Supergirl (1984)
Anchor Bay DVD (region 1)
d. Jeannot Szwarc; pr. Timothy Burrill; scr. David Odell; ph. Alan Hume; m. Jerry Goldsmith; ed. Malcolm Cooke; cast. Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway, Brenda Vaccaro, Hart Bochner, Peter O'Toole, Mia Farrow, Peter Cook, Simon Ward (124 mins)
The current wave of lavish blockbuster comic book inspired superhero movies owes in part to the emphasis on comics following the release of the original Superman movies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With superhuman heroes and villains having extraordinary powers, these were somewhat escapist science fiction adventures and in tone much lighter than the doomed, bleak interpretations of tortured humanity that would follow the revisionism of the Batman movies a decade later. There was a time it seems when even comic books were light and pleasant. In the decade between these two seminal DC Comics adaptations there came a number of lesser known flops including Howard the Duck (one of the few Marvel failures) which is not light and pleasant, and Supergirl, which is. Supergirl was produced by the team of Alexander and Ilya Salkind, who had acquired the rights to the character and to other DC Universe figures when they purchased the rights for Superman. Although the new film was meant to feature the two super characters meeting, star Christopher Reeve eventually backed away and so Supergirl instead relied on dialogue references and audience familiarity. Indeed, the filmmakers tried here to create a rather self-contained film that would exist separate from the main franchise but operate within the same mythos. It was also more fantasy oriented, colorfully pulpy and aimed at younger audiences.
Supergirl stars Helen Slater as Superman’s cousin. Initially living in Argo City, surviving the destruction of the planet Krypton by residing in inner-space, she comes to Earth in search of the city’s lost power source, the Omegahedron – lost through the fault of an irresponsible Peter O’Toole, Slater’s sometime mentor. On Earth, the mystical power source is found by an aspiring witch (Faye Dunaway) who uses it to strengthen her powers of black magic, much to the chagrin of her warlock teacher (Peter Cook). Slater poses as a student (whose roommate is Lois Lane’s sister) in a private school. When Dunaway banally uses her magic to bewitch a handsome, much younger man (Hart Bochner) the plan goes awry as Bochner falls in love with Slater instead. Vowing revenge out of her petty middle-aged jealousy, Dunaway thus summons forth the powers of darkness to go after Slater. Their rivalry continues as Dunaway uses her power to banish Supergirl to the prison known as the Phantom Zone, wherein Slater realizes that her powers have been stripped. She also discovers that O’Toole is there too, as punishment for losing the power source, and she urges him to help them both escape back to Earth to stop Dunaway, who by now has become something of a petty, fascistic Matriarch, unable to control her own ambitions. Correspondingly, the showdown looms between these symbolic mother and daughter figures. read more