As per tradition, allow me to start off the year with yet another fantastic Reb Brown B-movie review!
It's REB BROWN time!!! We will need a lot more hemp before we're through-
Movie: Captain America (1979) also known as Captain America The 1979 Movie or simply Reb Brown's Captain America
Directed by Rod Holcomb
Release date January 1979
Genre Action/Drama/Science-fiction made-for-TV movie
Country USA
Overall, it's Reb Brown in all his Reb Brown glory. Problem is, the movie isn't that good. Nor fun.
Let's be clear, this 1979 TV movie has very little to do with the actual Captain America. Our "Captain America" (who is really Captain America only in the last act of the film) here is the son of original Captain (who they didn't ever bother naming Steve Rogers.. so why even try to connect this to the comics?). Instead of the super-soldier serum the comic book character received in WWII, Reb Brown here gets the cleverly named "FLAG" serum after one road accident to many. And he doesn't even the real Captain America costume.. Although he does receive something closer to the comics in the epilogue at the end of the film.
There's a lot of great "bad lines" that keep the film amusing. Reb's never been a particularly good actor, in fact here he seems pretty distant through filming the entire movie, but he's always decent to watch due to his likable persona. The rest of the cast range between pretty bland to doing okay.
Despite being yet another watchable Reb Brown romp, the film is kind of boring for the most part. What's worse, this was made only a year after Richard Donner's Superman in 1978. Nobody was expecting much from a CBS made-for-TV movie, but come on... Some think this was just an attempt to greenlight and spawn a TV series much in the same style as The Hulk, but it never received much success.
Fun fact, it would be followed by Captain America II: Death Too Soon on November 1979, a direct sequel released THE SAME YEAR! Did anybody really had any hope for this "franchise"? Well, you might be surprised, it turned out a far campier film and more fun...
I give it:
1 / 3 RebBrowns!
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