Spider-Man (1967) Episode Forty-Seven: Rollarama

Rollarama

First Aired: May 10th, 1970

Synopsis: After a perplexing shot of a giant ball rolling down the streets of New York, we cut to Peter Parker and his apparent girlfriend Susan, investigating an old house it apparently came from. The house apparently belonged to Doctor Karl von Glutz, who hasn't been seen for years. Susan finds a smaller version of the ball, which is pulsing, and a mysterious glowing door. Peter recognises the door as being the Glutz machine, which apparently leads to the land of crystal creation. They find a manual for it that states that von Glutz found seeds outside a cave, which expand rapidly when exposed to air. They suddenly find that the smaller version of the ball has grown, and rolled towards the army base in town - but is teetering at the edge of a precipice, not having gone down yet. Peter decides, of course, that the only thing to do is to go into the Glutz machine as Spider-Man to find a solution to the problem.


Spider-Man finds himself in another dimension, and soon meets with the locals. Apparently, they hate von Glutz, as he discovered the seeds and that they grow in the cold, and so he made the land cold so that they could grow. Spider-Man thinks he can find a generator which will heat up the land, and goes off to another city with the blessing of the locals. When he reaches the generator, he's ambushed by plant monsters, who eventually get a lucky shot in and knock him out. When he comes to, he's in an arena, but he soon fights off the giant centipede-like monster he encounters there and goes back to the generator. He takes two giant gems out of it for some reason, which apparently means that the land will heat up. He then goes to the army base, which the giant ball has started to roll towards, and throws the gems inside the giant cannon that's firing at the ball. When its shell hits the ball, it destroys it for good.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Peter says that he needs to stop the giant ball from destroying the army base, because otherwise, "Our whole free enterprise system is at stake!" What the actual fuck, Peter?

Review: I'm not sure how clear it was made in my synopsis, but this episode heavily reuses animation from Vine. I have no idea why that was done, as Vine was pretty bad, but this episode manages to do the impossible and, using that lackluster animation, weak plot, un-Spider-Man-like enemies, and nonsensical menace, somehow tell a story that's even worse.

Where the actual fuck do I even begin? If the giant balls have been appearing all over the city, as Peter says when they're exploring the attic, then why is the house intact? How did they get exposed to air from the packages they were vacuum-sealed in? Speaking of, is it exposure to air, or exposure to cold which causes them to grow? Why does Spider-Man taking the gems - which are apparently radioactive, as he mentions later - lead to them destroying the giant ball, and why the hell did he go into the stupid machine rather than just trying to destroy the ball? These are some of the most egregious problems I identified with the plot, but I could go on for so much longer.

Even from a technical standpoint, this episode is horrible. There's reused animation of Spider-Man knocking out a moleman, which changes back-and-forth to a plant monster depending upon the shot. There's plant monsters talking, and the background randomly shifts location. Who the actual hell checked this to make sure that it was all good? I don't want to say that this is the worst episode yet, because I've had a busy day today so some of my feelings from that might be leaking onto the episode, but even so it's nowhere near watchable. Whatever you do, don't waste your time on this episode.