Saturday Action Matinee

Captain America (1944), Chapter 2: “Mechanical Executioner”

…Aaaand we begin with a recap of the entire fight scene that led up to last week’s cliffhanger, just in case we forgot that there was indeed a big fight between Captain America and two thugs in Gregory’s lab. (Actually, Gregory is just the assistant — the lab was apparently shared by the now-deceased Professor Lyman and the as-yet-unmet Professor Dodge, a fact you should file away for future reference.) He frees the people locked in the vault, runs in to try to turn off the “dynamic vibrator” (snort) which is shaking the building apart, and suddenly the roof collapses in on him! Can he possibly survive?

Well, yes. Because the roof simply doesn’t hurt him. Instead, he scrambles to the roof and jumps out, evading the huge chunks of wall from the crumbling umpteen-story building. Because that’s what superheroes do.

So the Scarab, aka Dr. Maldor, has been stymied in his quest to put his hand on the dynamic vibrator. (And too bad, too, because there were so many more jokes to be made.) But he’s an expert lemonade-maker, he is. Because one of his henchmen from that first episode retrieved from Professor Dodge’s safe the plans to an “electrical firebolt” device; details are somewhat hazy (it’s classified, dude! This is wartime!), but it falls into the category of “Largely Big Blow-Uppity Thing”, and thus it would be a great boon to the Scarab in his plans for generalized nefariousness.

The first problem is that the purloined plans are all in code, and the Scarab can’t break it. The second problem is that Professor Dodge has been placed under police protection in an undisclosed location.

Such things would be problems for lesser men — but not for the Scarab! He figures that the D.A.’s office must be involved in Prof. Dodge’s protection, so he arranges to “bump into” Gail, the D.A.’s assistant, outside her office. And when he shakes hands with her, his secret injector ring (Yours with five Wheaties boxtops and twenty-five cents!) doses her with a temporary mind-control drug, so that she both tells Maldor where Dodge is being hidden (at D.A. Gardner’s apartment) and follows his instructions to call ahead and tell the cop guarding Dodge that two “investigators” from the D.A.’s office will be showing up to “question” the professor.

By the time our dashing D.A. Grant Gardner shows up, Gail has forgotten all about the assistance she rendered Dr. Maldor, and thus can’t warn Gardner when he heads over to talk to Professor Dodge himself (and probably pick up some clean socks — it’s his apartment, after all). The thugs have already cleaned Dodge out of the place, though, and the one left behind gets the drop on Gardner. In a flash of pseudo-inspiration, he pulls Gardner’s own gun to fake a suicide, though why anyone looking to kill himself would shoot himself in the back of the ribcage from a dozen feet away is beyond me. BANG! Could Gardner, aka Captain America, be dead?

No, of course not. It turns out that Gardner always loads his gun with a blank cartridge first to use as a warning shot. But he plays possum on the floor until the henchman places the gun back in his hand and calls in to his superiors. Then a firefight breaks out between them, and from Gardner’s vantagepoint behind his amazing bulletproof sofa, he plus the bad guy. Then he calls police headquarters and has them find out the address for the telephone number “Oakridge 631″ (remember, this is the olden days, when even bad guys had to tell the operator to connect them instead of simply dialing).

The address is to an old barn outside town (with its own telephone line? Whatever.), where two other thugs have tied up Prof. Dodge to get the key to the coded plans out of him. Dodge starts off resolute, but they break his spirit with the ultimate weapon: A tractor! No, really. And not just any tractor, one with tank treads. They could run right over him with it if he doesn’t spill the beans, and it looks like it could really hurt. This is the “Mechanical Executioner” of the title, because the only other alternative was “Tractor of Torture.”

But Grant Gardner is speeding his way out of town, and upon reaching the old barn, changes into — Captain America!

He busts in and starts busting up the two goons. While fisticuffs fly, Prof. Dodge bounces the chair he’s tied to over to where a gun was knocked out of somebody’s fist. So when Captain America is laid low by a thrown object to the skull, Prof. Dodge manages to drive off the remaining conscious goon with some well-aimed shots. But before he runs out, the goon takes off the parking brake on the tractor, which is now aimed at the unconscious Captain America. Is there any way that Cap can escape before the tank treads chew him to red, white and blue goo?

Next Week: “Scarlet Shroud”