My Review of Supergirl (1984)

 

Written by David Odell

Directed by Jeannot Szwarc

Supergirl: "You have no friends, Selena. You treat everyone as if they were put on this Earth to serve you."

Selena: "More or less, I think they were. You included."

In the 80's, things were not going great on the Kryptonian side of things. Superman might have hit the ball  running with his first two movies, but his third one had hit something of a snag, so before we got the fourth one which was a bigger disaster, it was time for a spin-off focusing on Kara Zor-El. Surely it was going to be a success, right?

Not exactly. The ingredients for what should have been a clear winner are there, but somehow don't quite come together as such. The movie started with a trip to Argo City where Kara (Helen Slater) has been aware of her famous cousin's adventures on Earth. Kara clearly wants to take a trip to the planet and when inventor Zaltar (Peter O'Toole) lost a powerful orb called the Omegahedron, Kara quickly headed to a pod through time and underwater and found herself in Midvale to retrieve it.

The movie doesn't bother going Kara too much of an origin story as Supergirl. Her costume turns out to be what shes wearing upon landing in Midvale and for some reason, Kara also didn't waste much time infiltrating a local high school, going under the name of Linda Lee Danvers and befriending Lucy Lane  (Maureen Teefy). It's also soon revealed that Lucy has started dating Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure), the only character from the main series to appear in this movie.

Of course with a mission and some new friends, Kara also needed an enemy to fight and a vain, power hungry witch named Selena (Faye Dunaway) proved to be the campy adversary for Supergirl. You can even give Selena points for briefly trapping Kara in the Phantom Zone until Zaltar made the heroic sacrifice in order to get her out of it.

As a main baddie, Selena's motives are simplistic - she just wants power. She's a spoiled, immature, vain, possessive witch, not above insulting her snarky right hand woman Bianca (Brenda Vaccaro) or betraying the rather foolish Nigel (Peter Cook). Then there's her antics surrounding Kara's love interest but more on him in a bit. Either way, Dunaway clearly had fun with the campy witch and there's a decent final battle between Selena and Supergirl where the latter sends the former to her doom.

As for the love interest side of things, I have to admit its one of the weaker points of the movie. Hart Bochner (who'd later find bigger fame with Die Hard) does make for a hunky potential boyfriend with Ethan (also the object of Selena's lust) but its a largely doomed romance and Supergirl does seem to spend more time rescuing Ethan than getting romantically involved with him. Still though, he does provide a bit of eye candy in the movie even if he's not one of the best characters on display here.

- Christopher Reeve originally was meant to cameo in the movie as Superman but instead the character was written to be off world when Supergirl came to Earth. Selena gave her the Supergirl name.

- Mia Farrow and Simon Ward appear at the start as Alura and Zor El. 

- The director would later work on the series, Smallville, which Helen Slayer would also appear in.

- Chronology: I'm assuming 1984 given its release date.

Supergirl definitely feels like something of an odd film. It doesn't quite have the same magic as Christopher Reeve's first two Superman movies but it's better than his latter two. Helen Slater makes for a likable lead and Faye Dunaway certainly chewed up the scenery as Selena. More of a guilty pleasure than an instant classic but a decent first live action attempt for the Girl of Steel.

Rating: 7 out of 10