Other Reviews in this Series.
Director: Ivan Nagy
Writers: Wilton Schiller, Patricia Payne
Cast: Reb Brown, Connie Sellecca, Len Birman, Christopher Lee
Runtime: 83 mins.
1979
Captain America II: Death Too Soon is the 1979 sequel to the 1979 TV movie Captain America, and it is several orders of magnitude better than its predecessor. If you're in the market to watch one of these movies for camp purposes, it should undoubtedly be this one. It's not like you'll be missing anything important from the original's pointless wheel-spinning narrative.
In fact, the plot is a fair bit clearer and more straightforward. A mysterious terrorist who goes by the name General Miguel (Christopher Lee) plans to hold the entire town of Portland hostage by dropping an aging serum on their heads. Miguel is in hiding, pretending to be a prison warden at a local penitentiary. Steve Rogers (Reb Brown) must investigate a small town where something suspicious is going on, so that he might ultimately discover Miguel's location and let Captain America take care of business. Meanwhile, in an irrelevant B-plot, our favorite scientists Dr. Simon Mills (Len Birman) and Dr. Wendy Day (conspicuously replaced by Connie Sellecca--didn't this character used to be blonde??) are working on a cure for the virus. They deliver exposition ably, but fail at everything else.
The film still takes a little too long to reveal what is going on in the town, but the plot is for the most part less obtuse. This is very much to the film's advantage, because the last thing this movie should want is for us to start using our brains to figure out what is happening. Everything about the story is ridiculous, of course, but it's well within the reasonable bounds of schlock sci-fi. Steve Rogers taking time to woo a single mother and hang out at her farm with her kid is a less forgivable narrative misstep.
That being said, you can shrug that stuff off with a laugh because, unlike Captain America, Captain America II doesn't spend an ungodly amount of time on every single sequence. It sets up what it needs to, knocks it down, and awkwardly edits into the next scene. Parts of it still drag, but at least we're not watching a doofus go off motorcycle jumps for five to ten minutes at a time.
Reb Brown is not any better this time around, nor would I want him to be. I laugh every time some character makes a comment about how intelligent Captain America is. This remains the story of a thickheaded moron stumbling through a world he doesn't understand. Yet the film staunchly refuses to acknowledge it.
However, it appears director Ivan Nagy is far more willing to have fun with the material than was Rod Holcomb. That begins with the casting of the late great Christopher Lee as the main villain. Iconic actors slice their way through bad movies like warm butter, and Lee does exactly that here. Somehow he manages to get through the thing without embarrassing himself. He isn't quite allowed to become sinister, but there is a certain gravity to every line reading, as in this exchange during the climax:
Captain America: "Surrender your weapon!"
Miguel: "To whom, an unarmed man?"
Lee, as always, is booming with malice. Nagy doesn't neglect the little touches in this movie. When Miguel drops the aging formula on Portland, he sky-writes the word SMILE. When he means to demonstrate the efficacy of the formula, he sends a baby lion to the president--which then proceeds to grow into a full beast between scenes. There is even a classic sci-fi moment of rapid aging make-up put to good use.
Finally, and this should be obvious, but one tremendous advantage Death Too Soon has over the original is that Captain America is Captain America from the very beginning of the movie. Rather than being a mopey good-for-nothing, Steve Rogers starts the movie by painting an old lady and then defending her pension check from a gang. It's too bad Reb Brown makes good-natured Rogers seem either drugged or predatory, but the heroism still stands.
Not needing to deal with the hullabaloo of an origin story also lets the action setpieces breathe. Rather than odd, boring slogs, they're actually pretty charming little displays. A particular favorite of mine involved Steve Rogers driving his motorcycle through some crates onto a dock. Stacks of crates and heavy machinery make for some delightfully campy choreography. It's fun to see Cap use his terrible special effects superpowers. The movie also has a hilarious habit of using the same mysterious-sounding audio cue every time Steve bends metal or breaks something big.
Don't be fooled by my tone: Captain America II is still a bad movie. I sound positive by comparison to the original. I commend Nagy for making a vastly superior product out of the very same shoddy materials his predecessor was given.
1 / 5 BLOBS
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