Spider-Man (1967) Episode Seven: Kilowatt Kaper / The Peril of Parafino

Kilowatt Kaper

First Aired: October 21st, 1967

Synopsis: It's a stormy night at a prison, and Spider-Man is warning the warden that if Electro, imprisoned there, is exposed to the storm, he'll get his powers back. Electro manages to do so using a kite he's made of stolen materials, and escapes the prison. He declares that he'll drain the power of the entire city, and then heads to a power plant and starts doing so. All across the city, blackouts start happening as a result.


At home, Peter is trying to improve his web formula to stop Electro when he gets a call from Betty telling him what Electro is doing. He heads off as Spider-Man and tries to defeat Electro, but is seemingly defeated when he falls into a dynamo at the plant they're fighting at. Spider-Man survives, of course, and after finishing off his new web formula, sets a trap for Electro at Times Square. When Electro arrives there, Spider-Man's webbing is able to deflect his bolts of electricity, weakening the platform they're fighting on. Electro falls into the giant web Spider-Man has spun and is caught once again.

Webbing Does Not Work That Way

• How does Spider-Man get out of that dynamo he falls into, you ask? Why, he shoots his webbing at a control panel, causing it to explode on impact and thus stop the dynamo from spinning. Why he couldn't just climb out of the dynamo from the position he was in, I don't know.
• Okay, yes, Spider-Man's webbing shouldn't be able to reflect Electro's lightning, but given the build-up it's given, I'm going to give it a pass.

Miscellaneous Notes

• As mentioned, Electro regains his powers from the storm that's going on. I checked his last appearance, and there was no mention of him losing his powers there.
• In this episode, Electro's lightning often blows holes in walls when Spider-Man dodges out of the way of it. That's not possible for electricity to do, right?
• It's easy to miss, but at one point Electro jumps from ground level up to the power lines. Neat trick.

Review: We've got our first recurring villain on the show, and after a passable first appearance several episodes ago, this one manages to improve on it in pretty much every way. Electro's menace manages to extend to the entire city thanks to his draining of the power plants, initially because he wants more power but eventually because he can blackmail the city. I did give Electro praise last time for framing Spider-Man for a crime, but honestly, this sort of plot works much better for someone with his powers. On top of that, we've got some great fights which, in a bit of a rare moment for this show, Spider-Man is not so much defeated as he is temporarily distracted, allowing Electro to escape (at the prison, Spider-Man is briefly dazed; at the power plant, he's busy getting out of a dynamo). It counters some of the earlier episodes where Spider-Man was constantly being defeated throughout until the story's length was up - here, we get the sense that Spider-Man can defeat Electro, he's just missing a few opportunities.

Aside from all of that, we've also got a wonderful moment for Peter Parker - when Betty calls him up and tells him about Electro, he initially wants to keep working on his new webbing formula, but upon seeing the light in his room dim, realises that he has to go out and stop Electro, regardless of whether or not he's ready. Spider-Man's motivation hasn't been touched on in the show yet, and I don't know whether it ever will, but even if it never does, this is a fantastic showing of Peter's sense of responsibility, and is one of the best usages of his character thus far.

I'm not the biggest Electro fan in the world, and this episode hasn't changed that. What it has done, however, is fixed up some of the weaknesses of earlier episodes (and without the need to be based on a comic, too!) and in doing so, given me some hope that we might get to see some stronger uses of existing villains compared to what we've gotten so far.

The Peril of Parafino

Synopsis: At the prison, the criminal known as Red Dog Melvin has escaped. He makes his way into a wax museum in the city, where the owner, the artist Parafino, hides him. Parafino then announces that he will capture Spider-Man and become famous again. Spider-Man heads there soon enough, as an article in the Daily Bugle mentioned that there was a wax statue of Red Dog Melvin in the museum, and his spider sense was tingling whenever he passed the area. Upon seeing the figure of Red Dog Melvin, Spider-Man is told by Parafino that Melvin is in suspended animation, right before a wax duplicate of Parafino comes to life and throws adhesive at Spider-Man, which ends up trapping Spider-Man on a pedestal with his name on it.

Betty arrives at the museum, looking for Peter Parker who mentioned that he would be here. Parafino heads off to deal with her, giving Spider-Man the opportunity to melt the adhesive on his arms by holding it up to the hot lamp above him, and escaping the adhesive on his feet using his webbing. Parafino brings Betty into the room as a hostage, but Spider-Man manages to free her and then turns the heat up, causing Parafino to melt...after which a seemingly-wax statue of Parafino comes to life, revealing that the one Spider-Man's been fighting was created to do his bidding. Red Dog Melvin suddenly comes out of suspended animation and starts strangling Parafino, giving Spider-Man the opportunity to web them both up for the police, who Betty managed to go and get.

Webbing Does Not Work That Way

• I think this might be the most egregious usage yet: In order to escape the adhesive on his feet, Spider-Man shoots out a web, which shoots upwards in a spiral pattern. Upon making contact with the ceiling, it apparently turns into a drill which can rotate quickly enough to pull Spider-Man away from the adhesive. Bloody hell.

Wax Does Not Work That Way

• At one point, the wax duplicate of Parafino throws a glob of wax at Spider-Man, which shapes itself into a knife in mid-air, one sharp enough to cut through the webbing he's hanging from the ceiling on.

Review: I don't think that the general premise of this episode is bad. Creepy wax museums aren't that uncommon a plot, so throwing Spider-Man into one isn't a guarantee that everything will go wrong. And as a matter of fact, it manages to get that part working pretty fine - the villain has a creepy wax museum, he wants to capture people (well, Spider-Man), and display him as a wax figure. Nothing out of the ordinary so far.

But then we get to the actual execution of the plot, and the writers keep forgetting everything that's happened in the past five minutes. The statue of Parafino comes to life and starts lobbing wax at Spider-Man, but within a few cuts we're suddenly treating him as though he's the original all along, who's disappeared off screen. As a result, when he starts melting, it's less of a "GASP!" moment and more of an, "Oh, yeah, that's right," one. (Or maybe the original took over the job of throwing wax, and when we next return to the statue, that's when it turns out to have been the original all along? The cut during the initial fight makes it ambiguous). Towards the end, Red Dog Melvin is revived and starts strangling Parafino - but wait, didn't Red Dog Melvin intentionally come to the wax museum to hide? Why is he suddenly strangling the person who helped him hide from the police?

On top of all of that, throw in the nonsense of Spider-Man's incredible drill webbing and Parafino's amazing wax knife, and you've got a bit of a bonkers episode, and not in a good way. When I first started watching this story, I expected there to be some shenanigans between Spider-Man not realising that Melvin was disguised as a wax statue, which would have been silly, but could have been entertainingly so. The plot moved in a completely different direction to that, and while it took me by surprise, I can't say that that makes for a better episode.