Before he was making some of the best movies ever made, Morgan Freeman started like many actors do, working on daytime TV series. He was a regular on comedy series The Electric Company, which is where he landed a spot playing a Spider-Man villain for the webhead.
During the fourth season of The Electric Company, a recurring sketch called Spidey’s Super Stories was introduced, featuring a live-action Spider-Man actor foiling evildoers. In the second episode, titled ‘A Night at the Movies’, Spidey faces the one and only Count Dracula, who tries to suck the blood of someone seeing a horror movie. The vamp is none other than a young Freeman, who was nearing the end of his tenure on the show.
To save on effects and production costs, there isn’t much webslinging or wallcrawling for these short Spider-Man movies. Instead, most of the storytelling happens in limited movements from the cast that are connected through comic book-like transitions. Speech bubbles are used for dialogue on the limited sets. It has a kitschy ’70s vibe to it, and considering Freeman’s presence, contains some Hollywood history.
You can watch the full clip below. Imagine if such a thing was referenced in the MCU now as part of the multiverse? That’d be one hell of a deep cut.
Freeman left The Electric Company in 1975, though it’d be the ’80s before his acting career really started to take shape in drama movies Attica and Eyewitness and beyond. His work here really seems to have been forgotten to time, Spider-Man’s only solo animated series and subsequence action movies have overshadowed this version, played by Danny Seagren.
All of which is a shame! If the MCU ever does a straight vampire movie after Blade, we know who they should call.