1 of 3 | Matt Salinger starred in 1990’s “Captain America,” which screened Saturday at Big Bad Film Fest. Photo courtesy of The Albert Pyun Estate
Before Chris Evans was Captain America, B-movie impresario Menahem Golan produced a Captain America movie released in 1990. The director’s cut of that movie, which screened Saturday at the Big Bad Film Fest, reflects a sincere effort at bringing the superhero to screen in the pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe era.
The film opens in 1943 with a young Tom Kimball (Garrette Ratliffe) witnessing Captain America (Matt Salinger) steer a rocket away from the White House. Captain America, aka, Steve Rogers, crashes in Alaska where he is frozen until 1993.
Captain America seems to walk from Alaska to Canada, where he gets a ride to the United States from reporter Sam Kolawetz (Ned Beatty). Sam informs Rogers that Tom has become President, now played by Ronny Cox in a Deliverance reunion with Beatty.
Marvel waited until the end of 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger to freeze Rogers. Much of this movie’s first half revolves around Rogers finding out what became of his loved ones and colleagues, and adapting to the modern world of 1993.
At least it’s usually 1993. At one point, Sharon (Kim Gillingham), the daughter of his ’40s era girlfriend Bernie (also Gillingham), says it’s the ’80s. Continuity can be overlooked as both the ’80s and ’90s would be a contrast to Captain America, even if they couldn’t decide which.
In 1990, the main comic book movies to reference would have been Superman and Batman. 1989’s Batman had just become a mega-blockbuster, but the Superman series had wound down ignominiously and the 1980 Popeye musical was either a derided bomb or simply forgotten.
A low-budget Punisher had also been produced in 1989 but only went straight to video in the United States years later. Regardless, Golan was not producing movies with the resources Warner Bros. afforded Tim Burton for Batman.
Director Albert Pyun had been making action movies with limited resources, often for Golan, throughout the ’80s. Pyun’s Captain America may not be polished, but he had to figure out how to make a comic book come to life in 1990.
There was no computer animation to portray Captain America’s shield leaving Salinger’s hand and hitting a target in a single take. Still, the classical ’80s style editing works as it cuts from Salinger’s throw to a shot of the shield flying to a shot of the impact to another shot of Salinger catching it.
A stunt person does a real somersault over a car in an alley. It’s not Salinger but it’s impressive it’s any human being performing the stunt, far more so than an animated Evans doing the same thing in the MCU films.
The director’s cut comes from a work print, so expository scenes can take extra time showing characters walking from place to place and filling each other in. This is what is often referred to as “shoe leather,” which hopefully would be refined had this version been completed in 1990.
Still, the fact the movie was shot on 35mm film makes even rough footage look great. It has a texture lost to many modern digital films.
Pyun’s decision to show the majority of the 1943 storyline in flashback is interesting, and ultimately the biggest difference for the director’s cut. The producers re-edited the 1990 release to show the entire 1943 sequence as a prologue, which does make narrative sense.
A few scenes of Rogers signing up for service and eliminating a Nazi assassin work as flashbacks. When the modern day climax intercuts with his 1943 battle with Red Skull (Scott Paulin), it is confusing. The 1943 flashback should at least be entirely resolved prior to the film’s full climax.
There was also no way to shrink Salinger like the Marvel movies digitally shrunk Evans prior to the Super-Soldier experiment. This Rogers has a limp from polio, which the experiment cures in addition to giving him super powers.
Red Skull was the villain of The First Avenger too. In this film, Red Skull works with the Nazis, not the fictional HYDRA.
Red Skull survived the ’40s and assumed the identity of Tadzio De Santis with plastic surgery, though still enough scars that Paulin would have a full makeup session before filming. His daughter, Valentina (Francesca Neri) makes a delicious henchwoman.
De Santis has been behind the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, he is plotting with corrupt military officials to kidnap President Kimball.
The second half of the film is more exciting as Rogers and Sharon team up to foil De Santis and rescue Kimball. Though they travel to Rome, Captain America filmed in Yugoslavia, which still afforded the production value of a physical location.
The climax occurs in a castle. Whether a set or an existing location, the castle offers an effective playground for Captain America to save the day.
That first half takes the themes of Captain America seriously, Rogers feeling out of place has less to do with him not understanding movie references and more the jarring images of leather punks and women in bikinis.
More importantly, it’s seeing Bernie as a woman who has naturally aged 50 years, with Gillingham wearing old age makeup in those scenes. Rogers also visits a war buddy (Michael Nouri) who reflects on the meaningless wars for profit since WWII.
The political subjects are so big that even the Marvel/Disney Captain Americas waited until their third movie to tackle them. Pyun’s film means it, which is admirable even if it is incongruous with the scrappy superhero caper.
Kimball is pushing environmental legislation, which Gen. Fleming (Darren McGavin) opposes on behalf of his secret benefactor, De Santis. The end credits even include a message asking viewers to support 1990’s Environmental Protection Act.
The sincerity makes Pyun’s Captain America markedly different from the entire MCU, even though Captain America was the most stoic of their lineup. Still, a Captain America film that relies on no wisecracks is enough of a contrast to be worth seeking out.
The director’s cut of Captain America is available on Blu-ray from Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Video. The theatrical cut Blu-ray is out of print.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
