Oh, boy where to begin? Ok, Marvel Comics, until recently, seemed to be cursed with horrible adaptations of their characters. The lone stand-out was the Hulk, but it was more Fugitive than "Hulk Smash!". Following its success, though, we got this movie. Poor Cap, he should have stayed frozen!
The movie suffers badly from budget, with effects that were bargain basement even then; and a script that sounded like Snoopy wrote it on top of the dog house. Reb Brown looked good physically, but he was about as wooden as an oak. Still, he was better than Matt Salinger. Steve Forrest had starred in SWAT, not long before this; but watching him here, you wish he had taken a bullet in that series.
The motorcycle was cool (at least when I was 13, in 1979) and the shield/windshield was at least creative. The costume, oh man, the costume! According to Mark Gruenwald, the late editor of Cap and other Marvel Comics, the production changed the costume and Marvel had to beg them to change it back. The final scenes in the film show Cap in a close approximation of the original costume. The funny part was, the commercial breaks would display line art of Cap in his traditional costume.
Cap was given abilities closer to Steve Austin (the Bionic Man, not Stone Cold) than Steve Rogers, but it worked OK; there just weren't any spectacular stunts to make it interesting.
Ultimately, the film proved successful enough for a sequel, but not well enough for a series. Still, I'll take it over the Matt Salinger film any day! (An Italian Red Skull? Uggh!)
