8 Marvel Movies No One Remembers

Captain America (1990)

Credit: Marvel

Back in the 1980s, B-movie super studio Cannon Films bought the rights to both Spider-Man and Captain America. They failed to make a film of either property (after the horror they made of Superman IV it was probably for the best), but when founder Menahem Golan left the company in 1989 he was allowed to take the Cap rights with him. It didn't take his new company long to put together a Captain America film, with a planned release date of Summer 1990. Two years of postponements followed, before the film was finally released direct to video in 1992.

The end result probably wasn't worth waiting for. Hamstrung by an even lower budget than The Punisher (around $6 million), largely unknown actor Matt Salinger was cast as Steve Rogers. The film sticks fairly closely to Cap's backstory up to being frozen in ice (aside from Red Skull becoming an Italian who was experimented on by Nazi scientists). Other characters such as Chester Phillips and Abraham Erskine have their names (and in Erskine's case sex) changed for no apparent reason. The freezing of Cap comes fairly early in the film, with the rest of it featuring our hero foiling assassination attempts on the modern-day president. Red Skull meanwhile has become the boss of an international crime syndicate, responsible for the murder of JFK and Martin Luther King.

The film will never be accused of having a slow pace, as it hurtles through its 97 minute running time without pausing for breath. But as you can expect from a low budget 80's/90's action film, there isn't a lot to recommend it. It's all done in good spirit, but you'll never quite get over the spectacle of the heroic Captain America faking sickness in order to steal someone's car.

A bit of random trivia: Cap actor Matt Salinger is the son of The Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger.