It’s actually quite hard to pin down when Supergirl first appeared as a character because, once you have Superman, the idea of Supergirl already exists in a conceptual form and it’s just a matter of time before someone puts pen to paper and actually draws her. There were several Supergirls and Superwomen before the one everyone is familiar with, and even more after her. Sometimes she’s the future daughter of Lois Lane and Clark Kent. Sometimes she’s a fallen angel. Sometimes she’s an alien shapeshifter or a refugee from an alternate reality. And sometimes she’s Claire Kent, the identity Clark took on when he was changed into a woman by an alien witch as punishment for being sexist.
But the most famous and long-lasting version of the Maid of Steel debuted in Action Comics in 1959 drawn by Al Plastino and written by Otto Binder, who I don’t think gets enough credit for being a genuine trailblazer in terms of creating female superheroes. He also created Mary Marvel for Fawcett and Miss America for Marvel (confusing, I know).
This version, Kara Zor-El, the blonde teenage cousin of Superman, has endured as one of the most popular and iconic female superheroes in the medium probably second to only Wonder Woman (at least prior to the MCU). And, like most long-running superheroes she’s undergone many changes in her portrayal. Early on she was depicted as essentially her cousin with a higher hemline but modern stories have leaned into the interesting wrinkle of Kara actually being raised on Krypton and having a much more alien perspective on Earth than the All-American Clark.
She’s a fascinating character with a rich history who deserves a great movie.
What she got was one of the WORST MOVIES EVER MADE.
Superman 3 wasn’t a flop by any means but it did make significantly less than the first two movies and, what’s more, got absolutely mauled by critics. So the Salkinds puffed on those cigars and decided that what the franchise needed for its fourth entry was a pretty blonde who would get this series back to critical acclaim.
The plan was originally to have Superman be a supporting character and act as a mentor to Kara during her time on Earth but they were stymied by the fact that Christopher Reeve was fucking done with this shit and wanted out of the tights. They also wanted to get Richard Lester back to direct but he was also kinda fucking done with working for the Salkinds and noped out. The chair eventually went to French director Jeannot Szwarc who the Salkinds picked because *checks notes* Christopher Reeve once had a meeting with him and complimented him to the Salkinds. I don’t know what the compliment was, exactly. That he had nice shoes? Just a good vibe? Anyway, the director of Jaws 2 is now directing a movie that’s been written to include Superman and now has no Superman.
Which is not to say that you need Superman to tell a good Supergirl story. There are in fact hundreds of ways you can go. Unfortunately, none of them were known to the yahoos making this movie.
Anyway, let me take you down to Argo city, where the girls are blonde and the acting’s shitty.
Argo City was a city on Krypton that survived the explosion by vanishing into an alternate dimension called “Inner Space” and wrapping itself in cling film to protect itself from the void. We’re introduced to Zaltar (Peter O’Toole) and his young…student? Protegé? Kara Zor-El. Zaltar is using a device called an Omegahedron to create a sculpture of a tree and tells a curious Kara that they grow on Earth and Kara remarks that Earth is where her cousin went.
So right off the bat we have a big problem. Despite being trapped in an alternate universe her entire life, Kara somehow knows that:
- Her cousin is on Earth.
- He’s Superman.
- He’s also Clark Kent.
- He works for the Daily Planet.
- His bloody PIN number probably.
And there’s just no logical reason for her to know any of this. And having her already know all this stuff is just such bad storytelling. I mean, imagine Kara arriving on Earth and realising that her baby cousin who she thought was long dead is actually the world’s most beloved superhero. That’s a scene right there. You could film that. And an audience might very well find it compelling.
Another problem (warning you now, you’re going to be hearing that phrase a lot) is that Zaltar is supposed to be a loveable irascible mentor figure but he’s actually a colossal asshole. We learn that the Omegahedron is Argo’s power source and that Zaltar has stolen it to use for his crafting project. Kara then messes around with the Omegahedron and creates a giant dragon fly which flies through the paper-thin barrier protecting Argo City from the vacuum of Inner Space. The Omegahedron gets sucked out of the hole and Zaltar is all maudlin because now he’s going to be banished to the Phantom Zone while Argo City slowly suffocates to death. So Kara boards Argo’s one spaceship and blasts off to Earth.
The Omegahedron lands on Earth beside an older couple who are enjoying a nice picnic in the park.
These are…okay, strap in. The man, played by Peter Cook is Nigel, a maths teacher at a local girls’ boarding school. AND he’s a powerful warlock who has mastered the dark arts. And the lady, Selena, played by Faye Dunaway, is his girlfriend. AND she’s an aspiring witch who’s learning magic from Nigel and dreams of world domination. Oh, AND she also lives in a haunted house ride in an abandoned amusement park. Now, call me crazy, but I suspect that both of these characters may be amalgamations of different characters from different drafts. Call me nuts. But I got a hunch.
Selena is our villain and she *deep breath* suuuuuuuuuuuuucks. Her whole deal is that she wants to rule the world in that “I’m evil and so I want to rule the world and hate everything good and nice” kinda way. But she constantly needs Nigel’s help because she’s completely incompetent without male guidance. Now, if you think that sounds weirdly sexist, especially for the first female superhero movie I have good news. This isn’t the first female superhero movie, Sheena Queen of the Jungle debuted earlier the same year.
And secondly, don’t worry, this movie is also incredibly sexist towards men. But we’ll get to that. Selena and Nigel witness the Omegahedron crash and Selena senses it has great power, breaks up with Nigel and takes the device back to her home in the amusement park where she lives with her…sidekick…Bianca. Yeah, people in the Salkinds-Superman universe can just have sidekicks. Like Otis to Lex Luthor. It’s not superhero-exclusive is what i mean. You can be a homeless carnival witch and still have a sidekick. Bianca is played by Brenda Vaccaro who has clearly realised what her agent has dropped her in and is going full “maybe if I adlib enough funny dialogue I can push this thing into “camp classic” territory”. She can’t, but her sacrifice should not be forgotten. Bianca announces that she’s going to use the Omegahedron to take over the world but first thing’s first, she’s gonna get herself a MAN.
Meanwhile, Kara’s craft arrives on Earth through a wormhole that just happens to lead to the bottom of that same lake where Nigel and Selena were having their picnic. She emerges from the water already in her Supergirl costume. I’d complain about that but it’s not really any more out of left field than Clark suddenly emerging out of the Fortress of Solitude in his costume so I’ll give it a pass. Now, Helen Slater took a lot of flack for her performance when the movie came out but, I’ll be honest, I consider her…well, not a saving grace, that implies salvation was possible. But I do consider her the movie’s strongest element.
Slater plays Kara as an angelic naif, discovering the world and her own powers for the first time and there is an innocence to her performance that is infectiously charming. It’s not a take I think would fly today (no pun intended) but I think she’s excellent and doing much better with the appalling script than all of the seasoned luvvies in the cast.
While searching for the Omegahedron, two truckers try to rape her in the middle of the street, even after it is patently clear that she has super powers. Because, if there is one constant throughout all Superman-related media it’s that truckers are the scum of the Earth and must be beaten to a pulp and their trucks demolished for the good of all mankind.
We also learn through a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it radio news broadcast that Superman isn’t on Earth, having been dispatched by the President on a peace mission to a galaxy several hundred trillion light years away. Which, incidentally, would be a minimum of around 2,000 times further away than the entire length of the universe. I can’t help but feel this is the Salkinds’ overreacting slightly to Reeve’s refusing to be in the film: “FINE! WE DON’T NEED YOU! GET OUT OF HERE! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY OUT OF HERE!!”
Realising that she needs to blend in on Earth, Kara sneaks into a local girl’s boarding school and adopts the identity of Linda Lee after she sees a photo of Robert E. Lee hanging in the principal’s office.
Kara’s new roommate just so happens be Lucy Lane, younger sister of Lois because this entire world runs on convenience and contrivance. There now begins around fifteen minutes of sub-Mallory Towers girls school shenanigans where Kara has to protect Linda from a class bully named Myra who is by far the most evil and powerful villain she will have to face during the course of this film.
At one point, Myra tries to shut off the cold water in the shower so all the girls showering get scalded saying “so they lose a little skin, so what?” and at another point Kara has to block a shot in hockey that Myra was aiming at Lucy and the ball literally disintigrates againt Kara’s back. Like, sure, impressive that Kara’s that invulnerable but holy shit how strong is this kid?
Kid, that’s another issue. The movie never really makes it clear how old Kara is (or is pretending to be) but many of her classmates like Myra definitely look like quite young teenagers and that’s foreshadowing keep a little pin in that.
But what’s Selena up to? She, of course, having finally gotten the power she needs to begin her campaign of world domination decides that the first thing she needs is a man. She sees Ethan, the hunky groundskeeper who works at Kara’s school when stuck in traffic behind a schoolbus (this movie’s entire world is roughly the size of the Vatican) and decides “he’ll do”.
She lures Ethan to her lair and slips him a love potion but he has a bad reaction to it and stumbles out of the fairground in a daze because Selena is a terrible rapist. I mean that in the sense that she’s incompetent. And also, y’know. Obviously.
Anyway, Selena is freaking out because in his current state Ethan will fall in love with the first woman he sees. She uses her magic mirror to find him and then magically takes control of a bulldozer with the intention of scooping him up and bringing him back to her because she has the mind of a small child.
At that moment, Kara bumps into Lucy who is on a date with a nonce.
Yes, we unfortunately don’t get Superman or Lois Lane but we do get the Young People’s Favourite Jimmy Olsen who apparently dates high school girls. Well, maybe I’m being unfair. We don’t actually know how old Jimmy is supposed to be in this universe and I suppose it’s possible that he dropped out of high school early to work at the Daily Planet. I fondly remember my own teenage summer job when I was briefly Editor in Chief of the Irish Times.
Anyway, they see the bulldozer chasing Ethan and Kara transforms into Supergirl and rescues him. And only him. She snatches away the bulldozer’s scooper which contains Ethan but just leaves the rampaging bulldozer to terrorise the town. There’s a hilarious bit where Lucy climbs into the bulldozer to try and take control and gets knocked “unconscious”…while still very clearly holding on tightly so as not to fall out of the bulldozer
And there’s a dramatic scene where the bulldozer with the unconscious Lucy is rolling towards a building and you keep expecting Supergirl to swoop in and…it just kind of brushes against the building and comes to a stop.
Selena and Bianca are watching the whole scene via magic mirror and we get the most baffling, universe-reordering exchange of dialogue you can imagine.
BIANCA: A storm dragon?
SELENA: A super girl!
What?
WHAT?
WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN? ARE THERE DRAGONS IN THIS WORLD?! HOW LONG HAVE THERE BEEN DRAGONS IN THIS WORLD? I THOUGHT THIS WAS A PERFECTLY BOG STANDARD PLANET EARTH WITH TWO ALIENS AND A CRYSTAL FORTRESS AND NOW YOU’RE TELLING ME THERE’S WITCHES AND FUCKING DRAGONS NOW? STORM DRAGONS NO LESS!?
SHUT UP SUPERGIRL (1984)! SHUT UP! YOU’RE DRUNK AND I CAN’T DEAL WITH YOUR NONSENSE!
God this movie, man.
Supergirl takes Ethan to a remote location, changes into her Kara identity and only then frees him from the bulldozer claw whereupon he promptly falls in love with her. And this pisses Selena off no end. So this will be the conflict driving the remainder of the movie; a love triangle between a middle-aged woman, a man pushing thirty and a high school student. See, that’s how I like my villains. Completely, utterly, totally, pathetic. A true worm.
Furious at losing in the game of love to a child Selena sends a storm cloud to attack Kara’s school. She changes into Supergirl and realising that the Omegahedron is powering this storm, flies there to find it. Ethan follows her there because he’s still under the love potion’s spell let’s hope the jury buys that. Selena and Supergirl have a bit of a battle and Supergirl has to fly Ethan to safety when he’s knocked unconscious. Selena realises that even with the Omegahedron she’s just not a good enough witch and has to go crawling to Nigel for help.
He agrees because she basically offers her body up on a silver platter and he gives her the most evil foul magical artifact in all existence “The Burundi Wand”.
Meanwhile Supergirl has inexplicably fallen in love with Ethan and just as she kisses him he’s vanished away by Selena with Nigel’s help. She flies off to rescue him but Selena, who has now betrayed Nigel and stolen his wand (we’ve all been there fellahs, amirite?) banishes her to the Phantom Zone.
How…why…what? Fuck, I don’t care.
Supergirl is now in the phantom zone and she has no powers. She’s found by Zaltar who was banished there for being a civilization-ending fuck up and I strongly suspect that this is the point where Peter O’Toole started day-drinking to get through this fucking thing because he is convincingly blitzed.
Supergirl says she has to get out of here to save Earth from Selena and Argo City from her own actions and he says she can’t. And she says there must be a way. And he says there isn’t. And she says there must be. And he says there is a way, but it’s slightly difficult.
And so they set off to find the only way out of the Phantom Zone which involves a little light climbing.
They have to climb past a vortex and Supergirl says she can’t do it and Zaltar says she can and then she does it.
I swear to God. That’s the rousing speech.
But Zaltar doesn’t have anyone to tell him he can and so he dies. Supergirl flies back to Earth where Selena has taken control of the town of Midvale and set herself up as a local dictator with goons and everything. And the local populace has responded to their forcible annexation from the United States by an all powerful witch by…staging a sparsely attended protest with placards.
And look, Superman 2 wasn’t perfect but the sequence where the Kryptonians take over a town was given time to develop and had a real sense of dread. This is just hilarious. As she is driving through their conquered lands, Lucy angrily yells at Selena demanding to know what happened to Linda and this is enough for her to figure out that Linda Lee and Supergirl are the same and she takes Lucy and Jimmy hostage.
Supergirl arrives to put a stop to Selena’s nonsense and Selena causes the floor under Supergirl’s feet to crack apart and she has to stagger around trying not to fall in.
Anyway, it’s your classic witch versus Disney Princess final battle in a castle so that means we need a giant monster. Selena summons a huge demon that Supergirl struggles to overcome:
SUPERGIRL: I can’t!
ZALTAR FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE LIKE FUCKING OBI-WAN KENOBI: You can.
And wouldn’t you know it, that’s all it took. Supergirl then creates a typhoon that sucks Selena, the demon and Bianca into the Phantom Zone where they will no doubt be held for five, maybe even six minutes.
Supergirl frees Ethan, Lucy and Jimmy and begs them not to tell anyone of her existence and that she has to go back to Argo city.
***
I watched this with my six year old and this was his reaction.
You know what, son? Neither did I.
The Girl of Tomorrow
I knew a little girl as a kid for whom this was her favourite movie and I have no doubt that was all down to Helen Slater. She is a Supergirl for little girls and you know what? That’s a wonderful thing.
(Sister of an Ace) Reporter of the Daily Planet
Nice to see the Lane family tradition of diving headfirst into danger continues.
A Great Metropolitan Newspaper
Jimmy Olsen dates high school girls, pass it on.
Our Nefarious Villain
You know that bit in Into the Spider-Verse where Miles’ teacher tells him she knows he cheated on his multiple choice test because he got every answer wrong and the only way to do that is to know the right answers? That’s what this feels like. This feels like someone knew how to make a compelling villain and deliberately did everything wrong. This feels malicious.
Kindly Couple
We don’t even have Clark Kent, let alone the Kents.
Desperate Scientists
Both Kara’s parents are alive which means that this guy…
…is supposed to Marlon Brando’s brother.
“With powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men!”
Kara Zor-El demonstrates invulnerability, super strength, super hearing, x-ray vision, heat vision, super-breath and flight when she remembers she has it, the dippy moo.
FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:
NEXT UPDATE: 08 October 2026
NEXT TIME: Spooky season cometh…
