Supergirl (1984)

File this one under “so bad it’s good.”

Six years after director Richard Donner and actor Christopher Reeve convinced us all a man could fly in Superman, director Jeannot Szwarc and actress Helen Slater proved just how silly that can look without enough good talent on both sides of the camera.

Although it’s painfully obvious from the opening credits that Supergirl is little more than a cheap attempt to cash in on the original Superman franchise before it was completely bled dry (which happened the next year with the release of Superman IV: Quest for Peace), there is a certain guilty pleasure in watching it that’s hard to deny.

From the opening scenes, where you get to watch veteran actors Peter O’Toole and Mia Farrow ham it up for their paychecks, to the final scenes of Faye Dunaway spinning around in front of a cheap special effects screen as some evil creature she’s conjured up tries to eat her, Supergirl is a hoot.

I’m sure it was not intended as a campy bit of fun when it was made. It was just made with such ineptitude that it’s impossible not to laugh at it.

Here’s a perfect example. When Supergirl leaves her home planet, she is dressed like a Greenwich Village hippie. She travels millions of light years and crash lands in a pond. When she flies out of the water, she’s dressed in her Supergirl costume.

And nobody ever stops to tell the audience why. Or else I didn’t hear it because I was laughing too hard.

Starring Helen Slater and Faye Dunaway.

IMDB Site.