Customer Reviews

Captain America

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

While the old Video Treasures VHS release of the Captain America serial actually claimed on the box to contain comic-book style adventures of Captain America and Bucky fighting the Nazis, hopefully purchasers of this DVD will know they are getting a fairly typical Republic serial of its period, with no connection to the comic book beyond the name and costume. It has been plausibly suggested that the scenario was originally developed for Mr. Scarlet, a Fawcett comics hero who was secretly District Attorney Brian Butler and was aided by his secretary, who knew of his double identity; like Captain America, Mr. Scarlet was originally drawn by Jack Kirby. Timely Comics apparently was so pleased by Republic's previous adaptations of the Fawcett characters Captain Marvel and Spy Smasher that they offered Republic the serial rights to Captain America at no charge, and Republic decided to switch the story to the much better known character--or at least to switch the name and costume. Timely reportedly was not pleased with the resulting mongrelized portrayal; and in any case, as others have noted, there is no rationale for the D.A. character to don any costume at all, since he gets into the exact same type of scrapes whether in costume or not. Despite that, and unusually for a mid-forties Republic serial, really solid performers are cast as both heroes and villains (usually one or the other fell short); on the downside (also unusually), some special effects are almost pathetic, though others are as terrific as expected. The fight scenes, the main selling point for most Republic serials, are certainly good, but, oddly, less reminiscent of Simon and Kirby's comic-book fight scenes than those in many other cliffhangers from the studio. As for the DVD itself, I've seen several copies of this serial on VHS and one other on DVD, apparently all deriving from the same film original, and this is second to none: not restored from archival materials, but very watchable quality from public domain collector sources. ON THE OTHER HAND, the fifteen "chapter" breaks on the DVD do not in any way correspond to the actual fifteen chapters of the serial!!! So if you watch one chapter, put the DVD away, and come back to watch the next chapter a day or a week later--the recommended way to watch these old serials at home--you are going to have some trouble finding where it was you left off. People, this is not the way to do it--there is just no excuse for not making the DVD chaptering match the actual chapters of the serial. (As of August 2010, CultRetro, the video alter ego of A. C. Comics, is offering this serial on 2 discs with correct chaptering.)

Captain America is a fine serial, if you don't mind that it is not faithful to the comic books. Lionel Atwill as the villain is good, the direction is good, and Lorna Grey as the D.A.'s assistant is great. In this day and age of high quality DVDs, though, I was expecting a much better presentation. First of all, you can't select the chapters from the menu! There's just no excuse for that. The menu contains 3 items: a Lone Ranger trailer, a Hound of the Baskervilles trailer, and Captain America. Click on "Captain America" and it begins playing 4 hours of 15 chapters all strung together! If you don't watch all 4 hours all in one sitting, good luck finding your place again. Or say there's a chapter you really like and you want to pull out this DVD and watch it. Forget it; you'll spend all day trying to find where it starts. My biggest complaint, though, is that the picture quality is poor and the sound gets fuzzy. Watching this DVD feels like watching a VHS tape, and a poor quality one at that. (Maybe a tape would be preferable since you would be able to resume watching where you left off.) I suspect that squeezing 4 hours of video onto one DVD-R disk took it's toll on the picture and sound quality. Anyway, you have probably gathered that this is not the official DVD issued by the copyright owner, and it pales in comparison to official DVDs like Superman - The 1948 & 1950 Theatrical Serials Collection , Batman - The Complete 1943 Movie Serial Collection , or Batman and Robin - The Complete 1949 Movie Serial Collection .

Perhaps I'm seeing a later-generation release of this title, but I found the release to be acceptable. Yes, releasing this title (a 15-chapter serial) on a single DVD-R does create some compression artifacts....but it's far from terrible. My copy has chapter stops for each episode. The source print is rough, but I've never seen a better print for this particular serial. Until Paramount decides to release their vault materials (never) for some of these titles, this is probably about as good as we'll see on DVD.

My husband is a huge Captain America fan so this Christmas I wanted to get him something related to that. Last Christmas I got him a Captain America shield. I knew he didn't have the DVD from the serial of Captain America from the 40's and wasn't sure if he had ever seen it. He never seen it before and we watched it Christmas Day with our kids. It was excellent quality and a good story line. Highly recommended for all true Captain America fans, even if it is not in color.

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 9 years on a war, with the public having no reliable knowledge of the causes, progress, or effects of the war.

This is not about the program, but rather the actual product. I was really surprised and disappointed about the poor quality of the label on the box. Right away it seemed amateurish. Needless to say, I was even more upset to see that when I opened it, it was a BURNED COPY. Why is Amazon selling burned copies? Luckily it works (so far).

Movies always make a few changes when adapting characters from comics to screen. They are different media, after all. But the Captain America sequel tops them all in that it changes EVERYTHING about the character. Secret identity? Different--he is now crusading D.A. Grant Gardner fighting crooks. Super-soldier serum? Gone. He's just a regular guy. Military adventures fighting Nazis and saboteurs? Nope, it's a revenge plot with the members of an archaeological expedition dying off one by one. Even his costume has been modified, although it does bear a little similarity to the comics costume.

That being said, The serial is actually pretty good if you pretend it's not actually, you know, Captain America. This was supposedly the most expensive serial Republic ever made, and the sets are huge, often with two levels so Captain America can start every fight by jumping down on someone. Lionel Atwill makes a good villain, as well.

Where this product really falls down is in the DVD itself. This is a very cheaply made product. The cover take the gorgeous old poster (which contains the title) and pastes a blue box over it with the title in a plain font. The back cover contains no information about the product, except that it was released in "2009." All fifteen chapters are on one disc, so the compression is really bad, and the menus are as bare bones as you can get. The serial is good, as serials go, but this disc doesn't do it justice.

Republic's 15-chapter serial "Captain America" was released in 1944, directed by John English and Elmer Clifton, and is loosely based on the comic book character created in 1941 by Joe Simon and drawn by Jack Kirby. One's tolerance of the "improvements" made by Republic depend largely on whether it is approached as a serial, or a representation of the original character.

The plot changes Captain America's other identity from a soldier to District Attorney Grant Gardner (Dick Purcell), investigating a series of murders, hyped in the newspapers as "The Purple Death" owing to traces of a chemical found in the victims' blood. Dr. Maldor (Lionel Atwill) is secretly "The Scarab" who has been using a deadly and mind-controlling substance extracted from a rare orchid, forcing his victims to withdraw large amounts of money in cash from their bank accounts before they kill themselves. He is systematically killing the other members of his Central American Mayan expedition, claiming that they managed to gain fame and wealth, while he ended up only the curator of a small museum. But, as he explains to his latest victim, Professor Lyman (Frank Reicher) he has interests other than money; rare jewels, paintings, and from Lyman, "The Scarab wants the plans to your Thermo-Dynamic Vibration Engine" since the device could be used as a powerful weapon. Unfortunately for the Scarab's underlings, while trying to get the plans from the late Professor's safe they run into Captain America, and leave behind a package of flasks, glass "Purple Death bombs" that contain the deadly chemical. The District Attorney and his secretary, Gail Richards (Lorna Gray) soon track down the florists responsible for growing and processing the orchids (LeRoy Mason and Stanley Price). But The Scarab has just started on his treacherous schemes.

Some criticism has been made of the lack of Nazis in the plot, but while the war wasn't over, it wasn't directly included in the plot of ANY of the serials released in 1944. Even Universal limited the Nazis to occasional mention in "The Great Alaskan Mystery." The producers apparently didn't want to risk representing a war that was over, or significantly changed by the time the films got released. Captain America's peace-time job may seem slightly at odds with his origins. It is likely, as suggested elsewhere, that Republic already had a serial scheduled and cast for a different character, and when the rights to Captain America became available a quick adaptation was done instead of a carefully-planned new serial. 1944 was also the year that Republic made "Zorro's Black Whip" where "Zorro" isn't mentioned in the dialogue, also owing to issues with film rights to the character.

So why would the District Attorney need an alter ego, Captain America or otherwise? Why did Steve Rogers need one in the original version? Doubtless the usual excuse, that he wants to be able to do things that bend the law without getting caught, and the disguise is supposed to induce fear in his adversaries. But mostly Republic wanted to feature a comic book character. The costume looks like it was done quickly and cheaply, not quite up to Republic's usual standards. It has a lot of wrinkles showing, and when in that costume Dick Purcell displays a slight stomach overhang. While not really fat, he has more of a "District Attorney" body build, but if he doesn't look as heroic in tights as did Tom Tyler, the dialogue is delivered well. He, and stunt double Dale Van Sickel make the action fairly convincing, but regardless of identity, he wears clumsy-looking "District Attorney" shoes. Can he pull them through the legs of his trousers when changing into Captain America? At least they help him land on his feet when he falls into a mine shaft. The rest of the cast is about as good as it gets in a serial. Lorna Gray, as Gardner's secretary Gail Richards not only looks good, she gets directly invovled in the action, even shooting a couple bad guys. Lionel Atwill hams it up more than a little, but his cool, unflappable character oozes evil, and is...is....a lot of fun anyhow, so we don't need any "comic" relief. His main henchmen are Gruber (John Davidson), the scientific brains of the organization, and Bart Matson (George J. Lewis) who does most of the dirty work. They are aided by several well-known assistant bad-guy actors, including brief appearances by Kenne Duncan, Crane Whitley, Tom London and John Bagni. On the side of Law and Order are Charles Trowbridge as Commissioner Dryden, Russell Hicks as Mayor Randolph, Hugh Sothern as Professor Dodge, Tom Chatterton as J. C. Henley and John Hamilton as Hillman, these last three members of the Mayan expedition. Robert Frazer appears in one of his last roles as Doctor Clinton Lyman, brother of the late Professor from Chapter One. The musical score, by Mort Glickman is of the usual "pulse-pounding" variety at close to its 1940's best, if with a flubbed note or two from the trumpets that wouldn't have been heard in better days, including one in a frequently repeated excerpt. While action director William Witney wasn't available for this serial, his old partner John English, with Elmer Clifton do quite well with the many fights. The special effects range from quite good to fairly disgraceful, but there is a minimum amount of stock footage, and no dreaded "retrospective" chapter.

There are currently two DVD editions listed by Amazon. The one from PR Studios is cheaper, supplied on a single DVD-R disc. The print used has several minor defects that match the one used for the old Video Treasures (Anchor Bay) VHS edition; PR's copy has better image quality but otherwise less integrity. The opening titles for the first eleven chapters are all from Chapter One, the only chapter in the original to have the "mug shots" of the main cast members. The top of the frame is cropped in the titles, slightly clipping the top of John Davidson's head. The end credits are all missing except on the last chapter. The image isn't bad, most of it not cropped as badly as the titles and fairly sharp, but the contrast is a bit high. Faces don't go blank, but sometimes lack normal tonal range. A few places have dirt and small scratches but the print was mostly clean, though there are a few minor "digital compression" artifacts especially in the opening titles, likely due to fitting the serial on a single disc. The sound is a worse problem, some distortion, sibilants tend to be "explosive" and there is a "gurgle" in the background, probably caused by a noise-reduction process similar to that used by others to get "hiss-free" sound. Even the substandard sound of the Video Treasures VHS edition is better. And the sound runs about half a second late, out of sync with the picture in the last three chapters. The disc layout is not good; "chapters" are present, but not numbered the same as those of the serial, and go to a point after the chapter start. There is no index for the last chapter of the serial. And for no apparent reason two movie trailers have been included; for the 1956 feature "The Lone Ranger" with Clayton Moore, the copy having jerky action and also bad color, and for the 1959 Hammer Films version of "Hound of the Baskervilles" with Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes. The packaging has no information about the contents except for the image of a Chapter One lobby card on the outside of the case, and also on a paper insert inside, the reverse of which is blank.

Reelclassicdvd's edition, on two DVD-R discs, is from the 1953 reissue titled "Return of Captain America" and is much better than the one from PR Studios. All credits are present, and have the correct MPPDA numbers and copyright dates -- the first few chapters from 1943, the rest 1944. Made directly from a film print, without any analog intermediary steps, the result depends to a large extent on the quality of that print. Here, things are a little hit-and-miss, but the image is properly framed, even slightly "matted" and quite sharp. There is a small amount of dirt, some apparently from the negative, and a few very minor scratches, but it is not as "grainy" as the print used for the PR release. The gray scale is more of a problem; while usually quite good, some of Chapter One is fairly murky, and occasionally there are sudden changes in brightness, sometimes within a scene. After watching four chapters I finally noticed a "logo" in the lower-right corner of the screen for a couple seconds; just the letters "RCDVD" and fairly small, so not a major issue. The sound is also variable in the amount of noise, both "hiss" and a little sprocket-related buzz, usually low level but occasionally more than just noticeable. It is still far preferable to the garbled, processed "noise reduced" sound heard in the PR edition. The packaging is "generic" for Reelclassicdvd's releases, with just the title on the spine.

This is a good serial, for those not concerned by the changes made to the title character, though as usual with serials, leaving a day or more between chapters is best. While neither DVD edition is ideal, it is great to find one as good as Reelclassicdvd's release. While more expensive than the PR Studios edition, and still on "burned" DVD-R discs, it is easily worth the extra cost.

Three major complaints:

1. Terrible video - it looks as bad as a 3rd generation VHS copy.
2. The closing credits were cut for every chapter except the last chapter.
3. A chapter menu is provided but a selection takes you to an unpredictable location rendering the selection useless.

First of all, this dvd is not what I expected, but let me make it clear that I am referring to the presentation of the dvd NOT the serial itself; for the serial is great! I am very disappointed with the presentation of this dvd and if I had known it was going to look the way it does then I would not have wasted $15 on this. It does not look legit in simple terms. In fact, like another person has commented it is a burned copy and for that reason, $15 is way too much for this dvd.

But my main complaint is this, I was led to believe that this dvd was BRAND NEW and sure it was packaged as such BUT when I opened it and checked the dvd there were finger prints, scratches and scuff marks all over the disc. This IS NOT BRAND NEW condition! It is for this reason as well, that I warn any future buyers of this product to be cautious because there is a high chance you may be disappointed with what you recieve for the price you pay.

Amazon, if you monitor these reviews then do the right thing and stop selling this dvd. It is not legit and you have another unsatisfied customer and potentially many more.