Saturday Action Matinee

Captain America (1944), Chapter 1: “The Purple Death”

As of this writing, Captain America is dead. In the most recent issue of his comic, he caught a couple of bad bullets and was pronounced dead at the hospital. His death was neither the frightful attention-grab that “The Death of Superman” was a dozen years ago, nor was it (as I first suspected when I heard the news in advance of reading the comic) the culmination of the character assassination which went under the title of Marvel’s mega-crossover, the craptacular Civil War. (That’s the official title of the series: The Craptacular Civil War.)

Nevertheless, he is dead. And so in honor, I pulled my two-tape Video Treasures edition of his 1944 serial from the shelf (thanks, Torsten!). Also, to make a bet with myself: Given how long it will take me to get through a fifteen-chapter serial, will they have found a rationale for bringing him back from the dead in the comic before I finish this?

Not that you would easily recognize the character in the comics as the one in this serial. I mean, sure, the costume’s close enough that you wouldn’t recognize him for Superman or The Incredible Hulk: Star on chest, stripes on his abs, cowl with face holes in roughly the same positions, and that big “A” on his forehead. They had to ditch the wings on the sides of his mask, and sensibly so for as ridiculous as they would look on a live person. There are other discrepancies in the costume, but given how fluid the rendition of Cap’s suit was in the comics for the first few years, I can’t complain to loudly. But the most visible divergence from Captain America, the comic-book hero, is this:

That’s right. The shield is nowhere to be seen; instead, Captain America regularly uses a gun. If there’s any meaningful distinction to be drawn between “superhero” and “masked crimefighter,” then the Captain America in this serial falls solidly on the side of the latter.

In fact, there’s very little save the costume’s resemblance to tie this serial’s hero to the comic character. The credits inform us up front that Captain America, as played by Dick Purcell, is also Grant Gardner, District Attorney.

Oh, well. At least he’s blond.

Anyway. To get the story started: We see several prominent gentlemen of society kill themselves — by driving over a cliff, jumping from a window, or pointing a gun at his head — at the voiced-over instruction of “the Scarab.” These deaths are promptly recorded in spinning newspaper headlines as being that latest cases of “The Purple Death,” for reasons that aren’t immediately made clear. Grant Gardner is called in by the police commissioner to help track down the reasons for these deaths, which means that Captain America will soon be on the case as well.

Meanwhile, we get to meet this mysterious Scarab, otherwise known as Dr. Maldor (Lionel Atwill), a man so evil that he wears a monocle. His connection to all of the dead men was through a Mayan expedition in which they all participated; at least part of his motivation for their murders is that they all got great fame and renown for their parts in the expedition, while all Maldor got was this lousy curatorship at a museum. I guess such a flimsy motive will work well for someone with inherent world-conquering desires, and thus Dr. Maldor has used the extract from a rare orchid to poison his victims; it renders them completely obedient to his will in small doses, then gives their skin purple blotches upon their death. (Aha! Thus the name!) For his first three victims, he had them drain their bank accounts for his benefit before he ordered them to kill themselves; his latest victim, Professor Lyman (Frank Reicher), is an inventor, and Dr. Maldor wants the plans to Lyman’s “Thermo-Dynamic Vibration Engine,” which can destroy buildings and otherwise wreak great havoc. So he doses the unsuspecting Lyman up in the most insidious way: With purple death-laced cigars! This, ladies and gentlemen, may be the firs anti-smoking subtext in American cinema.

While Lyman obediently walks in front of a truck, Maldor sends a couple of goons to Lyman’s house to retrieve the plans for the vibration engine from his safe. But who should they meet there but — Captain America! (For no known reason. Look, he’s there, he fights them; what more do you want?)

As mentioned, he fights the two goons; one dies of a semi-self-inflicted gunshot wound, the other escapes with Lyman’s plans. But he leaves behind a set of Maldor’s “purple death bombs” — glass ampules with a high enough concentration of the orchid poison to kill instantly.

Cap gets ahold of his secretary Gail (Lorna Gray), who is apparently the only person who knows that Grant Gardner and Captain America are the same person, and arranges for a chemist to test the bombs. When it comes back that the toxin is a derivation of a rare orchid, Gardner sends Gail out to the rare flower dealers around town with a beaker of the extract, to see who can identify it.

More than that; when Gail finds a florist who instinctively recoils from the purple beaker (which is actually a dummy — carrying certain death around in a glass container is foolhardy, even for the good guys), she knows she’s found the Scarab’s supplier. Gardner follows soon after, rescuing Gail from a backroom full of henchmen and chemical beakers.

Now that the supplier for his toxin is out of commission, Dr. Maldor turns to other concerns: He wants to build Lyman’s engine from the recovered plans, but it turns out that there’s also a working model in the laboratory now run by Dr. Lyman’s former assistant Dr. Gregory. Maldor doesn’t want anyone else to have the vibration engine, because that might give someone the means to reverse-engineer it and find a way to defeat it, so he arranges for some henchmen to go to the lab that night, right when Dr. Gregory is supposed to be giving a small-scale demonstration of the engine’s power to Gardner and Gail among others, and set it to overload, bringing down the entire building.

Give me a moment to be juvenile here, will you? After the first mention, this fearsome machine is most often referred to as the “dynamic vibrator.” It probably doesn’t speak well of me that I snickered at everyone saying, “You can’t have my dynamic vibrator,” “No one else must have a dynamic vibrator,” “We’re here for the demonstration of the dynamic vibrator,” etc.

Anyway. Maldor arranges for a false tip to Gardner to draw Captain America away from the lab that night, though his plans to dispose of Cap come to naught. But he’s delayed long enough that, in the middle of the demo on a model building, the Scarab’s agents burst in and set the machine to overload.

Gotta say, that’s a heckuva cool laboratory set.

Cap arrives in time to throw the henchmen around for a while and free Gail, Gregory, and the other two observers. But the machine’s building to an overload, and while Cap tries to get into the lab and turn off the power, the building collapses! Could he possibly have survived? Especially without his indestructible shield?? (That’s right, see how far a handgun gets you in situations like these, Cap!)

Which means that this laboratory set won’t be used again, and it’s a pity; it sure looked cool. If this serial were available on DVD, I’d give you a wallpaper-sized cap of the dynamic vibrator (giggle), but since I’m working from VHS tapes recorded in EP mode, here’s the best I can do for you:

Next Week: “Mechanical Executioner”