La riposte de l'homme-araignée

YOU can criticise this movie in every department - if you compare it to films like Superman and Batman. But if you look at it as a movie of its time - the late 70's - and just let it wash over you, it's great stuff.

The fight scenes are funky rather than violent, the stunts are still impressive even today - man, is that guy really being pulled up a skyscraper by a rope? - and the whole thing is just so entertaining, if not thrilling. The bad guys are lousy, and the whole thing didn't cost much, but just seeing Spidey running around makes you smile.

I am sorry, but this movie was worst the then first one. How can you have a superhero movie without a super-Villain? Where is the web slinging! Why do he need transportation to get around?(helicopter to go the the roof of a building????). With a low budget and boring storyline, this movie is not even worth a rental! Hammond is too old to play Peter Parker, and where is Mary Jane, and Betty Brant? How is it that the Spiderman in the comics can take on Doctor Octopus, but in this made-for-TV movie, he gets his A*S kicked by TWO thugs? My children of 15, 11 an 8 saw this movie and threaten to call Child Protective Services for being cruel for making them watch this joke of a movie...Please, and I do mean please....I am asking all network media bosses only for one thing....If you going to make a Superhero movie for TV make sure that you stick to the original ideal of the comic and make sure that the Superhero has a Super-Villain to fight with.

Well you've read the comics, seen the various cartoon's and then you watch this. "Sweet jesus what is going on" was my first thought when viewing this nugget of 70's nostalgia. The first shock came when I saw good old Peter Parker, not only was he sporting a very fetching donkey jacket (I could almost smell the tramp urine) he also had the most ridiculous haircut, "ah well its only seventies fashion" I thought to my self, but no, not only had PP taken up the substitute school teachers wardrobe, he had somehow lost all his classic wit (probably all them nasty drugs). No longer was Peter Parker the nerd who became cool, he was just a nerd. Then he donned the spandex...

Gone was the athletic wall crawler who swung his way round the city with ease, only to be replaced by a positively lethargic "2cm per hour wall crawling speed" imposter, instead of gracefully traversing the city roof tops via his web shooters, he seemed to prefer to run about in a very foppish manner indeed (usually sticking to the one roof top)although on one occasion in the film he does swing from one building to another (although it is the exact same footage that was used in the first film and his webs are now inch thick white rope that can self tie knots around poles and other protruding objects). Then there's the fight scenes, In the comics he goes head to head with people such as Rhino and other massive super strong villians, In this he gets smacked by skinny "Jeff Capes" lookalikes, (so much for spider strength). On the villian front there is Mr. White who's about as threatening as your mum. Ah well for all its faults it is part of the Spiderman legacy, even if it does reflect the cheese of the seventies far too well. Watch it if your a die hard Spider-fan (call it spiderman the wilderness years) but if your new to the world of spider-man, read the comics and wait for Sam Raimi's film.

Back in the more innocent and carefree days of my early childhood life as a right young lad, I was properly into comic book-based superheroes (despite me never having read a single one of them). From the '60s Batman (Adam West & Burt Ward) to the '70s Incredible Hulk (Bill Bixby & Lou Ferrigno), I'd watch just about everything that had anything to do with these colourful, costume-wearing icons of pop-culture history. At roughly around the same time as when Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man film began to grow into a viable franchise juggernaut during the early 2000s, I remember having this old video tape of another Spider-Man movie that actually predated the more famous Tobey Maguire incarnation we all came to know and love (but little had I known it was from many, many years prior to when I was born). Yep, well before the immensely-beloved live-action Spider-Men of today's world (including Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland), there was the less-than-popular version played by Nicholas Hammond (of Sound of Music fame).

So now that I've had a chance to unearth and revisit this relic from my youth, was it actually worth rewatching after all these years? Well, yes and no. To my naive juvenile self, this was one of the coolest things ever. But to my now adult mindset, this is quite possibly one of the most laughable things ever. We always tend to take certain things a little more seriously as kids, so I'd say it's probably best-viewed through the eyes of a child (it suffers from what I like to call "Power Rangers syndrome" in that respect, where as a youngster it was really awesome but now as a grown-up it's kind of embarrassing). Seeing as though it was only a made-for-TV movie after all (not to mention, one from the 1970s), I'll cut it some slack on the special-effects side of things (such as with his web-slinging and the compositing shots) as I suppose they really weren't that awful when taking into account the decade in which this came out and the very minimal budget it must've had at the time of its production (you've honestly got to take these factors into consideration when judging a product such as this fairly). The stunt-work is truly enjoyable to watch as every bit of the choreographed fight sequences left me in hysterics, and I'm guessing this was most likely due to the heavier type of bulky TV cameras they were using in the late '70s (which I'm sure had a limited range of motion back then). And to top it all off with the technical details, there's always loads of unintentionally cheesy-sounding music cues which make the dramatic scenes seem more hilarious than anything else (no further comment on that one).

Although he's nothing like the full-fledged Peter Parker from the Raimi trilogy, Nicholas Hammond still does a semi-decent job in the role (Hammond's interpretation of Parker manages to capture that intellectual aspect of his nerdy character fairly well, and he even goes through the typical phase of wishing he'd never become the wall-crawling web-head). The spandex suit they designed is kind of a joke (I don't mean to be too picky here and maybe I've been spoilt by all the newer suit designs, but this one's aesthetic choices just make it look so funny in comparison to those others). Not only does it's very appearance come-off as if to say it was originally a cheaply-made, store-bought Halloween costume, but the mask's eyes are also pretty goofy-looking. And as for Spider-Man's movements, let's just say they're a little odd at best and downright bizarre at worst. Whenever he's lightly-running across a rooftop or crawling up and down the side of a building, it just looks incredibly awkward. Oh yeah, and the "Spider Sense" sequences are a spectacular sight to behold (it's just a dazzling display of strobing colour-effects layered over a choppily-edited scene of whatever the baddies are up to).

I'm very much aware of the fact that I haven't talked about the plot at all, but that's mostly because it doesn't really matter a whole lot, seeing as how it's not very memorable and feels so generically bland (there's something to do with Spider-Man having to stop a bomb from going off during a world peace conference, or at least something to that extent?). Quite frankly, it's just your mediocre '70s self-contained TV plot-line of the week (a pretty forgettable story, all-round). But even after all my harsh criticisms, I still find there's somewhat of an amusement factor to it (I suppose that's just my nostalgic memory doing the talking for me, now). It's a small-screen adaptation that's bound to go down in superhero history as an ironically-entertaining anomaly in the wider Spidey franchise (only for the morbidly-curious of dedicated Marvel Comics fans to seek out).

I have seen a lot of bad reviews for this, but I saw it, and like it. Yeah, Spider-Man strikes back looks low budget, but here's the thing: this "movie" is actually the two-part series premiere of the 1977 series, The Deadly Dust, edited into a movie, so that is why it's so low budget.

After being framed for the theft of a nuclear bomb, made by three students at New York State University, which they made by stealing plutonium in order to do a project on the dangers of nuclear power. Unfortunatly, this news comes to Mr. White, a Swiss arms dealer, who comes to New York City seeking to take the bomb for a ransom plot. Now Spidey has to stop the madman from going through with his plot to detonate the bomb if he is not given one billion dollars, in a mission that takes the web head to Los Angeles.

This is a great movie. Yeah, it's not as good as the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies as well as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but you have to remember this was made from two episodes of a TV show, made on a TV show budget. Nicholas Hammond deserves the same respect that Tobey, Andrew, and Tom get for playing the wall crawler, as he does a good job separating Peter Parker and Spider-Man, and Robert Alda does a good job as the villainous Mr. White.