"Supergirl"

-directed by Jeannot Sczwarc
1984
Welcome to the movie that was born to be tortured. Purely in self-defense, that is - if you don't torture it, it will do far worse to you. In a minute, i'm going to try to lay the plot on you in a single sentence, and there's a good chance you'll think i'm making it up. If you managed to live through the 80s without seeing it, you should either cherish your ignorance forever, or watch it with a group of friends whose sense of mockery is keen. Alone, you'll be capable only of muttering "why..." or "how...", unable to believe that there was any semblance of intelligent intent, or that it was connected in any way to the Christopher Reeve franchise (though admittedly, i haven't seen 3 or 4). Yet the irrefutable evidence will be staring you in the face - Marc McClure (SUPERMAN 1-4, BACK TO THE FUTURE 1&3) as Jimmy Olsen. SUPERMAN was admittedly no MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, but you'll be unable to reconcile the obvious fact that SUPERGIRL was intended for adults (or teens, at least). Vaccaro's presence can ONLY be accounted for by Dunaway's insistence that she have a friend on-set for all those long days of shooting. Perhaps the greatest mystery of all is how the film lost only twenty million dollars.
Okay, here goes (innnnnnnnnnhale)! A kryptonian city survives in an alternate dimension, powered by a spinning ball which Peter O'Toole (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, VENUS) loses, forcing Helen Slater (CITY SLICKERS, THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN) to leave her mother Mia Farrow (ROSEMARY'S BABY, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS) and chase it into our dimension where it lands on Earth and gets picked up by Faye Dunaway (BONNIE AND CLYDE, NETWORK), a second-rate con artist who drives a Cadillac and lives in an abandoned amusement park with socialite Brenda Vaccaro (MIDNIGHT COWBOY) and warlock Peter Cook (BEYOND THE FRINGE, THE PRINCESS BRIDE), who realizes her plans for world domination can finally be achieved, and sets to work doing so by putting a love spell on a hunky gardener, while Helen becomes Supergirl and enrolls at a girls' school where she has a shower, then the gardener sees Helen first, then Jimmy Olsen visits her roommate Lucy Lane (never mind that she's sixteen), but their face-sucking is interrupted by the invisible demons and construction equipment Faye sends to get the hunky gardener back and destroy Supergirl, who are sucking face on a beach even though her home city is about to be destroyed, then she's thrown into a dimension where she loses her powers and Peter (O'Toole, not Cook) is waiting to die, never mind that he knows how to get out, then Helen pops back onto Earth, where Faye sends more demons, who turn on their master and everybody goes home!
Phew. And the dvd actually has a director commentary track...with a historian too, to provide, um...lots of perspective, one would hope.