CAPTAIN AMERICA II (1979): DEATH TOO SOON: The Old People Around Here Are My Friends

Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979) – Directed by Ivan Nagy – Starring Reb Brown, Christopher Lee, Len Birman, Stanley Kamel, and Connie Sellecca.

CAPTAIN AMERICA II: DEATH TOO SOON is the second and final 1979 CBS TV-movie and after the stink bomb that is the first movie, you might be surprised to hear me say that it’s a shame this is the end of the line for the Reb Brown era.

DEATH TOO SOON is all sorts of goofy awesomeness, and if you just want to know if this is a movie you should track down, let me give you three factual statements about this movie:

1. Captain America uses an old woman as bait so he can beat up some thugs.

2. Steve Rogers drives around in his surfer van with a cat in the passenger seat.

3. Christopher Lee.

If that’s not enough to make you want to watch DEATH TOO SOON … I don’t even know you anymore.

DEATH TOO SOON opens with Steve Rogers painting a portrait of a nice old lady out in a public park. There’s all sorts of people milling about, having a grand ol’ time and then we see Steve sitting there all so serious and earnest, painting this nice old lady who tells Steve the old people around these here parts are scared because the local bad guys steal their pension checks. Steve is appalled by this, of course, and he tells Mrs. Shaw to point out the bad guys who he can go have stern words with them.

No, I’m just kidding. He tells the old lady to go cash her check. She does and when she leaves, the thugs close on her, which means Captain Freaking America is using this old lady as bait to draw some ruffians out into the open. The best part is that he doesn’t even stick all that close to her. We see her walking and being followed and then there goes Steve, pulling his van into a parking lot before blasting out the back on his super bike as the perp runs away with the old lady’s purse.

Cap beats up the bad guys and then tells them, “The old people around here are my friends.”

This is followed by Cap skipping town to go have an actual adventure. I like to think that in scenes we did not see, the Serpent Society is following Cap up the California coast, beating the crap out of old people Cap has sworn to protect before rolling on.

I was kinda worried at this point that DEATH TOO SOON would just give us more of the dopey Steve Rogers, but what follows is a rather good precursor to shows like Knight Rider and The A-Team, where our heroes help out those who need help protecting themselves from tough guys who really aren’t all that tough. A scientist named Ilson has been kidnapped by a terrorist named Miguel (Christopher Lee), who’s posing as a warden at a jail in Oregon. Ilson has been working on a magic aging potion, and Miguel plans to use it to blackmail the government into giving him cash before he bankrupts Social Security by making everyone age rapidly.

Christopher Lee is, of course, a cinematic legend and while it’s a bit surprising to see him turn up in a TV movie about a Captain America that never takes off his helmet, Lee is fully committed to the part (or really good at faking it). It’s a good thing Miguel and Captain America don’t share screen time until the end because Lee’s intensity would reduce Reb Brown to actual milquetoast.

Steve spends most of the movie in a small town where he makes nice with the beautiful Maid Helen Moore (Katherine Justice) and her young son. Miguel’s thugs keep trying to beat him up and Steve keeps beating them up, instead. Not that he doesn’t take his lumps. No one in the town wants to help him until Helen steps in after Steve has fought four or five of Miguel’s goons. There’s a kind of chaste sexuality going on between Steve and Helen. Steve’s this tall, musclebound dude, after all, and while Helen is not looking for a hero, she’s drawn to him in such a way that I’m pretty sure she got herself pregnant simply by being in Steve’s presence.

There’s some silly action scenes here, but whether Steve is battling some drugged up dogs or revealing that his bike can turn into a hang glider, it’s got a nice bit of old school charm to it. There’s a zip here that wasn’t there in the first film. Brown is clearly more comfortable playing a Steve Rogers who’s interested in being proactive rather than whining about not wanting to get involved, so if nothing else, the attitude adjustment makes DEATH TOO SOON better.

The best parts are Steve hanging around town, doing his investigating. Reb Brown gives Steve such a steadfast earnest banality that it becomes infectious after a while. Reb Brown does not make a great Comic Book Captain America, but he does make a good Whatever This Is Captain America because he’s incredibly consistent in his portrayal. This Cap doesn’t exactly come off as a human, but he does come across as an actual, individualized thing.

There’s a couple nice acting surprises here. Stanley Kamel (one of the All Time That Guys) plays Miguel’s assistant and Connie Sellecca plays a scientist working under Simon Mills (Len Birman). I’m pretty sure I remember reading an interview with John Tesh who said when he saw Ms. Sellecca in this role he knew he would make her his wife someday. I can’t find the link, but I’m sure it’s out there.

Or not.

While DEATH TOO SOON is a TV movie, it feels like a regular episode of a show. If you cut out that old lady opening and tighten the action sequences, this could very well fill a 60-minute, rather than 2-hour, block of prime-time TV.

The actual threat of Miguel dumping his aging gas on Portland is almost inconsequential to the film. It’s just there to give Lee chances to chew scenery, and who’s going to complain about that? DEATH TOO SOON is miles away from being fantastic, but it is an enjoyable treat.

CAPTAIN AMERICA (1979): I Just Want to Kick Back and Find Out Who I Am

Captain America (1979) – Directed by Rod Holcomb – Starring Reb Brown, Len Birman, Heather Menzies, and Robin Mattson.

If you’re looking for a straight adaptation of the Captain America from the comic books, take a pass on CAPTAIN AMERICA, the 1979 television movie.

If you’re looking for a cracking good story, though, loaded with a really good script, really good acting, great action, and 97 minutes of awesomeness, then, well, take a pass on it, too.

CAPTAIN AMERICA is a rather dreadful production where the entire point seems to be to delay the arrival of Captain America as long as possible. If you just want to watch the Cap bits, then skip ahead to the 73 minute mark and watch the last 23 minutes of the special, because that’s how long it takes for Cap to show up. If you’re thinking, “Well, hey now, Cap is just the costume, but Steve Rogers is the man,” then I would say to you …. skip ahead to the 73 minute mark and watch the last 23 minutes of the special, because that’s how long it takes for anything close to the Steve Rogers you know and love to show up.

For those first 73 minutes, we get a Steve Rogers (Reb Brown) who just wants to “kick back and find out who I am.” He’s out of the military and all he’s got in the world is a customized van, a motorbike, and his sketch pad. Steve wants to cruise the Cali coast and just draw, man. Dr. Simon Mills (Len Birman) is a scientist who won’t get off his case. Mills worked with Steve’s dad as a grad assistant when the senior Rogers was developing a formula called FLAG (Full Latent Ability Gain). Steve’s dad administered the formula on himself and went out to stop evil-doers and stuff. He did wear the Captain America costume, but the movie doesn’t reveal this until right at the end. We just know that he’s the only person the formula ever worked on, which is why Simon wants Steve to agree to undergo the procedure.

Steve’s response is to stare dumbly forward, make excuses about just wanting to find himself, stare dumbly forward, and lash out with moderate annoyance.

There’s a mystery at play here, too. Steve’s old friend Jeff Haden is in trouble. Seems he’s been taking secret photographs of a top secret project for some bad guys, but he’s being blackmailed. When Steve arrives to help him, he’s already been roughed up to the point he’s minutes from dying. Haden’s daughter Tina shows up, apparently just to have a cute face make an appearance, because then she disappears from the narrative (being in shock from her father’s death) until the movie needs her to play damsel in distress in the final act.

All of this back and forth between Simon on the one hand and Jeff on the other is pretty tedious, made worse by the fact they’re connected, so Simon’s, “Hey, why don’t you come back to my lab?” routine is a constant irritant. That said, Birman delivers the best performance in the movie, so I’m torn between not wanting the character around because he’s annoying and wanting the actor around because he’s pretty good.

The bad guys keep trying to kill Steve because they fear him taking the FLAG formula, and eventually Steve ends up in the hospital. He’s going to die, so Birman gets to do what he’s been trying to do all along – pump him full of FLAG. The results are, of course, spectacular, as Steve gains super speed, super strength, super hearing, and the ability to stare super-dumbly forward.

Reb Brown is not terrible as Steve Rogers, but he’s not very good, either. It’s hard to blame him too much when the script is this daft, but he’s almost completely lacking in charisma. That said, I’m not sure where the charisma could have been included, since 50 minutes into this bad boy and he’s still whining about not wanting to get involved. Once his character starts being an active participant in the film, he gets a bit better. I don’t really think of Steve Rogers and Captain America being two different characters the way I do with Peter Parker and Spider-Man, Bruce Wayne and Batman, or Clark Kent and Superman, and while Steve/Cap don’t display the same kind of schism, we do get a very boring, non-active Steve Rogers transforming into a more active Captain America, and Brown definitely improves when we move into the Cap section of the narrative.

During Simon’s attempt to sweet talk Cap into becoming his newest lab mice (all the other lab mice keep dying), he has Steve’s van fancied up. Oh, it doesn’t look different. The outside still has a late ’70s surfer vibe to it and the inside is still furnished just enough to look like a normal person might own it, but now … now when you hit a button, panels start to slide away and in a few short days, enough wood paneling has folded out of the way to reveal a fancy super motorcycle.

Steve is like, “Gosh golly geez, this is super swell,” but all I can think is, “What happened to all my stuff? I mean, yeah, thanks, super bikes are awesome and stuff, but can I still use my van to make a burrito? Because this van also doubles as MY HOME and I am not cooking sausage dogs in the exhaust pipes of a bike, no matter how super it is!”

We get a few action sequences from here to the end of the film, but they all start and cool and become super prolonged. They have that feeling you get when you’re at a rock concert and it’s time for the drum solo. For a few minutes it’s cool, but then, well, you don’t want to be a dick or anything, but after listening to one guy bang on his drum kit for ten minutes, you’re wishing you’d taken this opportunity to hit the bathroom. Or buy a t-shirt. Or write a novel.

During Simon’s courtship of Steve, our future superhero draws Simon a picture of what Steve would look like in a costume if he eventually decides that’s what he wants to do. (That’s convenient.) Simon goes ahead and gets that costume made and it’s pretty ugly. It’s got red and white stripes but they run from his belt to his shoulders, so he ends up looking like Evil Knievel’s sidekick. (Who else would never take off their helmet?) The shield looks like it’s made of clear plastic. Simon tells Steve that it can be used as a devastating weapon, and to prove it, he throws the shield up into the air, where it hits nothing but sunlight before returning.

Cap ends up saving the day, of course, stopping the thugs from igniting their neutron bomb, but there’s never much action to get excited about. There is one really nice bit where Cap drives his superbike up a ramp (that just happens to be out in the desert), jumps off to latch onto a helicopter, and tosses a bad guy out of the copter and into a stream. It’s not quite as impressive as Logan’s jump in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but it’s not bad for a 1979 TV movie with no budget and no desire to be a superhero show.

And that’s where CAPTAIN AMERICA ultimately fails – it doesn’t want to be a superhero movie. It wants to be a movie about a guy who wants nothing to do with being a superhero before someone makes him one without his permission.

Not exactly the recipe for thrilling television.