Captain America (1990)

Directed by Albert Pyun. Starring Matt Salinger, Kim Gillingham, Scott Paulin, Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty, Darren McGavin, Francesca Neri, Michael Nouri. [PG-13]

First feature-length effort to bring the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby comic book superhero to the big screen is cheapjack junk without a charismatic hero or a threatening villain or a script. The titular supersoldier fights archnemesis Red Skull (looking a little like Freddy Krueger and sounding a little like Dracula) in Nazi Germany, and gets frozen in ice after riding a missile to the Alaskan tundra. Thawed out almost fifty years later, he picks up where he left off, but the viewer has probably dozed off by that point. Earnest Matt Salinger rates zero as a heroic symbol of American interventionism in or out of his shoddy costume (which he only wears during the lengthy prologue and the climactic fight); reusing an obvious trick to shed his company of journalist Beatty and the adult daughter (Gillingham) of his former lady-love, the movie’s tagline could have been “Captain America: Always Abandoning People in Strange Places”. Not even Albert Pyun’s sometimes-inspired grade-D madness can be found in this messy, nebulous bore, although some claim the director’s cut is an improvement. Melinda Dillon has a minor role.

12/100