Captain America II

A follow-up to the 1979 TV movie, this at least brought in Christopher Lee to up the villainy quotient but was still stuck with blond lump Reb Brown in a silly motorcycle helmet and football padding as Marvel Comics' long-standing patriotic superhero (though it is implied that this Steve Rogers is actually the son of the original Second World War-era character). Lee is Miguel, whose scheme is to spray a super-ageing drug over Portland, Oregon, and demand a billion dollars for the antidote - it's no surprise that he ends up undergoing that rapid ageing and decay special effect Lee had become used to in his Dracula roles. Though Lee snarls well, the role is standard TV bad guy stuff and nowhere near as fearsome as the worst of Cap's comic book foes, the Red Skull, Baron Blood or Batroc the Leaper. Barbie-like Connie Selleca replaces the more interesting Heather Menzies as the Captain's scientist sidekick, Dr Wendy Day while Lana Wood has a vampy bit as a femme fatale. The two TV movies were pilots for a TV series that never came along. A 1940s cinema serial and a 1990s Cannon disaster weren't much better.