A friend of mine used to describe this shows as:

"The adventures of a costumed crimefighter with painful rectal itch looking for a box THIS BIG (holds out hands Spidey-style)."

Yes it was horrible but it was all we had. It was like gruel for Oliver Twist; it tasted like sawdust but he still went up there and asked for more.

Trivia: The actor who played Spider-Man also played the football player who broke a date with Marcia on the Brady Bunch when he saw her swollen nose thus leading to "something suddenly came up".

Wow. That really puts the "crap" in "craptastic." But, it's hard to be worse than Superboy.

...and gotta love the legal notice on the site the OP linked to.

PLAGIARISM IS ILLEGAL!
Please don't take any pictures, sounds, text or other content from this site without my EXPRESS, WRITTEN PERMISSION!

Uhm, you mean the **videos and screen grabs** from the show? The ones you "captured using a combination of the InterVIEW capture device from XLR8 and the GrabIT by AIMS Labs?" And the mp3s you captured "using Ultra Recorder and iTunes?" The ones I'm completely sure you have "EXPRESS, WRITTEN PERMISSION!" from the copyright owner to use? (*cough*cough*) Granted, I think illustrative examples constitute fair use, but please spare us the arrogant and hypocritical copyright lecture.

(paragraph 2 is a blockquote)

+ Watch video

The japanese take on spiderman is so much better

I think I remember watching this as a kid. I thought it was crap back then. Looking back now I know why I never liked Spiderman or seen any of the new movies.

I must admit, I loved this show when I was a kid. This isn't the first time I've realized, as a kid, you can love some real crap.

@xeijix:

+ Watch video

Italian Spiderman is better

"The japanese take on spiderman is so much better"

OMG. There's actually cheesy mecha! I can't tell from the clip if the mecha is the enemy or if it's Spidy's personal mech....

@Skeptic:

[video.google.com]

This is the full first episode with subs.

And that's Spidey's mech.

"This is the full first episode with subs."

Thanks for the link. The subs are amazing--as if they are reading my mind...

As far as the unmasking bit, I have to side with the bad guys. Let's imagine they take some precious time and yank the mask off. What do they see underneath? The unconscious face of some anonymous college kid who probably wouldn't even be recognized by most of the people in his year.

Let's look at how the dialogue would really go:

(Bad guy pulls off Spider Man's mask)

Bad Guy #1: "Who the fuck's that?"

Bad Guy #2: "Fuck if I know."

Bad Guy #1: "Fine. Blow his fucking head off and let's blow this candy store."

(BANG!)

that was great. i remember watching this when i was a kid. surely that is marvel's caravan of courage and will never be released?

He's got just 1 obnoxiously large webshooter that shoots webs from the opposite side of his palm!!!

@xeijix: Oh, Japan. Don't ever change.

@lonewolf333: Cute. But about three times longer than it probably needed to be...

It's not Spider-Vision. It's Spidey-sense. [www.geocities.com]

@IronicSans: you beat me to it! I registered here just to comment on that and clarify it.

I actually own a VHS version of an episode, I believe, called "The Chinese Puzzle". Maybe I should eBay it? Surely someone out there remembers it fondly enough to pay for it? :)

The thing about shows of this nature (live action superhero/sci-fi character/stunt shows) is that there is rarely enough actual action on it. Spider-Man, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, all suffered from unsatisifying action spread out over the episode...no one seemed to use their powers casually or in real-life situations. *sigh*

Even Knight Rider didn't show enough of the car doing its thing!

Kids (and kids at heart) tune in to see the fights, the powers, the stunts, etc., not to see a mystery solved, tension raised, or characters evolve.

Maybe one day there will be an action anthology series, maybe with revolving characters (perhaps a Flash Gordon, John Carter of Mars, stranded alien/magic user rotating show?). You get the idea...something where we can tune in once a week, see some really cool visual effects, scenery, stunts, and just be "fat and happy" at the end of the epsisode. Or maybe it's just me?

@cybergrunt: Umm, Caravan of Courage is available on DVD.

@bluewyvern: Dude, I would pay to see an Italian Spiderman movie.

You know what, I'm not saying it's GOOD, but I loved this show when I was a kid. Of course, I was seven at the time.

And oh...Spider-dude was also a von Trapp from the Sound of Music. I wonder if that's why he hated Red Skull so much?

Ye gods, how sophisticated we must feel. You know, in 1977, there wasn't exactly a plethora of superhero shows on TV. And by that, I mean there were TWO. And by TWO, I mean that one was blatant camp for it's first season (Wonder Woman) and the other was just a standard action drama for the time (Spiderman). Unless of course you count the Bionic Man (which didn't start as a comic book).

Are the effects cheesy? Damn right. Show me a TV show from that year that DIDN'T have cheesy effects. Hell, most MOVIES didn't have good effects until George Lucas raised up the industry with ILM. And Spiderman DID have one really good effect, the wall-crawling. Not the lousy chroma-key stuff you see here, but the actual 'suspended by a tow-wire on a real building' stuff. For the time, it was really impressive.

I'm not saying the show wasn't bad...but try watching some episodes of other shows at the time (Starksy and Hutch, Kojak, etc.) and you'll see it was in the same vein. Plus watching stuff that's 31 years old is gonna seem dated.

I don't care. I loved that show.

Of course, I was eight, so my expectations were probably pretty low.

Screw the DVD. I just want the soundtrack. That ROCKED!

@xeijix: OMFG that's hilarious! Spidey with some mad ninja skills. And WTF is up with that giant robot! LOL

This scared the crap out of me as a little kid.

The Electric Company Spiderman was way better.

Umm. I have every episode on DVD. (I bought it from a guy that sells old shows that havent officially made it to DVD) I still watch it occasionally. *hides*

Whatever, I fuckin loved this when I was a kid. Kids today are spoiled, when I was a kid you took what you could get when they made your favorite superheros move. Batman and Robin with the Harlem Globetrotters and Scooby Doo, fuck it why not.

I still get excited when I see this dude do little bit parts in TV and commercials. He's always been Peter Parker. This is still better than Spiderman 3.

@V.I.N.CENT: And yeah, the soundtrack rocked.

wow, I remember watching this when it came out but I don't remember it being that bad.
I do remember the ass-in-the-air-shuffle that he did when he pretended to be wall walking.

I am going to join the growing chorus of 70's babies that grew up on this and... fucking loved it! In my case, I saw it on the big screen in Romania where they showed the pilot as a motion picture and another two-parter as a "Spider Man 2" movie. Can't even express how huge this was over there in the 70's. Along with other exports like Charlie's Angels, Kojak and Streets of San Francisco, it really formed our view of "life in America". Ahh, those Charlie's Angels...

Awful is not the word...