Superman Summer - Supergirl (1984)

Directed by: Jeannot Szwarc

Starring: Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway, Peter O'Toole, Peter Cook, Marc McClure, Hart Bochner, Mia Farrow, Brenda Vaccaro, Maureen Teefy

Superman's cousin Kara (Slater) travels to earth to retrieve a mystical orb which has fallen into the hands of a witch (Dunaway).

Yes, it really is as daft as that summary suggests, and just as bad, unbearably bad. There's a certain level of bad cinema which came to prominence in the eighties. Movies were seen as a way to make a quick buck by producers like Dino De Laurentis, Golan & Globus, and the Salkinds, owners of the Superman franchise. They're a similar breed to the sort of billionaires who buy football clubs today, in fact De Laurentis is currently the owner of Napoli's football team.

The script is written by David Odell who went on to write the big screen adaptation of "Masters of the Universe" and it really is garbage. Slater does her best and Dunaway enjoys camping it up but they can't save this film from cinema hell. The effects are shockingly poor, Slater flying in front of some of the worst bluescreen backdrops ever filmed. The comic approach of "Superman 3" is carried on here and the attempts to generate laughs are punishingly unfunny. 

How can Superman have a living cousin? Wasn't Krypton destroyed in "Superman: The Movie"? Well conveniently a piece of the planet was cast into space following it's destruction. O'Toole has kept it thriving thanks to an orb which provides the energy to keep it sustainable. Kara loses the orb and follows it, leading her to earth. Cook and Dunaway are members of a witches coven and when Dunaway finds the orb she sets about using it to fulfill her wicked desires. Even writing this is giving me a headache.

So does Supergirl enlist the aid of the Man of Steel? Nope, he's away rescuing another planet, inconveniently for Supergirl but conveniently for Christopher Reeve who refused to appear in this turkey. He was saving himself for Superman 4. Whoops.

1/10

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