Before Tom Holland, Andre Garfield And Tobey Maguire, There Was The 1977 Spider-Man Movie. It Was Bad.

We all know about the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, we all know about the Andrew Garfield abominations and the box office from this weekend indicates we're all already super familiar and in love with Tom Holland's take on the web-crawler. But did you know those aren't the only theatrically released Spider-Man movies?? Yes, there was actually a TV movie that served as a pilot for the late 70's live-action Spider-Man TV show that ran on CBS. Though it only aired on television here in the U.S., it garnered a notable international theatrical release and even spawned two sequels (both of which were comprised of two episodes of the TV show packed together) that also garnered international theatrical engagements.

This 1977 film serves as an origin story for this version of Spider-Man, which updates a large share of various facets of Peter Parker's personality. Most notably, instead of being a High Schooler who gets bitten by a spider on a class field trip, he's now a 20-year-old College student played by Nicholas Hammond who gets bitten by a spider during a science experiment he and his buddy are undertaking on their own accord. Weirdly, nothing else in the conventional Spider-Man origin story (the wrestling gig to get money, Uncle Ben dying, "With Great Power..") shows up and even the idea of him being new to this doesn't get much presence in the plot proper. He gets the Spider-Man suit quickly and that's all she wrote on doing an origin story.

Anywho, the main obstacle Spider-Man must face here is...not Green Goblin, not Kraven The Hunter, not even The Rhino but rather a man by the name of Edward Byron (Thayer David), a dude who poses as a self-help instructor whose actually hypnotizing people into committing all sorts of crimes. Of course, both the viewer and Spidey are unaware that Byron is the one behind these crimes at first so the story at first concerns itself with Spidey trying to track down who is behind all of these unusual robberies and crooks before segueing into him trying to figure out a way to stop Byron while also unwittingly being under the man's mind control.

There is so much weird stuff to unpack in this 1977 Spider-Man film, it's kind of a treasure trove of flat-out odd decisions. Most notably, it's so bizarre to me how it feels like it was written by people who kind of knew the mythology of this character but only a handful of pieces of that mythology. The Daily Bugle is here, as are J. Jonah Jameson and Robbie Roberston, while Peter Parker lives with his Aunt May, but no other supporting characters or elements of his comic book roots appear. No Gwen Stacy, no Uncle Ben, no villains from the comics. Fidelity to the source material is not a requirement for a good movie of course, I just found it amusing how it seemed like the people writing this thing just seemed to grab three Spider-Man supporting characters and then created wholly new individuals to popuate the rest of the story.

In terms of the story itself though, credit where credit is due, at least the plot is decently structured and the bad guy's plan is cohesive. As a villain Byron doesn't have much, if any, motivation but at least the story he's involved in keeps his nefarious plans as the central focus of the plot, there aren't a lot of weird plot detours or anything like that. That's about the highest praise I can lavish on this 1977 Spider-Man movie but that does give it a leg up on the nonsensical plots of the two Amazing Spider-Man movies at least. The rest of it's just forgettable in its few best moments and laughably inept in its worst moments. Even by the standard of a 1977 superhero TV movie, this is a laughably poor affair.

For those hoping Spider-Man will have a large and fun presence in this Spider-Man movie, prepare to be crushed as he has little in the way of screentime. When he does show up, his costume looks pretty subpar and oddly terrifying in some shots. The way he's framed and filmed when he's just walking around on rooftops generates laughs when it should be generating heart-pounding action. Way too many times the movie just lets elongated wide shots of Spider-Man trapsing around on rooftops for reasons that are unclear and they just go on and on for seemingly forever. There's one good action beat in a duel between Spider-Man and some henchman and a cute moment where Spidey playfully waves goodbye to his enemies before swinging away on a piece of webbing feels like classic Spider-Man behavior, but this version of Spider-Man is incredibly unexciting and tedious in the few times he shows up on-screen.

Peter Parker himself gets played by Nicholas Hammond, a guy who doesn't emanate a whole lot in the way of a discernible personality in his performance. He's a total blank slate who seems far more like a human incarnation of a Melatonin tablet than a nerd. Scenes where he interacts with a love interest named Judy (played by Lisa Eilbacher) somehow create negative amounts of palpable romantic tension. At least Hammond gets to deliver the thoroughly bewildering final line of dialogue in the movie that totally seems like a payoff line to some kind a previously established moment that the movie forgot to actually establish which at least ends the movie on a big unintentional laugh. If you're looking for those kind of giggles, this incredibly inept 1977 Spider-Man movie actually does have them in spades though it really does have nothing else to offer beyond some laughs at its low quality.