The first actor to portray Spider-Man on a big screen, although in a somewhat roundabout way, was Nicholas Hammond, best known for the role of the eldest von Trapp child in The Sound of Music. In 1977 he starred in The Amazing Spider-Man, a television series based on the popular Marvel comic book, with its pilot episode being released theatrically in a number of countries and territories.
The plot begins with Peter Parker, the protagonist played by Hammond, as a young man who works as a freelance photographer in order to finance his studies at the university. There he takes part in an experiment involving radiation, during which a tiny spider is irradiated. The spider bites Parker, who inadvertently gains strange superhuman powers – enhanced senses, the ability to walk on walls and shoot webs from his hands. This coincides with a series of bizarre incidents involving prominent New York doctors, lawyers, businessmen and other pillars of society who inexplicably rob banks only to lose all memory of the events afterwards. Responsibility is taken by a mysterious person who claims that he possesses mind control technology that could make 50 random New Yorkers commit suicide unless a US$50 million ransom is paid. Parker discovers that the person behind the threats is Edward Byron (played by Thayer David), a popular self-help guru who manipulates his victims via microwave technology.
Any comparison between this and later screen incarnations of Spider-Man clearly points to the technological and financial limitations of 1970s television. Made on a low budget, this television film features rather primitive special effects and often displays them in recycled shots. Hammond is, on the other hand, passable as Peter Parker, but hardly impressive, and this becomes even more evident with other actors, like Nicholas Pataki as the hostile NYPD Captain Barbera, leaving a much more memorable impression. The main problem is the script, which treats Spider-Man’s origin story as something of an afterthought, never bothering to explain why Peter Parker would bother to wear a strange costume and fight criminals. The attempt to provide some sort of satirical commentary on self-help cults, which were gaining immense popularity in 1970s America, is quickly abandoned, and the exploitation of the martial arts craze, which comes in the form of Byron’s Asiatic henchman armed with kendo sticks, is quite lame. Although this pilot film is still watchable, it also gives an answer as to why the series was short-lived and why fans of Spider-Man had to wait for 21st-century Hollywood to treat the iconic character right.
RATING: 4/10 (++)
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