Watch Captain America For Free

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is a brief review as the difference in the comic books and the serial have been covered very well by other writers. But I wanted to correct some incorrect information in some other reviews. In some of those reviews it mentioned that Dick Purcell was on the pudgy side and it showed when he pulled on the Capt. American suit. Purcell never wore the suit except in a few closeups. The suit was worn by well-known stunt man, Dale Van Sickel. To find a lot of information on Van Sickel go o Google and put in his name. He was a stand out in three sports at the University of Florida. In Hollywood he formed the stunt man association and become its first president. On the IMDb site you will find that he did stunts in 200 movies. In Chapter one of "Captain America" he has a fight with another well known stunt man Tom Steel (we wore the mask in "The Masked Marvel") He had a couple of appearance without the mask, a call box policeman in Chater three and a fake humane society man in Chapter 10. I find this serial to be very entertaining with a variety of cliffhangers, good production values and 16 stunt men providing the action. Purcell was in a few fight scenes as the district attorney and handled himself pretty well as you can see he is doing his own stunts there.

This serial has nothing to do with the original comic book Captain America but is still entertaining. Some people considered the star, Dick Purcell, to be pudgy but this is simply not so. He just had a more realistic body type than a male growth hormone guzzling freak like Sylvester Stallone. The men of Dick Purcell's era had survived the Great Depression and when they were hungry they ate meat and potatoes. Go take a look at your own gut sometime! Overall, Purcell made a pretty good serial hero, tough enough to do the job convincingly, a reasonably good actor, not wearing his angst and self doubt on his shirt sleeve like some modern sissy boy hero. While not as great as Buster Crabbe or Tom Tyler, he was better than Kirk Alyn (sorry, Kirk).This serial has lots of excellent fight scenes and great cliff hangers. Also, there is a sequence where Captain America rides the Republic motorcycle, which was also seen in 'Spy Smasher.' The villain, Lionel Atwill, is probably one of the best serial villains, perhaps even better than Charles Middleton as Emperor Ming. Perhaps it would have been wiser to do this in the usual 12 chapters, as opposed to 15, but then again, if I minded wasting my time, why would I watch these old serials? Overall, this is a pretty good serial, and as such it has a higher value for escapist fun than most modern super-heroic cinema. One significant criticism I will make, however, is the inexplicable exclusion of all references to WWII. When it's WWII out there, and you have Captain America, a character created to fight WWII, yet the story has nothing to do with WWII, well, that is an awfully big elephant in the room. It would be akin, say, to a nation that spends $200 million a day for 10 years on a war, with the public having no reliable knowledge of the causes, progress, or effects of the war.

While this serial is about as unfaithful an adaptation of a comic book character as there has ever been, it's still an entertaining piece that almost (not quite) holds up today.Captain America in this serial is not a private named Steve Rogers, but a District Attorney named Grant Gardner. Instead of Bucky (and, in later years, Falcon, Battlestar, Diamondback, and various Avengers) he has an assistant named Gail. The bad guy is not one that's found in the typical Captain America rogues gallery, but a mind controlling fiend called the Scarab. And instead of a "mighty shield," he carries a pistol and that's about it.Given that, the serial is a fast paced adventure that is big on action. The various fight scenes in the movie are far beyond those in many serials of the day (and even later day action films, such as a certain 1989 excursion featuring another costumed crimefighter) and the stuntwork in the many cliffhangers is excellent.The story is fairly standard: a scientist creates a device. The bad guy steals it. The heroes try to find out who he is. Interestingly, the film gives the audience his secret identity in the first chapter. While mysteries are better in theory, this works because it allows the Scarab to have more of a personality.Dick Purcell is likable as Captain America, although it takes time before you get used to seeing him in his costume. He almost looks more "Captain America-ish" as Grant Gardner. Lorna Gray is superb as Gail rivaling most serial-era heroines. The serial isn't perfect, of course, including sometimes lackadaisical cliffhangers. There is no origin provided for Captain America. That he has any abilities similar to those he had/has in the comics (given to him by the so-called Super Soldier serum, which is also mentioned not once) is never even implied. In fact, his reason for donning the costume in the first place is unknown. The scenes wherein Grant Gardner takes matters into his own hands underscore the notion that Captain America never seems to do anything that a really tough DA couldn't do. The relationship between he and Gail is also hard to understand. They never seem to be romantically involved, no matter how intense the situation. They could be related, but there's no allusion to that. The mundane truth seems to be that she simply works for a DA who decided to become Captain America. Interestingly (and, for some, disappointingly, no doubt) there is no mention of wartime concerns such as, well, the war.Despite this, the serial is engaging, charming and often suspenseful. The action sequences are miles ahead of many of the era's best stunts and the sheer charm of the movie makes it an entertaining watch.

There have been countless film adaptations of comic strip, comic book and pulp magazine adventures. This has been true for the last 60 years or so. Hence, we have seen FLASH GORDON,BUCK ROGERS,TIM TYLER'S LUCK, JUNGLE JIM,THE SHADOW,THE SPIDER,SUPERMAN,CAPTAIN MARVEL,BATMAN and even such minor leaguers as CONGO BILL,TEX GRANGER and THE VIGILANTE (among many others)were seen on the silver screen matinée bill.In the 30's,40's and 50's most of these were not produced as feature films, but rather in the form of the serial, AKA the chapter-play or cliffhanger. This was before the arrival of Television as the dominant media. All of the studios involved in sound serials at the time (Republic, Universal and Columbia)acquired rights to do some of these features as part of their serial output.In 1944 Republic brought us the adventures of CAPTAIN America. One can only imagine that the juvenile audience of that time were highly excited in the expectation of CAPTAIN America being on the screen, as well in comic books published by Timley Publications (later known as Atlas and still later Marvel Comics).Indeed, CAPTAIN America was the first Timley/Atlas/Marvel feature to be so adapted, but what happened? We all knew that C.A. was in reality Army Private Steve Rogers, a former 4F recruit who was transformed into a man of great physical power and physique (tho not super powered).Steve Rogers was to be the proto type, the first of an army of former 4F's. He had been a sort of human guinea pig for a kind of super vitamin injected into him (later accounts said a pill was used), in order to make him into the type of red-blooded fighting man we needed for World War II. (Did this foreshadow the emergence of anabolic steroids two decades later?) He wore a colorful costume, based on the American Flag. He had a juvenile assistant,"Bucky" (Bucky Barnes),who was much like Batman's Robin. He sported a shield, which functioned as a sort of giant boomerang-like weapon, as well as affording protection against enemy fire power.He fought the Axis agents, 5th Column Sabateurs and soldiers from Nazi Germany,Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. He actually existed because of WWII, and other than the familiar figure of Uncle Sam on the recruiting posters or maybe Lady Columbia, no symbol was more representative of the USA than Captain America.So, what of the serial from Republic? Other than the title, there is very little in common with the comic page version. His identity in the film is District Attorney Grant Gardner. He has no connection to the military.He had no Bucky, no wings on cowl and a plain .38 caliber pistol instead of the multi-purpose shield. For that matter, you'd think that there was no war going on in this story line.This might have been okay as a serial if it was made in the pre-war years. It really should have been given a different title.