Marvel Mondays #5 - Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979)

It's safe to say that the first two instalments of the '70s Spiderman film trilogy didn't exactly get glowing reviews in this blog so the prospect of going back for a third helping definitely wasn't something I was looking forward to. However, needs must as the devil drives his snowplough and all that...

"Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge" was, as it turned out, the final episode of the Amazing Spiderman TV series in the States (shown in July 1979, a full five months after the one before it due to the series being pushed out of its prime time slot) before it was cancelled in the face of poor reviews and ratings but it did make it over for a UK and European cinema release a couple of years later in 1981 with the aim of kickstarting a new series. However, this never happened and Spidey wouldn't be seen on the big screen again for another two decades.

(NB - I s'pose if we're going by cinema release dates then it should probably go after next week's Captain America 2 - however, firstly I'm going on the order these things were released in and secondly, a double dose of '70s Captain America could well end in me losing my sanity and I'm sure nobody needs that. Also, interestingly, there was apparently plans for a "Spiderman vs Hulk" movie in 1984 to try and reboot both series with Nicholas Hammond and Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno starring but due to lack of interest, this also came to nought)

One year on from the abysmal "Spiderman Strikes Back!" and Peter Parker is still working at the Daily Bugle having now graduated from college. J Jonah Jamieson returns in this third instalment as does his receptionist Rita Conway who we saw in the second film but otherwise it's pretty much a whole new cast here. Gail Hoffman has been replaced as Spidey's sort of love interest at the Bugle by Julie Masters although it's never properly established whether they're dating or just friends.

Anyway, the story this time - J Jonah Jamieson gets an unexpected visit from a Chinese exchange student who he was friends with at Uni called Min Lo Chan who now works as Industrial Development Minister for the Chinese government but is currently on the run after being caught up in a corruption scandal involving some American GI's approaching him for secrets about Chairman Mao during the war. He now needs to find the GI's to prove his innocence but an evil American industrialist called Zeider who wants to build a huge nuclear plant in Shanghai is on his trail. As Chan opposes the plan, Zeider wants him dead or imprisoned and has sent some goons to make sure he never gets back to Hong Kong. Jamieson's solution - I know, Peter Parker's friends with Spiderman, I'll send them to look after you!

Pete and Min get an early warning that this isn't going to be a cakewalk when they're ambushed straight away in the archives room at the Daily Bugle. Luckily the Matt Berry lookalike goon who's been sent is probably the most inept hitman ever and Spidey defeats him by catching a stack of newspapers that the guy throws at him then bowling them back at his legs to knock him over.

Min takes Peter to his daughter Emily's house where he says they'll be safe which, of course, means that the villains promptly break in about five minutes later. Peter runs off into the spare room leading Emily to think he's done a runner but he returns as Spidey to take the villains out. Unfortunately Min ends up having a heart attack with the stress of the whole thing and Emily calls Peter a coward and storms off after her dad's put in the ambulance and taken to the hospital.

Forced to go it alone on the case, Peter discovers that Zeider's right hand man Evans has stolen the information regarding the contact details for the three GI's caught up in the corruption scandal and is planning to pass it to some goons to take back to Hong Kong later that day. There's a punch-up at the tube station which sees Spidey shot in the arm after he nicks the film and he only narrowly avoids getting mown down by a subway train but just to say makes his escape. Unfortunately it turns out that of the three GI's, one is dead, one is critically ill in hospital and the other one, a Professor Dent at Peter's old college, wants nothing to do with the case.

Rendezvousing back at the hospital, Jamieson comes up with a plan which involves the Bugle printing a fake news story (blimey, there's ahead-of-the-curve thinking for you!) stating that Min is dead to throw the villains off the scent while they transfer him to a private hospital out of the city. In the meantime, Min orders Peter and Emily to put their differences aside and try and persuade Dent to go with them to Hong Kong to testify in the trial.

Rain check - halfway in and so far, this has actually been a bit of an improvement on its predecessors with a lot more happening, the action sequences being a lot less repetitive and even though the villains yet again aren't really proper OTT Spidey villains, the plot's at least reasonably gripping. Unfortunately we've still got 50 minutes of the film to go and it's almost like the scriptwriters completely ran out of ideas here. After persuading Dent to go along with their plan, Peter and Emily jet off to Hong Kong with the professor in tow. The film then spends twenty odd minutes on them going sightseeing which makes for as captivating viewing as you'd expect before thankfully Evans and his gang end this torture for the viewers by kidnapping Dent at an Oriental market.

Spidey gives chase on a junk boat but loses the goons halfway across the harbour. Him and Emily then try to locate where Dent's being held in a helicopter...only to land at the farm where the villains had him about five minutes after they've done a runner meaning the place is empty. That waste of time takes up another ten minutes of the film before Spidey trails the villains back to the harbour again only for them to shoot him with a poison dart which leads to him falling 30 feet into the water. Emily and some locals pull him out and take him to the local hospital where the doc ends up removing his mask and Emily finally twigs that Peter is Spiderman.

At this point, there's literally five minutes of the film left meaning the final sequence with Spidey trailing the transmitter he placed on Dent earlier to Zeider's HQ, beating him, Evans and the goons, rescuing Dent, winning the trial and having a quick snog with Emily before he gets back on his plane feels just a bit rushed especially given how painfully slowly the film's been going prior to this.

Although it's a slight improvement on its predecessor, this is still a massively below-par film which is pretty much terminally wrecked by bad pacing. The first 30-40 minutes is passable enough but as soon as Peter Parker jumps on the plane to Hong Kong the film slows to an absolute crawl and it's all you can do to avoid losing interest. I do actually feel quite sorry for Nicholas Hammond as the poor standard of these films isn't his fault (certainly compared to Reb Brown in the Captain America film the other week he's practically Richard Burton in terms of acting ability) and there's only so much he can do with the poor material he's been given. Any road up, this was pretty much the end for Spidey on the big and small screen for 20+ years. Happily the reboot would make for some much better viewing...but unfortunately it's gonna be a good few months before we get to it.

FINAL RATING: 🕸🕸🕸 3/10

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
2. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
3. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
4. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
5. Spiderman Returns (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Captain America versus Sauron! Unfortunately not as exciting as it sounds...

Marvel Mondays #4: Captain America (1979)

For those who've seen the modern day Captain America films which are among the best in the MCU, it's strange to think that Cap was once up there with the Fantastic Four in terms of having an embarrassing number of terrible films to his name. Today, we're looking at the first of them - 1979's "Captain America". Sorry Cap.

Following on from earlier commercial successes with the Hulk and Spiderman plus the unfairly maligned Doctor Strange film, it's perhaps no surprise that Cap would be the next Marvel character to get the film treatment. This film was a straight-to-TV movie from early 1979. I dunno if it was supposed to be a precursor to a series but they ended up making a sequel later in the year. However, nothing came of it and the idea was promptly shelved for a decade. Watching this, I'm afraid it's fairly easy to see why...

It's safe to say that if you're familiar with the modern day Captain America films (or even the 1990 one) that Universal took a fair few liberties with the script for this version of the story. The main protagonist isn't Steve Rogers but Steve Rogers Jr, the son of the 1940's Captain America who we learn was killed after World War 2 finished by some shady characters. The film starts with Steve cruising up the California coast in his campervan having just completed his service with the Marines. Steve (played by Reb Brown) is a big muscular tanned blonde hippy surfer dude who now works as a freelance portrait artist (?!) and we see him calling in at his mate's surf shack to catch up where he finds out a message has been left for him by one of his dad's old scientist mates.

As it turns out, the guy's lab is only ten miles away so Steve decides to drive up to see him only to be diverted off the road by some dodgy workmen who send him up a narrow mountain road. As he's on his way up, a tanker covers the thing with oil and he ends up driving off a cliff edge. His shirt's ripped but he's otherwise unscathed (!) - however, his Mystery Machine-alike van is a write off.

Having presumably walked or hitch-hiked the remaining distance to the lab, Steve meets up with the two scientists Simon and Wendy who explain that they've been working to recreate the FLAG (Full Latent Ability Gain) serum that his dad used to get his superpowers back in the 1940s and, as he's the only genetic fit, would he be interested in helping them? Steve says thanks but no thanks then promptly returns home to find his friend Haydon brutally murdered. Soon Simon turns up as it turns out Haydon was a friend of his as well and he and Steve wonder who could be behind this.

As if by coincidence, Steve suddenly gets a phone call from someone who says they're also trying to find out who the murderer was asking him to meet them at a garage at midnight. Of course, it's a trap with Steve jumping on his motorbike to try and escape only to inadvertently drive off a cliff edge again. Bet Chris Evans never had this problem...

Steve ends up in the local ICU and Simon decides to take a risk by injecting him with the FLAG serum which ends up saving his life. He has another chat with Steve when he wakes up but he still doesn't want anything to do with the Captain America project. However, on leaving the hospital, Steve is promptly kidnapped at gunpoint by the same guys who were at the garage and taken to a local slaughterhouse. It turns out the goons were searching for a film in Haydon's house but Steve doesn't know where it is either. The thugs try to off him but they aren't counting on Steve now having Captain America style superpowers and he easily beats seven bells out of them and leaves them for the cops to collect.

Figuring that if there's a bunch of people out to kill him he's probably gonna need all the help he can get, Rogers agrees to hook up with Simon and Wendy to explore his new powers further (and get some quality smooching time with a swimsuit-clad Wendy on the beach). Simon reveals that the agency has recovered the wreck of his van and modded it to launch his motorcycle out of the back. Rogers promptly takes the bike for a spin round the agency test track only to be ambushed by two goons in a helicopter. He leaps into the helicopter from the top of a ramp jump and beats them both up before landing the thing in what's actually quite a fun if slightly overlong sequence ('70s Marvel relying on padding films out again? Perish the thought!)

Meanwhile, Haydon's daughter Tina receives a visit from Lou Brackett, an old business partner of her late father who asks her if she knows where the elusive film is hidden. She eventually remembers but of course the whole thing is a ruse with Brackett being in cahoots with the bad guys and kidnapping both her and Wendy who's popped over to pay her a visit for reasons unexplained. They're taken to an abandoned petrol plant which leads to Rogers FINALLY suiting up to become Captain America and speeding into the place on his dirtbike.

To be honest, this is probably the best bit of the film as we get an enjoyable enough punch-up between Cap and the baddies culminating in him spilling a load of oil over the yard leading to the baddies doing a pratfall en masse and Cap giving the goofiest grin possible.

Anyway, Steve rescues Tina and Wendy but Brackett has already fled the scene. Apparently he needed the film as it contained images showing him how to create a neutron bomb (what is it with late '70s Marvel films and nuclear warfare obsessed villains) and is now on the way to Los Angeles to blow it up. The trouble is that he's travelling in the back of a lorry (!) so as not to stand out meaning he's stuck going at about 40mph. This officially makes him the dumbest villain in a Marvel film to date as all Cap and Simon have to do is find a lorry from the company slowly driving towards LA. They duly do, Cap diverts the exhaust into the lorry and causes Brackett to pass out from the fumes. That's it. Literally. No big end of film fight, just a mild case of asphyxiation and a dull sequence involving a helicopter chasing a lorry. Oh and it turns out that Haydon's wife wasn't dead after all, it was just a ruse by Brackett to keep him in a vulnerable position with regards to helping the baddies. There's no preamble to that revelation at the end of the film btw.

Quite honestly, apart from the pratfall scene (which I've totally just ruined by spoilering it now, sorry) there really isn't any reason to watch this version of "Captain America". As with a lot of Marvel films of this era, it suffers from interminable padding sequences of not much happening, some real "giant sequoia" style wooden acting from Brown in the title role and just generally being very very dull. It's only really the fact that "Spiderman Strikes Back" was even duller that stops it going straight to the bottom of the league table. Universal did give the franchise another go later on in the year but as we'll see, that effort wasn't much better either. Unfortunately Cap was still a good 30 years away from starring in a decent movie at this point...

FINAL SCORE: 🎯🎯2/10

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
2. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
3. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
4. Spiderman Returns (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Spiderman goes to Hong Kong (but forgets to take more than half an hour's worth of plot with him...)

Marvel Mondays #3: Spiderman Strikes Back (1978)

Week three of my trawl through the Marvel back catalogue then and it's a second dose of Spidey for you. "Spiderman Strikes Back" was, depending on which side of the Atlantic you live on, the pilot episode for the Spiderman TV series in the States or the second Spiderman film to be released in cinemas in the UK and Europe. We looked at its predecessor, "Spiderman" a couple of weeks ago on this blog and to be honest, while there's worse Marvel films out there, it suffered from long periods of not very much happening and the lack of a genuinely threatening villain. So, could ABC get it right second time out? Let's see...

This sequel is set a year after the original Spiderman film with Peter having moved out of Aunt May's house and got his own flat while still splitting his time between working at the Daily Bugle as a photographer and studying at college. The only other characters to return from the original film are Peter's boss at the Bugle J Jonah Jamieson (though it's a different actor playing the part this time) and Michael Pataki as Captain Barbera, Parker's contact at the NYPD (sensible as he was one of the better things about the first film).

The plot then - one of Peter's science lecturers announces to his class that he has managed to procure some plutonium to help with the experiments he's doing which raises the ire of a trio of CND type students who plot to steal the plutonium as a way to make a statement as to how dangerous nuclear material is. Um yeah, you can already see that this thing's gonna have more plot holes than a Swiss cheese can't you?

Meanwhile, Spiderman's heroics have attracted the attention of a reporter from the national Examiner paper called Gail Hoffman who turns up at the Bugle asking if she can shadow Peter for a bit to hopefully get an interview with Spiderman. Cue ninety minutes of Parker pretty much pulling excuses out of his arse about why you never see him and Spidey in the same place at the same time. Fairly amusing the first time, less so by about the 16th...

Anyway, the CND student types steal the plutonium from the lab. Spiderman goes to stop them but he arrives too late and only succeeds in getting seen leaving the building by the security guards making him (and by extension Peter who everyone assumes is Spidey's best mate) number one suspect in the case. The students are expecting the story to be a big panic front page headline but it ends up being relegated to page 10 on the Bugle with an expert commenting that the plutonium isn't really dangerous anyway. Rather than accepting that they should really just give the f**k up at this point, they decide to make their point as to how dangerous the stuff is by building a nuclear bomb using their flat which just so happens to have a handy laboratory capable of handling nuclear waste in it.

Okay, let's just take a rain check here - this has got to be the stupidest plot to a film that I've ever come across. Peace-loving hippy students steal nuclear waste and then decide to build a bomb from it to demonstrate that nuclear waste is bad. Oh and they've managed to set up a lab for building stuff with plutonium in one of them's flat on a student budget. It's...just...GGGAAAHHHH! HOW DID THIS FILM EVER GET MADE WITHOUT SOMEONE SAYING THIS IS F**KING STUPID?! Anyway, yes, sorry - word gets out about the robbery to an LA-based villain called Mr White (who looks more like Burt Reynolds as dressed by Colonel Sanders than a Spiderman baddie) who decides to head from his holiday home in Switzerland (!) across to New York and nick some of the waste for himself.

Unsurprisingly, he succeeds as one of the students ends up falling ill with radiation poisoning (duh) and has to be taken to the hospital by the other two. With the cops initially having arrested Peter, he ends up released with an apology after they turn themselves in but the incident still results in him being fired from the Bugle. Meanwhile, with the nuclear-lab-in-a-flat unattended, White's goons simply waltz in and take the bomb. Spiderman attempts to stop them but only ends up getting thrown off a roof by one of them and saving himself by spinning a web across the alley to break his fall before placing a transmitter bug on their getaway car.

We're about halfway through the film now but the rest of it is such a non-event that I'm gonna skim through it quickly for the sake of all our sanities. Peter and Gail track White back to LA with Jamieson tagging along to keep an eye on them (having given Peter his job back and on the premise that he gets a major scoop out of it). They get involved in a car/bike chase with White's two thugs (a big seven foot bloke and the most inept karate henchman you ever did see) and, having already got into a scrap with them twice in New York, fight them about three more times, first on an old Wild West movie set, then in a music studio and finally at White's mansion. The fight scenes are pretty much interchangable and dull as ditchwater to be honest.

In the meantime, Gail gets kidnapped and forced to lounge around the pool in a bikini by White prior to Spidey finally turning up and defeating the thugs at about the fifth attempt. He doesn't even manage to catch White who has taken the bomb downtown and left it on a building next to the stadium where the President is due to give a big speech that day. Spidey flies in on a helicopter, jumps on to the top of the building and defuses the bomb about three minutes after White has left and about five seconds before it's due to go boom. That's it. No big final showdown, no villain getting brought to justice, just a bloke defusing a bomb on top of a tower block. Talk about the most anticlimactic movie ending ever...

Overall judgment - good lord this film is BAD. Even ignoring the 40 odd years of cinematic progress since it was made, it just seems to have taken all the bad bits from the first Spiderman and made them ten times worse. Loads of padding? Check. Repetitive fight scenes? Check. Underwhelming villain who looks more like he belongs in a Starsky and Hutch episode? Check. Add to that the stupid ending which doesn't resolve anything and this one's a real stinker frankly. There would be one more Spiderman film before ABC dropped the series and we'll be dealing with it in a couple of weeks' time. Let's just say I'm not getting my hopes up...

FINAL RATING: 🕸🕸 2/10

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
2. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
3. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Captain America - the campervan years!

Marvel Mondays #2 - Dr Strange (1978)

A year on from the first Spiderman film and Marvel were starting to get a foothold in the world of TV and cinema. As well as Spidey's TV series being commissioned, the Incredible Hulk would also make his small screen debut later in the year (although it's gonna be another decade before we see him on the big screen). So, plenty of scope for a third Marvel TV series given that the first two were doing well...who would it be? Iron Man? Captain America? The X-Men? The Fantastic Four?

Nope, Dr Strange.

Of course, thanks to the recent MCU film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, most fans now know who Dr Strange is but this must've seemed like a bit of a leftfield turn at the time as he wasn't exactly one of the better known Marvel characters. Nevertheless, fresh off picking up a hit with the Hulk series, Universal commissioned a pilot for a potential Dr Strange TV series. Unfortunately, unlike the big green dude, this one bombed and the series was quietly shelved. As with Spidey the year before though, the film was given a limited theatrical release internationally and as such it qualifies for this list.

I have to be honest, with the exception of the Incredible Hulk film (which is very much an "is it or isn't it?" affair in any case due to Edward Norton being in it instead of Mark Ruffalo), the recent "Dr Strange" is probably my least favourite of the modern day MCU films. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good film but as good an actor as ol' Benny C is, he feels a bit miscast in the role while the plot definitely had a few noticeable holes in it. Minor gripes in the big scheme of things but when you're in such high quality company as the other MCU films, it does end up being a bit noticeable if you're not quite as good. So how does this one compare?

Well, one change from the modern film, the villain in this one is female - Morgan La Fey the sorceress who has been sent to earth by some evil hell demon type thing to kill the Sorcerer Supreme Thomas Lindmer (played by John "him from Kula Shaker's grandad" Mills, kind of the replacement character for the comic books' Ancient One as played by Tilda Swinton in the more recent Dr Strange film) and stop him appointing a successor before his power runs out. Jessica Walter who plays La Fey is probably the highlight of the film as she nails the whole femme fatale thing pretty well.

La Fey possesses a woman called Clea Lake and sends her to kill Lindmer which she tries to do by throwing him off a pedestrian bridge on to a busy road below. Being a sorcerer though, Lindmer survives and deduces that La Fey is after him. After chatting things through with his right hand man Wong, he decides he'd probably better get on with appointing a successor sharpish and tells Wong to contact a Dr Stephen Strange who works as a psychiatrist (not a surgeon in this version) at the local hospital. As it turns out, Lake (now freed from La Fey's possession) has been checked into the hospital after a cab driver found her wandering dazed in the street in the early hours of the morning so Lindmer's basically got both the people he was looking for in one place which is handy.

The next half hour is a bit of a slowburn to be honest with a lot of dream sequences and people at the hospital trying to work out what's wrong with Clea. If I'm gonna be really cruel here, I could say that it gets a bit reminiscent of the awesome spoof '80s horror show "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace" at times but hey, let's give it a chance eh? Plus you can always marvel at Strange's impressive white man afro to while away the time if you get bored...

After a bit of persuading, Lindmer persuades Strange that Clea has slipped into a coma due to La Fey's spell and that in order to rescue her he's going to have to do a dimension jump type thing and enter a demon realm. Lindmer gives him a safe word to use if he needs to be recalled and we promptly get the most hilarious "Austin Powers on acid" style dimension jump sequence you ever did see.

Morgan attempts to stop Strange by sending some sort of evil demon knight after him (which is meant to be scary but...um, really isn't) but in a battle which looks like they did it in a warehouse with some glow in the dark scenery, Strange shouts the safe word, banishes the knight and rescues Clea.

Demon dude is not happy with Morgan who admits she's been taking it easy on Strange because she's attracted to him. Because, as we know, girls all used to go crazy over guys who looked like a grown up version of Screech from "Saved By The Bell" back in 1978. Possibly. Anyway, back on earth, Lindmer asks Strange if he wants to be his successor as per the prophecy. Strange says thanks but no way EVER am I doing any kind of dimension jump again. On his way out of Lindmer's house, he sees a black cat sheltering from the rain and, figuring it must belong to Lindmer, brings it in.

Schoolboy error - obviously it's La Fey who promptly battles and beats both Wong and Lindmer using some '70s laser special effects. This probably looked dead cool at the time but, as with a lot of '70s Marvel stuff, it hasn't exactly aged well.

Meanwhile, Clea has been discharged from hospital and asks Strange if he'd like to go out on a date with her. Because, as we've already established, white guys with afros were irresistible in 1978. However, on arriving at her flat, La Fey reappears and sends Clea into a trance ordering Strange to come with her if he wants to see her again.

La Fey and Strange arrive on the demon plane (which basically looks like a platform with skulls on it hanging in midair) where she tries to seduce him into joining her. She almost succeeds until he sees Lindmer crucified just behind their bed...yeah, I'd imagine that'd be a bit of a passion killer. Strange uses the thunderbolt from his sorcerer ring to burn away the thorns and makes his escape with Lindmer back to earth. Fire demon is so angry at this that he turns Morgan into an ancient hag as punishment.

Wong is there to meet them and after reviving Lindmer, they complete the ritual to transfer the power over to Strange (who gets a natty new set of robes in the process). Next day, Strange is back at the hospital and finally gets to go on his date with Clea although as they pass a television shop, they see Morgan back on earth and back to her old self now running a self-help class. This was obviously supposed to set her up as the main villain for a TV series that never happened.

While it isn't a classic and it definitely drags in places (though nowhere near as bad as the Spiderman film last week did), this film isn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be. True, it hasn't aged well and the action sequences look just a bit silly but if you're prepared to accept it for what it is (a late '70s straight to video movie essentially) then it it's a passable enough use of your time once you get to the halfway point or so. As mentioned earlier, Jessica Walter very much steals the show as Morgan La Fey and gives the film the main thing the Spiderman movie last week was lacking in a genuinely threatening main villain (though the whole subplot about her being attracted to Strange should've been ditched as it kind of detracts from her general bad-assness a bit). If they do make a follow-up to the recent Dr Strange film then I think there's certainly potential for a more modern version of the character to be reintroduced. Peter Hooten is decent enough as Dr Strange and the other characters are reasonably well-rounded. Overall, it's a bit daft and low budget but it could've been a lot worse...

FINAL RATING: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 (5/10)

CURRENT MARVEL LEAGUE TABLE

1. Dr Strange (1978) (5/10)
2. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)

NEXT WEEK: Spiderman goes to LA and fights the same two blokes for an hour and a half after some CND people build a nuclear bomb. I so wish I was making this up...