Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge

The Dragon's Challenge cuts back on the wallcrawling, webswinging action of our hero and concentrates on Japanese WWII-inspired political intrigue. How anti-exciting. Don't hire this for your kids because they'll be bored immedietly. Drama and spectacle is few and far between.

It's a boring story poorly told, which shifts to Japan half way through to allow for 20 minutes of sight-seeing (!) obviously funded by the Japanese tourist board.

Ultimately, Spidey simply captures the bad guys and rescues the hostage, who are at the top of a skyscraper, naturally. The political intrigue angle is nicely handled but for a superhero movie, we want supervillains! Evil schemes! Ultimately, the Japanese stuff in the plot is an excuse for kung fu antics that were so much in fashion at the time. A bunch of easily defeated martial artists are no substitute for a good supervillain though, especially ones who can't get within spitting distance of Spidey before he webs them up.

The special affects are fine, and the stunt work is excellent. The wallcrawling sequence with Spidey climbing a huge Japanese skyscraper is the best in the entire series; not only is it an enormous building, but when Spidey gets near the top he turns 90 degrees to check his Spider Tracer device, allowing for some vertigo-inducing P.O.V shots from a stuntman hanging upside down hundreds of feet in the air. Truly impressive stuff.

Unfortunately, considering so much kung fu is promised, Dragon's Challenge lacks action - there is only one proper fight scene - and just a lot of running around. The saving grace, really, is the awesome music, some of the funkiest jazz known to man. Spider-Man Strikes Back (1978) and Spider-Man (1977) are far better, so catch them instead.

Actually a great detective superhero film about the Spider.

This film is glued together from episodes 7 and 8 of season 2 of the well-known Spider-Man TV show, these two episodes are connected for international and European cinemas.

I like the Chinese vibe of Hong Kong and all the aesthetics of Kung Fu and stuff like that.

The film has great dialogue and great stunts with action scenes, which I think did a great job of ending the Hammond era on a great note.

I want to note the fact that in 1984/85 a crossover with the Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man with the then popular black suit was supposed to come out, but alas, it did not work out. Lol but then they made a crossover with Thor ... in general, we were broken off then.

After this two part episode, the series was givin the ax. This was the most exciting one. Spider-Man really takes a few beatings in this one, he gets called a coward, he also gets shot at. Really not a good day to be super-hero. The story is about Peter Parker/Spider-Man goes to Hong Gong, In hopes to flush out some bad guys who is trying to kill a rich but nice old Chinese man. I still don't think Nicholas Hammond looked the part of Peter Parker, but he plays it well non the less. This one was the best, not a single flaw or pot hole. It had great action and great suspence. Really a classic Spider-Man.

The Dragon's Challenge cuts back on the wallcrawling, webswinging action of our hero and concentrates on Japanese WWII-inspired political intrigue. How anti-exciting. Don't hire this for your kids because they'll be bored immedietly. Drama and spectacle is few and far between.

It's a boring story poorly told, which shifts to Japan half way through to allow for 20 minutes of sight-seeing (!) obviously funded by the Japanese tourist board.

Ultimately, Spidey simply captures the bad guys and rescues the hostage, who are at the top of a skyscraper, naturally. The political intrigue angle is nicely handled but for a superhero movie, we want supervillains! Evil schemes! Ultimately, the Japanese stuff in the plot is an excuse for kung fu antics that were so much in fashion at the time. A bunch of easily defeated martial artists are no substitute for a good supervillain though, especially ones who can't get within spitting distance of Spidey before he webs them up.

The special affects are fine, and the stunt work is excellent. The wallcrawling sequence with Spidey climbing a huge Japanese skyscraper is the best in the entire series; not only is it an enormous building, but when Spidey gets near the top he turns 90 degrees to check his Spider Tracer device, allowing for some vertigo-inducing P.O.V shots from a stuntman hanging upside down hundreds of feet in the air. Truly impressive stuff.

Unfortunetly, considering so much kung fu is promised, Dragon's Challenge lacks action - there is only one proper fight scene - and just a lot of running around. The saving grace, really, is the awesome music, some of the funkiest jazz known to man. Spider-Man Strikes Back (1978) and Spider-Man (1977) are far better, so catch them instead.

Shot partially in HONG KONG this episode uses asian intrigue to tell a tale that was unusual from most in the SPIDER MAN tv series. People find this show today at times painful to watch, yet it is good clean family fun. I supose in retrospect it is indicitive of the "cookie cutter" system in place at the time it was made. The show was aimed at kids when it was made in the 1970's yet the season run of the show was brutally short.