My first passion was probably monster movies, especially the old Universal horror classics that I was already watching, in the reassuring presence of my mother, by the age of five.
My second passion was comic books, especially those emanating from the mighty Marvel bullpen. The Amazing Spider-Man. Captain America. The Silver Surfer and Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner.
So in 1977, when CBS scored a ratings success with a television movie inspired by “The Incredible Hulk,” you’d think I would have been in Seventh Heaven.
But I was also a purist, and the show made so many changes to the source material that the 11 year-old critic in me received it with decidedly mixed feelings. To me, the series was a little too much like “The Six Million Dollar Man” meets “Kung Fu.” (I was too young at the time to be wholly aware of “The Fugitive.”) Little “originalist” that I was, I was judging it against the impossibly destructive, brutishly monosyllabic, gloriously over-the-top Hulk of the comics.
Returning to it now, 44 years later, what do you know? For a TV movie, “The Incredible Hulk” is actually pretty good! In fact, the show’s pilot does everything right. Strong characterizations. Doomed romance. Abundant pathos. An awareness of classic monster movie conventions. In fact, it’s only sin is that it was made in the ‘70s.
Hulk’s origin, world, and situation may be totally different from those created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1962, but his TV incarnation is overflowing with humanity and heart. If only they had had the technology and production values back in 1977 that are available today, it would easily stand head and shoulders above just about any of the current crop of sterile, production line Marvel movies.
Hand-painted Olympic-hopeful Lou Ferrigno, in tattered pants and yak-hair wig, may not have been my ideal vision of the comic’s Green Goliath – the real Hulk would have dismissed him as “puny” – but he’s about as close as a real-life stand-in is ever going to get, and he does bring a Karloffian pathos to the role. And earnest Bill Bixby, as David Bruce Banner, brought two decades’ worth of accrued good will from his seemingly constant presence in America’s living rooms, thanks to his work on “My Favorite Martian,” “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” and “The Magician.”
I hope you’ll join Roy and me on our platform of rage, as we overdose on gamma rays, for a nostalgic trip back to “The Incredible Hulk,” on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Dispense your anger management therapy in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, this Sunday evening at 7:00 EDT! (PLEASE NOTE: There will be no show tonight.)