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
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.
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. - Iron Man - Incredible Hulk - Spider-man - Marvel Comics'
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