented it. The film was a wildly successful box office spectacle that took decades to assemble on screen. Before Sam Raimi’s massive hit, James Cameron had spent most of the ’90s trying to put his version together, with repeated attempts by Cannon Films in the ’80s with names like Tobe Hooper and Joseph Zito attached. But even before all of those attempts, the character had already made his live-action debut in the CBS series The Amazing Spider-Man.
Marvel made many attempts to bring their heroes to life on the small screen throughout the late ’70s. Only two of those attempts actually led to a full-blown series, and of the two, only The Incredible Hulk was successful. The other was The Amazing Spider-Man. But Spider-Man’s pilot actually premiered two months before Hulk’s. This was the show that paved the way. While Spidey had appeared on The Electric Company, this was Marvel’s first real attempt at a serious live-action adaptation of any of their properties. Even though it’s not remembered as being particularly great, that’s more to do with the fact that it is a late ’70s action show restricted by budget rather than any fault of the series itself. Spider-Man did not have the budget to do most of the things that we now so easily see the hero do on screen.
It did not have the budget for Spider-Man’s villains, nor most of his monthly supporting cast from the comics. Instead, it focused the action primarily on the Daily Bugle news room, a smart choice for a weekly crime show. Each episode would focus on some science-fiction or occult plot that Peter Parker and his friends would have to investigate. This meant that Peter frequently overstepped his role as a photographer to basically serve as an unofficial reporter. It also meant that the show was basically Kolchak: The Night Stalker with tights, which on a ’70s TV budget was probably the single coolest thing it could have been.
The pilot TV movie Spider-Man scored CBS’ highest ratings of 1977, and if you’re a fan of it like me, it’s easy to see why. I admit there’s heavy nostalgia at play. Before the 2002 film came out when I was thirteen, I had this film on VHS as a kid, and nearly wore the tape out. But I genuinely enjoy it. Yes, it takes some drastic liberties with the plot. Uncle Ben is completely out of the picture, probably more for the sake of Peter becoming Spider-Man faster and getting to the good stuff before the audience tuned out. Yes, that sacrifices essentially the backbone of the comic character, but Peter is still a good dude. In fact, it’s his natural instinct to help people as soon as he gets his powers, and the costume stems naturally from that. It’s genuinely funny to watch Peter come up with most of the major details about Spider-Man, including the costume, randomly on the spot while stammering to J. Jonah Jameson.
The movie is also a smart and subversive takedown of the rising self-help movement at the time. The villain, Edward Byron, leads self-help seminars in which he uses mind control and subliminal messaging to make his well-to-do patrons commit crimes. It’s a decidedly un-subtle commentary on the fact that these gurus preach taking control of your own life, when they truly just want you to do whatever they tell you to do, and more than anything else, want money. Byron is after $50 million, and will select ten New Yorkers at random to kill themselves unless he gets it. For as silly as it can be, it’s pretty dark to watch Peter Parker, helpless under mind control, nearly hurl himself off the Empire State Building.
While light on action, Byron’s mind controlled goons lead to some fun kung-fu sequences that are incredibly of the time. Spider-Man even beats Daredevil to the hallway fight by a good forty years. The action in all of these Spidey sequences, not just in the pilot film but throughout the series as a whole, is honestly such a highlight. Ironically, it’s much more impressive now, after sixteen years of the MCU, than it ever was when I was a kid. There’s an entirely different spectacle to the low-budget action of Amazing Spider-Man because everything you’re seeing is tangible. It’s all there. It’s all “real.” When Spider-Man web swings, there’s no way to do that but to have a stunt man on a harness (if he’s lucky) literally being thrown between skyscrapers.
There are fire stunts, huge leaps, falls, there’s a scene where Spider-Man fights a goddamn bear and there’s one sequence where he can be found dangling from a helicopter hundreds of feet in the air and it’s all real, in-camera and tangible. CGI absolutely has its place and obviously still has the ability to wow, but in our era of Marvel movies filmed almost entirely in front of a green screen, there’s an undeniable appeal to that.
The casting for this show is pretty great, too. It makes the most out of its grouchy old men, with Robert F. Simon’s J. Jonah Jameson and Michael Pataki’s police chief being the biggest standouts. Nicholas Hammond has grown up from The Sound of Music to play a little too self-assured but otherwise pretty believable Peter Parker. He’s not as quippy, but that’s mostly due to Spider-Man actually having very few lines when in the costume.
On top of that, the guest stars are insane and maybe worth watching the show for on their own. Veteran villain Andrew Robinson plays the heavy in a prison-themed episode. Ted Danson appears in two episodes. Geoffrey Lewis, Morgan Fairchild, Gavan O’Herlihy and many more all put in appearances as well.
Amazing Spider-Man is also fairly inconsistent and while that doesn’t sound like a compliment, it actually might be a selling point for the show. The differences are jarring from episode to episode, but spotting them is absolutely part of the fun. For example, Spider-Man’s spider sense changes a handful of times in terms of the way it’s depicted, with the show ultimately settling for having Peter’s eyes flash white & freeze framing in a way that was sure to traumatize kids at the time. The web shooters rotate from being on the inside of the costume to the outside and back again. And, perhaps best of all, Aunt May is played by a different actress every single time she appears.
Amazing Spider-Man only lasted thirteen episodes, but it’s a gem. It’s barely worth mentioning that the show has more flaws than you can shake a web at, as that’s probably clear to anyone who’s even heard of it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun on its own. It actually kind of is. There’s an allure to it that shines through both in spite of and because of its haphazard cheapness. In an age where we’re seeing some of the best, most faithful Spidey content we could ever imagine on the screen, it’s a great time to take a look back at what came before and truly appreciate the steps it took in getting us to this point.
