Review of Captain America (1990) by Darik H — 25 Feb 2008

"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.".

-Pauline Kael.

Everyone has a guilty pleasure- some sad, unusual indulgence that, even though you know it's bad for you, even though you know it has no beneficial value whatsoever, you can't help but love to revel in. Well, that's how I feel about Albert Pyun's 1991 direct-to-video Captain America. With its laughable effects, cringe-inducing dialogue, and, most infamously of all, the lamented rubber ears on the eponymous hero's cowl, Captain America hardly sets the standard for good comic-book adaptations, much less for great cinema. As a child, I despised this Batman knock-off for its faults as a superhero flick: the hero doesn't wear his costume for most of the film, the Red Skull's skull is only red for one sequence, etc. But having grown up and acquired a taste for subtlely crafted cinematic ventures as well as all-out action spectacles, I find myself inexplicably drawn back to this celluloid disaster. Matt Salinger redefines bad acting as our hero Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America. In many scenes, his reactions essentially amount to him looking towards a different part of the screen every few seconds with a blank, unresponsive gaze. Sure, he gets a few moments to shine- to date, I have never seen a man drink a glass of milk as angrily as Salinger does in this movie- but that isn't enough to save him from utter mediocrity in a part that reeks of poorly written "awww-shucks" wholesomeness. Scott Paulin as the Red Skull (whose skull is, for the most part, definitely NOT red) fares much better (or worse, depending on personal taste); his stilted accent and slicked-back hair gives him a distinctly Lugosi/Dracula feel, which is probably why I love his performance, cheesiness and all. Paulin does manage to get across a great deal of subtlety- the Red Skull's deep-seated hatred of newspapers, for instance- but he's never really given room to breathe in the film's tightly-woven plot, which is constantly moved forward via obtrusive dubbed exposition (his performance is much better as the doctor attending Steve Rogers after the Super-Soldier experiment, which included a close-up that you could almost swear was of a cardboard cut-out). The Skull's make-up is kind of lame, making his face look all puffy and shiny (in a way that says to the viewer, "LOOK! I'm wearing make-up!"); for the one scene in which his skull actually IS red, however, the effects are better than one would expect, making him into sort of a Nazi Freddy Krueger. Newcomer Kim Gillingham gets to play a triple role: young Bernie Stewart, Steve's girlfriend from 1943; old Bernie, Steve's girlfiend now married in 1993 (and sporting one of the WORST old age make-ups I've ever seen); and Sharon, Bernie's bleach blonde, suntanned, valley-girl daughter and Steve's consolation prize. She's not particularly believable as any one of them, but her Sharon is so annoying that I could help but want to throttle her through half the movie. Francesca Neri, on the other hand, plays the Red Skull's daughter (who, come to think of it, is never mentioned by name, though we do see her I.D.), a blasé euro-trash heiress with a cadre of like-minded layabouts and a helicopter to carry her motorcycles. Ned Beatty picks up a paycheck as an investigative reporter, Sam, who can, apparently, track down wandering superheroes in the wilderness of Canada and make direct phone calls to the President of the United States, his childhood buddy Tom Kimball (played by Ronny Cox in a surprisingly non-villainous turn). Cox delivers probably my favorite speech of all time as the ass-kicking President: "It's bad medicine. And nobody said the medicine would taste any good... but can we afford not to take it? I don't think so. If we don't take this medicine now, we'll all die. Slowly... but we'll die." For all its hokey effects and insanely-cut action sequences (with alternating cuts done quickly enough to induce epilepsy, if one isn't careful), this was a well-intentioned (if pitifully executed) attempt to bring an icon to the screen, and I hold true that, with a little reworking and a larger budget, this could have been a worthy effort. It may not be Star Wars- hell, it's not even Howard the Duck- but if you're willing to put up with just how abominably BAD this movie is, you might just have a lot of fun watching it...