Captain America

USA 1979
produced by
Allan Balter (executive) for Universal/CBS
directed by Rod Holcomb
starring Reb Brown, Len Birman, Steve Forrest, Heather Menzies, Robin Mattson, Joseph Ruskin, Lance LeGault, Frank Marth, Chip Johnson, James Ingersoll, Jim B.Smith, Jason Wingreen, June Dayton, Diana Webster, Dan Barton, Ken Chandler, Buster Jones
story by Don Ingalls, Chester Krumholz, screenplay by Don Ingalls, based on the comicbook created by Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, published by Marvel Comics, music by Pete Carpenter, Mike Post

Captain America, Captain America (Reb Brown)

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Industrialist Lou Brackett (Steve Forrest) wants to get the secrets of the neutron bomb from scientist Haden (Dan Barton) because ... oh, he probably wants to blow up something or blackmail someone, the whole film is a bit hazy in that regard. Anyways, Haden accidently gets killed, and now Brackett and gang go after Steve Rogers (Reb Brown), the man whom Haden has talked to with his dying breath, figuring Haden must have told where he has hidden the bomb secrets. For some reason though, Brackett's men kill Rogers as well. Thing is, Rogers' father was a superhero and has developed a superhero serum (a super steroid, actually) that apparently works with the Rogers-genes, and thus a gouvernment operative, Mills (Len Birman), brings Rogers back to live, and with superpowers, too, and persuades him to become a superhero called Captain America - and it's about time, too, since Brackett has since found Haden's neutron bomb secrets hidden in his fishing rod and now travels to somewhere to blow up something with the bomb and a detonator strapped to his chest. But of course, Captain America prevents disaster just in time and sees that Brackett gets his just desserts.

Let me state this up front: Captain America is by no means one of the more interesting characters of the Marvel-universe, he's a one-dimensional superhero created during World War II to boost morale and above all advertise patriotism.

However, this made-for-TV movie doesn't even do a rather neglectable superhero like Captain America justice, it's nothing more than an ill-conceived, badly paced and sloppily executed TV-show that's neither interested in its source material - Captain America's origin it totally re-written - nor does it play with its plot's more campy aspects or lets irony come into the mix. The result is ... actually almost pathetic, and something not even a superhero of Captain America's lack of real quality would have deserved. It's almost funny on a so-bad-it's-good level though ... unfortunately only almost.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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