Supergirl

Supergirl (1984)

Runtime: I saw the version that was 124 minutes long

Directed by: The impossible to pronounce Jeannot Szwarc

Starring: Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway, Hart Bochner, Brenda Vaccaro, Peter O'Toole

From: Several British companies

This is another movie I hadn't watched in a long time. I did not like it as a kid and as an adult I remembered its badness correctly. Yet, it's a great movie to laugh at, as what a gonzo plot it has. My Letterboxd review is below, trying to explain this madness:

Sometime in 2016 I do plan on watching the original four Superman movies; I know I've mentioned in the past that I rarely even pay any attention to the modern superhero films as they just don't have much interest to me at all (and that goes for both DC and Marvel) but as a kid I saw all four. In reviewing the original I'll also mention the famed Salkind International Extended Cut that I found (nevermind how), and I'll also see both versions of Superman II.

In addition, I saw Supergirl as a young boy. IIRC, it was one time on VHS and the other time was on network TV. No, it was not the long version that fit in a 3 hour timeslot. I remember it being shorter than that. Even with those two being different cuts (more on that in a moment), I wasn't a big fan of the film; I hadn't seen it in more than 20 years so the memories are hazy but what I do recall, it was weird and made absolute zero sense. I figured it was finally the time to see this infamous picture as an adult. As there are plenty of different cuts of the movie floating about, I have to clarify which one I actually saw. There have been different TV edits, more than one VHS version, a 137 minute “Director's Cut” that may have been the aforementioned version that was once shown on ABC, etc. It was the 124 minute “International Cut” that I watched last night.

Well, this movie... it was as weird as I remembered. The title girl lives in a wacky hippie commune of people who used to reside on Krypton (nothing is said about how they weren't killed when that planet was destroyed; were they gone when that happened?) and via wacky circumstances, a device known as the Omegahedron escapes and it just happens to land on Earth, and Kara (soon to be Supergirl) goes there to retrieve it, where she just happens to meet the younger sister of Lois Lane. “Just happens” could be used many times if I were to do a scene by scene breakdown of this, but I won't. The device ends up in the hands of a witch (Faye Dunaway hamming it up on purpose; she must have realized early on what a boondoggle this was, so why not be over the top? I am surprised she was able to say most of her dialogue with a straight face) and various things just happen.

It wasn't quite as nonsensical as I had remembered, although I was still left with a number of questions. A good one is, why was a distinguishing characteristic of Selena (the witch) that she was what is now known as a COUGAR? She pines after Ethan, who Supergirl also has a romantic attraction to. Another question would be, why did Selena and her possible lesbian lover/definite assistant Bianca live in an abandoned amusement park, and why did they have a bizarre 80's party there? Oh, and why exactly did Supergirl use her powers to disguise herself as “Linda Lee” and enroll in an all-girls school, where there are some juvenile pranks that also happen? “Killing time” isn't a great answer, even if that's probably the right one. Why was an important moment of the plot involve spiking a can of Schlitz malt liquor? I am not sure but I howled with laughter at such a thing.

The movie is pretty awful in terms of storytelling, logic, plot, character motivations, etc. Yet it's unintentionally hilarious, to the point that I wonder why it isn't more of a camp classic. I wasn't bored, that's for sure. There are some interesting ideas-such as that giant invisible monster-Helen Slater was good in the title role, the special effects were fine (aside from the whole wires thing) and I enjoyed the score from Jerry Goldsmith. I am glad it wasn't as painful as I was expecting it to be. I also laughed that one of the scenes I remember (her confrontation with a pair of predatory truckers), one of the truckers was Matt Frewer, wearing an A&W t-shirt. They and Popeyes Chicken obviously paid to be in this. Yet it is still a bad film and it isn't surprising to me that it wasn't until this fall that we got a Supergirl television show.