Captain America (1990)

Finally, the last one. After watching all three Captain America films by my own free will, I really think I should be awarded a medal. Or maybe locked up in a sanatorium because only crazy people would do something like that. Anyway, since parts 1 and 2 had shown me the real face of bad, I must admit the third (unrelated the previous installments) was actually watchable, more or less.

Portovenere, Italy, 1943. The evil Nazis in cahoots with evil Mussolini (like, duh!) are conducting equally evil experiments to create the ultimate villain. Their test subject is a little boy who will become known as Red Skull. However, the doctor in charge of the project realizes her mistake and escapes to America. 7 years have passed, and the doctor tries to right her wrong by creating the ultimate hero. The chosen one is Steve Rogers, a scrawny disabled man who is transformed into a super-man codenamed Captain America.

The Krauts and Italians want to launch a missile to destroy America, which of course the Captain has to stop. However, he loses a battle with Red Skull (but not before severing his arm in a most hilarious way) and as a direct consequence he ends up chained to the missile. At the very last moment, Captain manages to deflect the rocket from blowing up the White House and instead crashes in Alaska… where he remains frozen in ice until 1993! How the US defense systems didn’t pick up a huge missile that literally grazed the White House and then crashed in Alaska is beyond me. Even more stunning is the fact that for almost 50 years no one, not one soul had found it. Oh, well.

During the Captain’s absence Red Skull didn’t not just sit on his ass.  He became an underworld kingpin and a leader of a secret society that was responsible for a number of conspiracies, like the murders of M. L. King and JFK, among others. Now, hypothetically speaking, IF the Illuminati existed, any similarities with them would be purely coincidental. Ahem, yes. Anyway, this secret society totally unlike the hypothetical Illuminati has kidnapped the US president himself. Oh, my! Who will save him?

Now, this “Captain America” is now a normal below average B-film, unlike the other two abominations. A recurrent flaw in the series is an absence of humor and one-liners (although here the Captain did say “Heads up!” to a woman before decapitating her with his shield - off-screen of course). There’s some decent bloodless action featuring better stunts. Overall, the film got a level up in almost everything.

A good portion of the runtime is used by, believe it or not, (bad) character development. The acting has also improved, considerably so. Reb Brown is no more, because he was too old for the role so Matt Salinger stepped in his shoes. A small trivia, Matt is the son of the famous writer J.D. Salinger. Another trivia, particularly interesting to me, is that “Captain America” was mostly filmed in ex Yugoslavia (Croatia and Slovenia) and stars some famous ex Yu actors like Mustafa Nadarević, Relja Basić, Rene Medvešek and others, who are merely extras in a bad foreign B-flick. Now what does that say of our cinema, haha?

The next “Captain America” is scheduled for a 2011 release, and it surprises me it took so long to make a proper film. In the meantime, you can watch these previous three and I believe the upcoming one will look good to you no matter how bad it may be.

Rating: 3/10

- review by Ventilation Shaft