As Spider-Man swings back to the top of the box office with Brand New Day, Tom Holland’s 10-year stint as the character makes him the longest-running live-action Peter Parker, and the first to have four solo outings. His latest movie builds on an aspect of superheroes oft-forgotten by the Marvel Cinematic Universe: the isolating pitfalls of a dual identity. Recent big-screen versions (played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield) have touched on this idea, but no other feature film has really captured how harrowingly lonely Spidey’s spandex vigilantism can be. That is, no feature since the 1978 TV spin-off Spider-Man Strikes Back.
Starring Nicholas Hammond (The Sound Of Music‘s Friedrich Von Trapp), Spider-Man Strikes Back is the second of three features carved from CBS’s The Amazing Spider-Man series, which ran for 13 episodes from 1977 to 1979. The pilot was technically a TV movie with an international theatrical release, but the first episodes to air on U.S. television—the two-parter “The Deadly Dust”—were combined and repackaged by Columbia as a cinematic sequel overseas.
Directed by Ron Satlof, the 90-odd minute story introduces us to Peter a year into his vigilantism (while it was the first to air, “The Deadly Dust” was actually the fifth episode to be produced). Given its limited budget, its production value is nothing to write home about, but this gives the film a scrappy DIY charm, which enhances its dramatic sincerity. Peter works as a Daily Bugle photographer under a grumpy J. Jonah Jameson (Robert F. Simon) and alongside Jameson’s chummy secretary, Rita Conway (Chip Fields)—a version of the comics’ Glory Grant. It isn’t long before an attractive rival journalist, Gale Hoffman (Joanna Cameron), complicates both his public and secret lives by chasing down Spidey for a story.
Gale and Peter form a camaraderie that verges on romance, but Peter can’t bring himself to reveal his true identity. So, he speaks on Spidey’s behalf, in riddles that express just how lonely he feels. “How can he ever talk to people? What kind of a life can he really have?” Peter asks, about his own friendly neighborhood alter-ego. “People think it would be really wonderful to have Spider-Man’s powers… I’m not so sure whether it’s a blessing or a curse.”
While Aunt May exists in this universe, she makes only sporadic appearances, and Peter doesn’t seem to have any real friends, outside of congenial relationships with his coworkers. While it took the MCU four Spidey films (and seven appearances overall) to get to a similar stage, the ’70s Amazing series flies right out the gate with Peter agonizing over his duality and cutting himself off from the world. It isn’t long before Gale susses out his secret, though she keeps it to herself so the pair can continue talking around the truth. Besides, they end up chasing a much bigger and more important mystery than the man beneath the mask, courtesy of overzealous activists in Peter’s college physics class.
Drawing from the American anti-nuclear movement, the plot concerns a trio of youngsters who object to their professor’s use of plutonium for its potential in bombmaking, which they demonstrate by building a bomb. This goes about as well you’d expect, with one of them suffering radiation poisoning, and the others being hoodwinked by a wealthy supervillain—the karate-chopping, ivory-suited Mr. White (Robert Alda)—who steals the device and threatens to blow up the president unless he’s paid a billion dollars.
It’s all a bit silly, but the fact that it’s played completely straight allows us to take Peter’s emotional dilemmas seriously. His insistence on never revealing his identity gets him in hot water, as both he and Spider-Man become suspects in this nuclear ploy—a result of his constant snooping around. He even loses his job in the process, and his efforts to win it back take him to Mr. White’s lavish lair in California, where his metaphorical lone gunmanship is made quite literal when one of his chase scenes ends up on a Western movie backlot. It’s all a goofy delight that blends plot and character drama.
Sure, the action is fairly ragtag, and modern Spidey costumes have made it impossible to get used to Peter’s kitchen-drain-cover lenses. However, the shoestring quality of Peter’s powers yields enchanting ingenuity, like its enjoyable depiction of Spider-Sense. The 1977 Spider-Man movie first dramatizes Peter’s intuitive ESP by cutting rapidly between his close-ups and shots of violent events about to occur. Spider-Man Strikes Back imbues this editing with gonzo formal tricks, like Peter’s eyes lighting up in flashing red and blue—the colors of his costume, but he looks like a living police siren—while his premonitions take the form of photonegative footage, a hilarious flourish for a superhero photographer. Meanwhile, his webs (which resemble carefully woven ropes) are frequently filmed in POV shots as he releases them, and ensnare henchmen in perfectly circular nets. These shots are kooky and off-center, with the camera sitting on the shoulder of Spidey stunt performer Fred Waugh, making them resemble a second-person shooter video game. The film was accidentally ahead of its time in more than one way.
While all of this style seems cartoonish, it also makes Peter seem appropriately alien, adding to the sense that there’s something deeply strange about him, which he in turn feels the need to hide. Spider-Man Strikes Back may be the rare Spidey film to get overtly political (Peter and Glory poke fun at Jameson’s conservatism and distrust of communists), but despite its sprawling nuclear plot, the story’s focus remains on Peter’s bumbling attempts to wall off his disparate personae, lest his public and private lives bleed into one another and hurt those around him. This theme is what makes Brand New Day so riveting as well. And while no other modern Spidey film has really dramatized this conundrum—the burden of ultimate isolation while still living in the public eye—this kind of story has always been a part of the character’s DNA, whether in comics or on the big screen.
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