Spider-Man Strikes Back

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.

Spider-Man Strikes Back is nowhere near as good as the movies in Sam Raimi's excellent trilogy. But it's still pretty darn enjoyable.

It doesn't have a lot in common with the comic books, but neither did the Hulk series from the 70s, and that one is considered one of the best shows based on a Marvel comic book.

Nicholas Hammond is good as Peter Parker (the hair is hilarious, though...the 70s was a tacky decade), and aside from the visible web shooter and belt, the suit doesn't look any worse than Christopher Reeve's Superman outfit. J. Jonah Jameson is very funny, and the fight scenes and stunts are exciting to watch. I felt more dizzy watching this than any of the scenes in the new ones.

I can't remember anything offensive in it, the fight scenes are bloodless, and there's no nudity, except for some ladies in bikinis. If you have small kids, it's probably better to show them this than the scary movies in the Raimi trilogy.

When a group of students discover that their university is hoarding stocks of plutonium, they decide to put their skills to the test and build their own atom bomb.

But when this bomb then falls into the unsafe hands of meglomaniac millionaire Mr White, it falls to Spider-Man to save the day.

An engaging Spider-Man feature film made out of two episodes (The deadly Dust part 1 & 2) from the unfairly underrated series finds SpiderMan/peter Parker pursued by some bad guys who think that he knows where the stolen plutonium is, and, on top of that, a hot journalist wants to interview Spider-Man and thinks Parker could link her with SpiderMan.

There's a standout stunt work in which SpiderMan leaps from a helicopter and connects to another 'copter via his web slingers. No CGI- the stuntman (Fred Waugh) actually jumped out. There's plenty of Karate fights, a showdown in a ghost town. Robert Alda plays the villain Mr White, though I thought he was Howard Keel for a moment! Joanna Cameron is just wow!

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 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.