The 1977 version of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ is awesomely cheesy

A fact that many modern moviegoers probably forget is that once upon a time, most superhero movies were just plain bad. Audiences currently enjoy big-budget comic book movie spectacles like "The Avengers," "The Dark Knight Rises," and "The Amazing Spider-Man" because Hollywood has perfected the superhero formula over the years. That formula has resulted in masked vigilantes and super-powered crime-fighters enjoying huge success at the box office -- but that formula wasn't developed over night.

While DC Comics found success early on with their campy "Superman" franchise and Tim Burton's gothic "Batman" movies, Marvel did not capitalize in the same way. For the 1970s and '80s, Marvel's superheroes were relegated mostly to TV and occasional low-budget movies. In an effort to stave off financial trouble for the company over the years, the comic book publisher had sold off the film and TV rights to their major characters, including the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, and their most popular hero at the time: Spider-Man.

See also: 'Spider-Man': What's next for your friendly neighbourhood web-slinger?

Preceding "The Incredible Hulk" TV show by a few years, "The Amazing Spider-Man" was the first time a Marvel Comics character had been depicted on television. The 1977 made-for-TV movie spawned a short-lived series that ran until 1979. It was pretty standard Spider-Man stuff: Peter Parker is a university student/photographer who must balance his personal life with his crime-fighting life after being bitten by a radioactive spider that gives him powers. But the production budget allowed by a weekly TV series were obviously a far cry from 2012's "Amazing Spider-Man" movie.

Watch the hilarious trailer for the TV movie below.

See also: 'Spider-Man' stars: Where are they now? (PHOTOS)

Amazingly, the show's cancellation had nothing to do with its quality (or lack thereof). CBS, the network that aired "The Incredible Hulk," "The Amazing Spider-Man," and "Wonder Woman," cancelled the latter TV shows to avoid being labelled as "The Superhero Network." But where Spider-Man had failed, the Hulk soldiered on. The popular television series was followed up by several extremely cheesy TV movies, complete with cameos from fellow Marvel universe heroes Thor and Daredevil.

Other Marvel characters, like Spider-Man, were not so lucky. Captain America featured in an abysmal 1990 action movie made on a shoestring budget, while the Fantastic Four fell into the clutches of schlock producer Roger Corman in 1994. Corman's "Fantastic Four" film was never released due to its "fantastically" cheap production values. The awful screen adventures of Marvel heroes continued all the way until 1998's "Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.," a TV movie that starred David Hasselhoff (of "Knight Rider" and "Baywatch" fame) as the character subsequently made famous by Samuel L. Jackson.

See also: 'The Amazing Spider-Man' stars: Before they were famous

Marvel didn't get on track in the movie department until 2000 when Bryan Singer directed the well-received "X-Men." The company followed that up several years later with the enormously successful Sam Raimi-directed "Spider-Man." The rest is movie history.

It's amazing what can happen when you give a filmmaker with a modicum of talent the reins to your comic book property; the real shame is that it took Marvel Comics nearly 25 years to figure that out. Today's comic book fans are lucky to be living in an era when their beloved superheroes are given the big budget treatment they deserve -- and clearly require.