A quick bit of background - after the failure of the previous year's Superman 3 at the box office, Alexander and Ilya Salkind decided to go for one final throw of the dice by taking the franchise off in another direction with a Supergirl movie. However, Richard Lester, the Superman 3 director, had clearly learnt from getting his hands burned the first time and declined to come along for the ride. However, the film did get a promising cast with the likes of Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, Peter Cook and Peter O'Toole all signing up. Allegedly both Brooke Shields and Demi Moore auditioned for the title role but instead it was given to a relative unknown, Helen Slater. Wonder if they regret that decision all these years later?...
The plot begins on a Kryptonian outpost called Argo City (hang on, wasn't Krypton destroyed in the first Superman film? Plot hole alert!) where a young girl named Kara is friends with an older man named Zaltar (Peter O'Toole) who it turns out is the founder of Argo. He's borrowed the outpost's power device called the Omegahedron but unfortunately it goes rogue and blasts off to Earth (where Zaltar was planning on going on vacation). Against the wishes of her Mum (Mia Farrow) and Dad, Kara quickly grabs a spaceship and pilots off after it.
The Omegahedron is found on earth by a witch called Selena (Faye Dunaway) who's part of a coven with her friend Bianca and the older warlock Nigel (Peter Cook). She quickly realises it can give her immense power and predictably sets her sights on world domination. Meanwhile, Kara lands on Earth and instantly finds herself transformed into Supergirl with all of the Superman-esque powers that entails. She also beats up a truck driver who attempts to hassle her, played by Matt Frewer aka Tresh from Generation X. Yeah, that'll teach you to completely ruin the first attempt at an X-Men movie you swine!
Needing to disguise herself, she enrols at a local all girls school taking the nom de plume Linda Lee where she becomes room-mates with Lois Lane's younger sister Lucy. As Linda is Clark Kent's cousin the pair quickly bond through family links. Both also have a crush on the local himbo, groundskeeper Ethan who is also a target of Selena's affections.
So much so that Selena decides to give Ethan a love potion to make him fancy her. Unfortunately her and Bianca are then distracted by Nigel knocking at the door and by the time they return, Ethan has left and stumbled out into the street. Selena sends a dumper truck out to retrieve him which goes past the diner where Linda and Lucy are having their lunch along with Lucy's date Jimmy Olsen. Lucy attempts to stop the runaway truck but only ends up knocking herself out once she gets in the driver's cab leading Linda to turn into Supergirl and bring the chaos back into order. Of course, as Linda is the first person Ethan sees, it's her who he ends up fancying. Which, given that she's a schoolgirl is just...creepy...
Supergirl has a bracelet on her wrist which can track the Megahedron and she traces it to Selena's lair in an abandoned fairground. Unfortunately Ethan has tailed her with chocolates and flowers and the pair are ambushed by Selena and Bianca. However, Supergirl's powers are enough to fight Selena off and her and Ethan quickly escape.
Sat alone by a lake, Ethan realises that Linda and Supergirl are the same person but before they can do anything about it, he's promptly kidnapped by Selena who has briefly reconciled with Nigel to grab his death wand. Of course, once she has that she promptly imprisons him because, y'know, villains are untrustworthy like that. She's also managed to conjure up a mountain with a castle on top as her new lair. Well, I s'pose it's a bit more regal than a disused ghost train.
Supergirl quickly flies to the lair but Selena entraps her and sends her off to the Phantom Zone, home to General Zod. However, it isn't him that she encounters here, rather her old friend Zaltar (I'm convinced O'Toole must have been drunk during this sequence. If not, he's doing a very good job of pretending he is) who rescues her from a swamp where she nearly drowns.
Kara persuades Zaltar, who'd previously given up hope, of helping her trying to escape the Phantom Zone. Selena realises what's happening and sends fireballs and tornados down to stop them. Zaltar doesn't make it through but Kara does and promises to avenge him.
Returning to the real world, Supergirl confronts Selena who sends a shadow demon out to stop her. It nearly kills her but, taking strength from Zaltar's last words, she escapes its clutches and summons up a cyclone which sucks Selena, Bianca and the demon in and banishes them all to the Phantom Zone. Ethan is freed from her spell and the two of them share a tearful goodbye before Supergirl flies off back to Argo City to return the Megahedron back where it belongs.
Oh lord that film was bad. How bad exactly? I actually had to take a 20 minute break midway through watching it because its sheer awfulness was giving me a headache. It's really no wonder that the Salkinds bailed on the Superman franchise after this joke of a film - unfortunately the series wasn't quite finished yet as we'll see next week. The saddest thing is that there's actually enough talent in the cast here (Peter O'Toole, Peter Cook, Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow) that this could have been half-decent but a combination of an awful script, terrible acting and a plot with more holes than Swiss cheese sees Supergirl resoundingly sink to the bottom of the DC films table so far. The worst thing is that looking at what's coming up in the weeks ahead, I'm not even sure that it's gonna stay there for a particularly long time...
Unsurprisingly though there would be no Supergirl 2 as the film bombed on release, recouping less than half its production budget. However, recent years have seen Linda Lee return to our screens as part of DC's enjoyable Supergirl TV series, this time played by Melissa Benoist (with Helen Slater also starring as her mum bringing the whole thing full circle). So there was a happy ending to this mess of a film eventually. For now though, this atrocity has definitely set the bar at a new low in terms of DC films. Well, for the next week or two anyhow...
FINAL RATING: 🚀🚀 (2/10)
CURRENT DC FILM TABLE
1. Superman (1978) (8/10)
2. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
3. Batman (1966) (8/10)
4. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
5. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
6. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
7. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
8. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
9. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: Superman goes all CND in Superman 4: The Quest For Peace. Jeez, this thing really ain't getting any better, is it?...
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