Outside of this film's seemingly devoted fanbase (not counting the IMDb user obsessed with Siouxsie Sioux who keeps creating new identities and entering positive "10 star reviews" in an effort to convince the casual visitor that "Supergirl" is a film loved by everybody), "Supergirl" seems to have been box-office Kryptonite. Clearly the magic was gone in the franchise after the first two films, and perhaps "Supergirl" was seen as a means of taking the same idea in a new direction. It was a branch of the family tree that would have been better left unexplored.<br /><br />Just about the only novel thing about this film is having a female superheroine as its central character, and I suspect it was this identification with young girls that gave "Supergirl" most of its audience. Wonder Woman's TV show had already come and gone, and a big-screen female contender was the next logical step. In 1984, it was an idea whose time had come. Unfortunately, it came in the form of this movie.<br /><br />Part of the problem is that it's not very easy to understand exactly what's going on in the film. It's one thing to make the audience think and imagine, but it's quite another to make the audience confused; there are some serious blanks that should have been filled in if the movie were to truly connect. The version I first saw was the original American theatrical print, although even the extended cuts of the film don't help explain much. As the movie opens, we see what appears to be a large crystal shopping mall surrounded by bleak nothingness. We learn this is "Argo City", a fragment of the planet Krypton. Somehow it has survived the massive explosion that obliterated the original planet, and furthermore we learn that it exists in "inner space" instead of outer space. This is more than a little vague, especially when Kara makes her voyage to Earth in a spaceship, and emerges in a lake.<br /><br />She has come in search of the Omegahedron, a whirling, glowing tennis ball that happens to be one of Argo City's main power sources. Kara has helped lose it, so she must reclaim it before everyone in her city presumably dies. Even with this kind of crucial time constraint, she still has time to do a flying ballet when she arrives on Earth (already in costume). She also feels the need to adopt a secret identity as a student at a local girls school and waste time going to classes.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the Omegahedron has fallen into the wrong hands: Faye Dunaway's. She is an amateur witch named Selena who immediately senses the Omegahedron's power when it literally lands in her soup at a picnic. No, really. Selena intends to use the Omegahedron to achieve all sorts of lofty goals, like making a landscaper fall in love with her. She also wants to take over the world.<br /><br />It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but neither did the "Superman" movies if you think about them too much. The problem with "Supergirl" is that she doesn't exactly have a whole lot to do. There's a dull action sequence involving a runaway backhoe, as well as a scene where Supergirl uses a lightning-charged streetlamp to ward off an invisible monster that's after her. In the backhoe sequence, we're asked to believe that the entranced landscaper could wander around the crowded town without actually looking at anybody, because Selena's spell dictates he'll fall in love with the first person he sees. Of course the first person he sees is Supergirl. This infuriates Selena to no end, and she forces Supergirl to take on a supernaturally powered Tilt-A-Whirl.<br /><br />Perhaps the biggest liability with "Supergirl" is the special effects. Putting it bluntly, they are awful. They may look alright on home video, but I just had the pleasure of catching "Supergirl" at a midnight showing on the big screen, and the audience was definitely not buying it. The matte visuals look fuzzy blown up on the screen, and an unwise sequence shows Supergirl changing clothes several times in a series of jumpy cuts as she walks behind trees. Argo City itself is a goofy concept. It's wrapped in what appears to be a clear plastic tarp that, when punctured, exposes Supergirl to the vacuum of...what? Inner space? Or the vacuum of this movie? It's never really clear. One tedious sequence takes place in the Phantom Zone, which has morphed from the flying plane of glass in the first films to a desolate terrain where it's possible to set up a roughly-hewn home, and they even give you controlled substances. Where IS Argo City, anyway? Why do Supergirl and the Omegahedron reach Earth by surfacing in a lake? Dunaway's performance, as well as a co-starring Brenda Vaccaro, helps the camp factor a great deal, but what is Peter O'Toole doing in this movie? It seems to me the producers wanted to lend some big-star weight to the cast a la Marlon Brando, but O'Toole's character winds up being mostly silly. Also note how Mia Farrow's credit appears early in the cast list, yet she has about four lines. Aside from Dunaway, whose scenery-chewing performance seems like a continuation of her "Mommie Dearest" routine, nobody really shines. Helen Slater actually does a great job as Supergirl, but the story is so confusing and dull that it doesn't really matter.<br /><br />A very big help would have been a cameo appearance from Christopher Reeve as Superman, who is nowhere to be seen. Don't drop your guard, or you might miss the explanation for his absence, which zooms by when Selena's car radio suddenly comes on.<br /><br />Apparently the international and directors cuts of the film helped to flesh out the ideas a little bit better, but the damage was done for this film once it hit theaters. It was generally considered a disaster, and watching it, it is easy to see why.