YMMV / Captain America (1979)

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The fight scene in the meat processing plant.
• Complete Monster: Lou Brackett is an immoral industrialist and, in truth, mad-dog killer who kept his best friend Haden working on a neutron bomb against his will for months by keeping his wife hostage. When Haden is murdered by his men without disclosing where the film reel keeping the last blueprints of the bomb is, Brackett furiously has his men look all over for the reel while disposing of any loose ends like Steve Rogers, whose transformation into Captain America he facilitates through repeated attempts on his life. Brackett kidnaps Rogers' friend and Haden's daughter and threatens to murder them to keep everyone off his tail, planning to use the bomb to murder the entire population of Phoenix to cover his theft of gold depository worth a billion dollars, wiring the bomb to go off if his heart stops to kill everyone in Phoenix anyways in the event of his death.
• Fight Scene Failure: The first film only has two major fight scenes, both of which are largely played for laughs and do little to sell Steve as an action hero. Death Too Soon fares better in this department, though it doesn't help that several fight scenes are resolved via the usage of Captain America's cheap-looking shield.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Near the end of Death Too Soon, Miguel claims that in other circumstances, he and Captain America could have been friends, despite the two seemingly having nothing whatsoever in common. A few years later, Reb Brown and Christopher Lee would be co-stars again in Howling II: Stirba: Werewolf Bitch, where this time they were on the same side.
  • The hero being the only one the super serum works on due to his father's DNA is similar to The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
• Memetic Loser: This version of Captain America is mocked as a loser for doing very little act heroics and acting surprisingly whiny and passive for an otherwise strong and mighty hero played by Reb Brown. He became even more infamous after Conan made a running gag out of claiming to have an exclusive preview for Captain America: The First Avenger, playing a clip from one of these movies instead, then sarcastically declaring, "Looks gooooood!"
• Memetic Mutation: Thanks to Spoony, a line as spoken by Doctor Mills after they figure out what Brackett's plan is: "But why? Brackett is no mad-dog killer, he is after something."
• Retroactive Recognition: Why is Dr. Kroger helping Christopher Lee to blackmail the globe?
• Special Effects Failure: Captain America's shield in both films is blatantly cheap plastic, and even bends and makes a very hollow thudding noise when he actually bothers to use it.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While it's still not regarded as good by any means, Death Too Soon is near-universally seen as the better of the two films, for having a lot more in the way of action scenes, Captain America looking and acting a little more like his comic counterpart, and Christopher Lee being an effective villain.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The first film seems to have originally been written with Steve as the son of the original Captain America, given the extremely strained justification of how his father used the name as an Appropriated Appellation in World War II. This could have been an interesting angle to go for if they were going to skip the typical Human Popsicle element of the character, but for whatever reason it was scrapped.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The effect showing Miguel's aging to death in Death Too Soon is surprisingly effective and horrific, considering the film's low budget.

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