ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Long before Tobey Maguire domed the outfit and swung down Broadway, this made-for-TV movie took a shot at moving the web-slinger off the comic book pages putting him onto the screen.

It was released theatrically in Europe.

Nicholas Hammand stars as the shy high school student, Peter Parker, who is bitten by a radioactive spider and develops super strength, adhesive hands-and-feet, and a "spider sense" which alerts him to danger.

Parker also uses his spider-mutated blood to synthesize a liquid "web" material which he can eject from small mechanical sprayers he wears on his wrists. This is how it was presented in the comic books, but later changed in the first three feature films with Tobey Maguire.

Stan Lee served as script consultant for writer Alvin Boretz on this TV treatment of the character, in which he thwarts a mind-control scheme.

Directed by E. W. Swackhamer. Also starring Michael Pataki, Bob Hasting, and Thayer David ("Journey to the Center of the Earth").
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Boy, it's really getting easy to find YouTube videos of TV movies and pilot episodes of unsold series. YouTube seems to be more tolerant of things like that than theatrical features — even the low-budget ones that you'd think nobody would care about!
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The Amazing Spider-Man - Season 1 & 2 (1977-1979)


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

Checking on Wikipedia, I see that the Spider-Man TV series starring Nicholas Hammond didn't last very long.

"The Amazing Spider-Man was shown in the United States from September 19, 1977 to July 6, 1979. Though it was a considerable ratings success, the CBS series was cancelled after just 13 episodes, which included a pilot movie airing in autumn of 1977."

They later refer to that as "a backdoor pilot," which I guess means that they made the TV movie as in theory a one-off, and waited for the audience reaction before having any official thoughts about a series.