Captain America 1990

1990 represented the growing heights in comic book interests.
Captain America: The Motion picture, was what fans wanted to see, and yet it continued to undermine expectations.
Marvel and DC Comics by 1990 was beginning to see a surge in sales and a rabid fan base wanting to see more on both the big and small screen.  The fall of 1989,  debuted Tim Burton's Batman, Bill Bixby's began airing a trilogy of Incredible Hulk made for TV Movies, and Dolph Lundgren's Punisher went direct to home-video. So on some medium, fans were getting their content, A teaser with the shield began showing in select theatres in the summer of 1989, sparking interest. With a release slated for August 1990 to commemorate the 50 years of the character inception. All plans got pulled in the eleventh hour and only a small international release in the UK and some Slavic territories was given in December. It  finally appeared on direct to video in 1992 and  on cable network for its North American debut.
 21st Century Film Corporation, an off-shoot of Cannon Group Inc. produced the film, with many big name stars pitched for the title role, Val Kilmer, Dolph Lundgren, Schwarzenegger, were just a handful of stars who were shown the script and Michael Dudikoff and Steve James of the American Ninja movies had sat down for 2 meetings discussing a Falcon and Captain America movie with Cannon Films. But talks broke down, scheduling conflicts arose, and the script initially read by the chosen actors was not the script of the film they had signed on for, and with a limited budget to work with director Albert Pyun and writers Stephen Tolkin & Lawrence Block, shot the movie mostly in Yugoslavia.
 Beginning in Fascist Italy, a kidnapped child prodigy Tadzio de Santis witnesses his family killed and is experimented on with the super soldier procedure, it's inventor Dr. Maria Vaselli escapes to America and several years later perfects it on a frail soldier stricken with Polio Steve Rogers. Vaselli is murdered shortly after the Roger's transformation and the secrets of the procedure dies with her. Rogers' is given his first order stop a prototype ballistic missile aimed for the white house controlled by Santis now the Red Skull.  The two fight and Rogers is strapped to the missile and causes it to derail into the Arctic, Now 50 years later an unearthed from ice Steve Rogers returns as a man out of time re-connects with the daughter of his true love and sets off to save a pro-environmentalist US President Tom Kimball from being kidnapped and potentially brained washed by the Red Skull.

Not sure who to trust in this time, Steve Rogers is not adequately equipped to handle the new world and seems to runs a lot,  stealing cars from those who are trying to help him.  Its unintentionally comical, and rigid in its action set pieces. Pyun who is known for creating the cyborg action sub-genre of the 80's and 90's, is constrained here with limited resources and an unproven leading man.

The movie got re-released as part of Captain America: First Avenger studio promotion and Pyun  was invited to speak on behalf of his work, there are allegedly three different cut versions of this movie.  The movie is also a reunion of two if its' big name stars, Ned Beatty and Ronnie Cox who first appeared together in Deliverance.