EDITOR’S NOTE: Captain America II: Death Too Soon was on the CBS Late Movie on December 18, 1981.
Airing on November 23 and 24, 1979 — the same nights that Salem’s Lot was also on CBS — with the new creative team of director Iván Nagy (perhaps better known as the boyfriend of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss) and Wilton Schiller (who produced the last season of The Fugitive and wrote this with his wife, former casting agent Patricia Payne).
According to star Reb Brown, Captain America wore a helmet in these movies because the California Highway Patrol — you know, CHiPs — said that he must have a helmet to ride a motorcycle on the freeway.
At least he gets to hang-glide this time and get a decent villain, as horror royalty Christopher Lee plays General Miguel, a freelance revolutionary terrorist who is using a newly developed rapid-aging formula to hold Portland hostage for a multi-million dollar ransom. Cap has Connie Selleca on his side as Dr. Wendy Day, a scientist who heroically injects herself with an antidote to a disease she doesn’t even have yet, but this pitch for a series — the second if you count the other TV movie that aired four months before — didn’t get the ratings needed, what with those expensive stunts.
I kind of love reading reviews making light of Steve Rogers being a painter in these movies. That’s totally the character from the comics, one of the few things that made it into this film. But lord, what a bizarrely low-stakes way to kick off a battle for the free world. The movie opens with Steve chilling in a Los Angeles park sketching an elderly woman named Mrs. Shaw. When she complains about local thugs shaking down pensioners for their Social Security checks, Steve’s patriotic duty isn’t to call the LAPD. It’s to use the sweet old lady as literal human bait. Are you going to kill the Giggler, Steve?
Once the muggers pounce, Steve slips away, dons his motorcycle helmet and flag-suit, and launches into an action sequence that immediately establishes the frantic, hypnotic incompetence of the production. Cap throws his mighty shield at a crook and misses entirely, relying on the laws of 1970s television physics for it to loop back and bop the guy. He then chooses to chase a dune-buggying thug on foot down a beach, operating at cinematic fast-forward while beachgoers casually stroll past a guy in a domino mask sprinting by like a startled gazelle.
Meanwhile, General Miguel has kidnapped a scientist named Professor Ian Ilson, who has created something called manipulative gerontology. We call it bullshit sc ience. It’s a chemical that instantly accelerates aging and Miguel holes up inside a fully functioning lab located comfortably inside a federal penitentiary, because apparently, hiding out in a prison warden’s office was the ultimate mastermind plan.
Cap tracks the chaos to a sleepy rural town where everyone acts like pod people, shooing him away. He shacks up at a local boarding house run by a single mother, engaging in a deeply strange, lingering dynamic with her young son that involves an alarming amount of friendly rear-patting, right before launching into that signature, gravity-defying hang-glider pursuit over the countryside.
The grand finale is a masterclass in anti-climactic showdowns. Steve catches up to Miguel, who tries to finish him off by hurling a glass vial of the rapid-aging juice at the Star-Spangled Avenger. Cap, ever the athlete, hurls his shield to intercept it mid-air. The shield shatters the vial, splashing the fluid back onto both of them. Because movie math dictates fractional exposure, Cap only gets a light misting and ages a single month. Miguel, however, takes the full brunt, rapidly shriveling into a ancient husk and dying on the spot in less than sixty seconds.
Universal wanted a weekly cash cow on par with The Incredible Hulk. They didn’t get it.
