Supergirl (1984) (with Amanda Jane Stern)

[00:00:04] Welcome to Movie Oubliette, the film review podcast for movies that most people have mercifully forgotten. I'm Dan. And I'm Conrad. And in each episode, we drag a forsaken film out of the Oubliette. Discuss it and judge it to decide whether it should be set free. Or whether it should be thrown back and consigned to oblivion forever.

[00:00:39] Movie Oubliette

[00:00:59] We dive into forgotten genre films, horror, sci-fi and fantasy because we love instantaneous costume changes, spinning magical balls and love potions for boys at inappropriate ages. Hello Conrad. Hello Dan. How did the wisdom teeth removal go? Well, I think it went well. So I had to go under general anaesthetic. Like to actually go under.

[00:01:27] So it was proper dental surgery or I think it's called maxillofacial surgery. It's the technical term. But during the recovery, no excessive pain, just a bit of discomfort while everything was numb. And then apart from that, yeah, I think everything's healing well. I haven't been in pain and I've just been at home just playing a bunch of board games by myself.

[00:01:58] And yeah, which is, that's fun. So I guess successful. Yeah. Oh, that's good. And you don't sound any different at all. Not to my ear. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So listeners, I'll let you in on a little secret. We recorded majority of this episode before my operation. We did. Yes. If you notice a difference, that's why. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:26] Because I did not know whether I could actually talk post-operation when we were supposed to record our usual podcast episode. So on the safe side, we recorded a bit early. Yeah. So the only thing we couldn't record early was the mailbag. Yes. Because obviously it wouldn't have existed. Yeah. What we have, Conrad. We've had so much, especially about He-Man. That one really took off.

[00:02:55] I mean, most of the comments were just along the lines of, I love this. I hate this. Screw the haters. And all this kind of thing. I think because the new film is coming out, it's invited a lot of retrospectives on the 80s movie. And yeah, there's a little bit of, my opinion is right. My opinion is right. So that's been quite fun to watch. Yes. I have seen the new movie, actually. Oh, you have? What did you make of it? I liked it.

[00:03:23] I can see why people won't like it. But I thought it was fine. I don't know. It's not exceptional. It's not an exceptional film. It's definitely more faithful, I guess, to the cartoon. There's more nods to the cartoon. There's also some nods to the original as well. There's a cameo in there. Ah. And the music's fantastic.

[00:03:50] I think Brian May had some hand in the electric guitar work for the soundtrack. And it does sound incredible. It does. Yeah. I've listened to the album and I enjoyed the end titles, which are a nod to the cartoon. Yes. Yes. I noticed that as well. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not a perfect movie. Let's be honest. But I enjoyed it. So I don't know. Well, that's good.

[00:04:20] Well, Michael Roll said on He-Man, congratulations, a masterful job on this podcast. I made my wife watch this film and she didn't hate it. I've got a soft spot for it. Although it isn't much of a He-Man film. We're looking forward to watching the new one, but only because it looks terrible. We love the 80s Beastman practical makeup for the win. Thanks again for a great episode. Yes. Yeah. Thank you.

[00:04:49] James Skerman, regular correspondent, says, This film holds a special place in my heart as it was the first VHS I ever rented. I think we had it for a day and I watched it four times. Wow. Wow. I was a big He-Man fan. You don't say, James. And I guess I was young enough to not be bothered by the fact that it had pretty much nothing to do with the show. I also really liked the Blade character.

[00:05:18] I'm very interested to see what the new movie is going to be like. So there you go. I'd be interested to hear back from both of you on what you made of the new movie if you went to see it. So, Michael and James, get in touch. Let us know. And finally, we heard from Serge of Cold Crash Pictures. Hello, Serge. Hello, Serge. And he said, I know most people my age love Labyrinth. And I do too.

[00:05:44] But what surprised me the most after my latest rewatch, my first in 15 years, is how much more I like it now than I did as a kid. Back then, it was just a puppet showcase. But now it's an epic parable about choosing to leave childhood behind. Mad props to movie Oubliette for making it to their 200th episode.

[00:06:06] They continue their tradition of thoughtful commentary, impeccable production values and snagging the most wonderful guests. Yes. Wow. Thank you. Yeah, Dave Golds was a delight to have on the podcast. He's a wonderful man. But of course, Serge, we're always trying to top our very first guest who still hasn't been beaten. Yes. Serge? Was that Serge? It was Serge, yeah. Well, this is the thing. I read his comment.

[00:06:36] I thought, sorry, is that a backhanded compliment for yourself? Because he is a frequent guest. And yes, I'm looking forward to having him back this year as well. Yes. And also, I do agree with you, Serge. Yes. I enjoyed Labyrinth much more as an adult than when I was a child. Ah, fascinating. Yeah. I think the same is true of David Golds as well. So it's obviously one of those things where the magic unfolds.

[00:07:05] It ages like a fine wine. Yes. All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for getting in touch. Yeah, we always love hearing from you. All right, Conrad. What are we doing today? Well, let me just do a ballet leap over to the Oubliette and open it up to find out. Oh, I seem to be in a picnic by a lake or something. Oh, it's very peaceful. Yeah, everyone's having a great time. Wait, what's that? Oh, my goodness.

[00:07:35] I think something's going to hit us. Meteoric. Oh, I'm jumping out of the way. Ah! Oh. It's a bit of an anticlimax. Yeah, it's just a Blu-ray just dropped into some dip. Sorry, madam. OK, I'm bringing it back. OK. Squat? Squat? What do you have, Conrad? Well, I have with me the 1984 British superhero film Supergirl, directed by Jeanneau Swark,

[00:08:03] written by David O'Dell, based on the DC Comics character, and starring Faye Dunaway, Helen Slater, Hart Bochner, Peter Cook, Mia Farrow, Mark McClure, Brenda Vaccaro, and Peter O'Toole. Oh, yes. So what happens in Supergirl 1984? Well, when the survival of your entire hidden Kryptonian civilisation rests on a glowing softball-sized

[00:08:31] MacGuffin called the Omegahedron, you probably shouldn't let an irresponsible artistic type play with it near a thin plastic window. Naturally, the orb is sucked into the vacuum of space and lands on Earth, forcing the naive Kara Zor-El, Helen Slater, to ditch her trans-dimensional home of Argo City and follow it to Midvale, Illinois.

[00:08:54] Upon arrival, Kara magically acquires a perfectly tailored branded superhero costume and, in a masterclass of narrative urgency, immediately decides that her dying colony can wait while she enrolls in a local all-gools boarding school under the alliterative alias Linda Lee. Unfortunately, the Omegahedron didn't just land anywhere.

[00:09:17] It dropped right onto the picnic basket of Selina, a campy, power-hungry amateur witch who instinctively realises it can elevate her from basic parlour tricks to world domination. Rather than executing a grand geopolitical takeover, however, Selina uses her infinite cosmic power to cast a love spell on the local groundskeeper, Ethan.

[00:09:43] Purely out of spite towards her warlock ex-boyfriend. A series of runaway construction equipment later, Ethan falls for Linda instead, sparking an apocalyptic magical girl grudge match between Krypton's last daughter and a jealous sorceress. Will Selina cement her global dictatorship, or will she become addicted to micromanaging the romantic impulses of her bewildered gardener?

[00:10:13] Can Kara navigate an oily bog of despair without spoiling the pristine blow-dried volume of her blonde hero hair? And is there any force in the universe powerful enough to save this movie from the structural damage inflicted by its screenwriter? Find out after the break. Yes, and we will be joined by a guest. We will, thank goodness.

[00:10:48] Returning for a third time is producer, actor and writer, whose script development technique includes testing dialogue with terrible British accents, Amanda Jane Stern. Welcome back. Welcome back. Oh my God. Welcome back. I love that and it's so true. I want to hear them now. I mean, I think it was my husband doing the bad British accents because he was reading the British part.

[00:11:16] So I guess I just have to have him come on, which he would be thrilled because he's a very big fan of this podcast. Great. No, I love that as a technique for spotting phony dialogue. It helps. So what have you been doing since we last met? Seems like you've been busy. I have. Yeah. Okay. So last time I was on, I know it was for Don't Look Under the Bed. And at that point, I was co-hosting the film podcast, Don't Be Crazy.

[00:11:46] Since then, I have also joined Pleasers and Punishers as a co-host. So that is a film podcast. We look mainly at genre cinema and we look at movies that people love to watch, movies that ruin your today, tomorrow and yesterday and all things kinky and queer. And I also have joined Joe Lipset on Murder Made Fiction, where we look at narrative fiction and television adaptations of true crime.

[00:12:15] Oh, so you're his co-host on that one. Okay. Well, I only started in June. So, you know, anything June onwards with Leopold and Loeb onwards is May. Ah, I will check that out because Joe tapped me up to do the music for it. Oh my goodness. Okay. Yeah. It's one of the things that I've done to pay my bills is produce true crime.

[00:12:39] So I've been the person making true crime television and, you know, doing the interviews to get contributors to come on the shows and writing up the pitches and the outlines and doing the research and finding all of the case documents and facts. So now I'm just doing that for fictional things. Oh, that sounds great. Yeah. Well, definitely check those out, everyone. True crime is so much fun. Be gay, do crime. Indeed. Not intended as a factual statement.

[00:13:07] Well, we may have exposed you to a crime against cinema today. The 1984 rendition of Supergirl directed by Jeanne O'Swark. Had you seen this before or did you come to it completely innocent? Oh no, I was a virgin to this movie. Oh boy. Yeah, it's a lot. For me, of course, this is from the 80s.

[00:13:31] So I would have seen this either on VHS or on TV, but I definitely do remember seeing it as a kid. How about you, Dana? This escaped you? I do remember watching this as a kid. Oh, wow. I remember not minding it. I thought it was okay. I was never a big fan of Superman though. So this was at the time of watching as a kid. I thought, oh, this is a nice change from Superman. But now watching it again, I'm not sure. You're not?

[00:14:01] You're not sure? Really? You didn't think this was Oscar worthy? Maybe not Oscar worthy. Well, it is rather camp and fabulous. The costumes? Yeah. Selena's hair? Oh, wow. Yes, it's huge. I guess it's interesting to see an attempt to centre a woman in a superhero film that is meant to be a big budget summer blockbuster. Following in the footsteps of Superman, which had been a huge hit, one and two certainly had been a huge hit.

[00:14:30] But of course, three had been a failure, all produced by the Salkinds. This one was their attempt to sort of build on their franchise, to create a DC universe long before universes were a thing. And spread the love to include women as heroes for possibly one of the first times in a major motion picture. Did you feel seen, Amanda? As a woman? No. I don't think so. No? Okay.

[00:15:01] You know, there's a lot going on in this movie. I'm not going to go out of my way to say it's super sexist. I just don't think it's really anything. It's kind of what it is. None of the motivation makes any sense. Yes. Why characters do what they do. And then when we first meet Kara at the beginning, she is so dumb. Yeah.

[00:15:29] And dumb in a way that just does not make sense. I was watching this and for another secret project of mine, we're discussing sexy baby movies. And so I was watching this and my husband goes, does she fit into the sexy baby trope? Is she born sexy yesterday? Oh, you know, she could quite possibly be.

[00:15:48] So we're introduced to Supergirl in her floating city of Argo, which I always used to think as a kid was Argos, which is the name of a catalogue store in the UK. Oh, yes. Okay. Which I couldn't figure out. Was it like a fragment of Krypton that drifted off like the ivory tower in the never ending story? I don't know. I think so. I think they try to explain it with, it's like interdimensional. It's like inner space. They talk about outer space and inner space.

[00:16:17] So it's like not in our reality or something. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't understand that. In our core almost. Yeah, she flies out of a lake after zooming through what appears to be a lava lamp rather than through space. Oh, you mean when she flies through an old Windows computer screensaver? Yeah. That's the one. That? It looks like she's going through a car wash or something. It's so special.

[00:16:46] And then somehow she just appears magically in a whole new outfit and she now is secretly really smart? Yeah. And yet when we met her, she is playing very young. So Helen Slater, hats off to her. She's got quite the task to try and pull this off. I do think she does impressively well. She was 20 when she made this. But we're introduced to her.

[00:17:10] She's in this city with Peter O'Toole playing this leader stroke artist who makes really boring translucent sculptures. Yeah. And she's sort of sitting on the floor with her legs splayed out like she's a toddler. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. I have no idea how old this character is supposed to be. Because in the comics, she's 21. And then part of what makes that so murky is that they give her a romance with the tree guy. How old is he? Yeah.

[00:17:40] Yeah. So Ethan, the landscape gardener, is played by Hart Bochner. Ah, yes. Landscaper. I forgot that word. So I went with tree guy. That'll do. I'd call him a tree guy. He is 10 years her senior, you know, in terms of the actor's age. Great. Love that. Yes. That's really comfortable. I mean, let's face it, even in the reality of the film, she is at school. Yeah. She's a school kid in uniform. Yeah. Great. And he's in love with her. I mean, that's what I was thinking the whole time.

[00:18:10] Like, she's a minor. Why is this happening? Yeah. He looks like he's like 25 and she looks like she's like 16, 17. Yeah. Yeah. It just doesn't gel well with me. That whole kiss was not appropriate. Or consensual. It was not consensual. Yeah. On either part, arguably, because. Yes. Of course, after Kara comes to Earth to rescue the Omegahedron, which is the source of power

[00:18:39] for Argo City, which has gone out the window for some reason. Because of air. I mean, that whole scene was just preposterous. Like the source of the whole city, he just steals to make a sculpture. It's just a thing that we're holding and playing with. And it's like a revolving tennis ball. Yeah. And it flies out this cellophane thin wall.

[00:19:02] So if you had this one ball that powered your entire world, would you really just let anyone hold it? Yeah. Would it not be locked up somewhere? You wouldn't. It would be like in the beast's west wing, underneath, behind a cabinet, locked away. You couldn't just take it out and play with it. Like, let's play fetch with the thing that powers our entire world. Yeah. Let's just kick it across the floor. Yeah. Let's do that. Why not? Let's play with it.

[00:19:31] It's a toy. Yeah. It's not terribly responsible. So Zoltar, Peter O'Toole's character, is, I think, self-banished to the Phantom Zone for that particular crime. Mm-hmm. And Supergirl, or Kara, comes to Earth to rescue the ball, but she quickly gets distracted and enrolls in a boarding school instead. For some reason. Or is that just cover? Wait, that's the thing. I think it's cover.

[00:19:56] I feel like this movie loses its plot along the way of, is she really here to find the Omega Hedron, or does she just want to be a normal teenage girl falling in love with a 30-year-old landscaper? Yeah. When also, the real romance we should be getting is between her and her roommate. Yes. Lois Lane's sister, Lucy. Lucy. Lucy Lane. One of our tenuous connections to the main story.

[00:20:22] The only other connection we have is Mark McClure playing Jimmy Olsen, who visits because he's got a thing for Lucy Lane, apparently. Apparently. Superman was supposed to appear in this movie. There was going to be a bit of a handing over of the torch or sort of endorsing the movie by having Christopher Reeve in it, but he pulled out at the last minute and they had to rewrite the beginning and the end. I wonder why. Yeah.

[00:20:48] I think he was a little bit burned by Superman 3 and not terribly pleased with the Sal Kynes at this point. I think the whole firing of Rich and Donna, I think, had left a bad taste in the mouth. The director of the original movie should have been the first two movies. So, yeah, he pulled out. So, she was left to fend for herself. I have to say, the whole boarding school situation is very coincidental. She just happens to fall into this boarding school. So much is coincidental.

[00:21:17] I mean, the Omegahedron just falling into Selena's French onion soup and then her wizard advisor is also the math teacher at this all girls boarding school. Yeah. It's a small world. Yeah. So small. Lucy Lane also attends that Jimmy Olsen is involved. And just is magically her roommate. Yeah. What a coincidence. It's so fortunate. I do like the line at the end of the movie where I'm jumping way ahead where they end up

[00:21:45] all suspended from Selena's ceiling in these sort of orb cages. And Jimmy Olsen turns to Lucy and says, who's that guy pointing at Peter Cook? And she says, I think he's my math teacher. Yeah. It's a bit peculiar, isn't it? Like, what is he doing here? How did you and Selena meet? Why is he just a random math teacher if he's also an evil wizard?

[00:22:12] I think that's just what they do at the weekends, like book club or something. Yeah. It's just witchcraft weekends. It's your side gig. It's like, oh, you know, by day, average math teacher, by night. World domination wizard. Yeah. I mean, we should talk about the villains because I do feel like they're kind of the

[00:22:37] weakest part of the movie because they don't seem to have any motivations apart from I want a boy toy landscaper boyfriend. Oh, actually, he's useless. Let's world domination. But one city at a time. We'll just take over the police. But things just kind of happen. All you need to do that is money. It's just magic, right? The orb just does magical things that just happen.

[00:23:03] Well, yeah, we never get what the powers of the Omegahedron are truly explained to us. No. Is it a magical thing? Is it an air source? In some ways, this movie is almost like, what if the beginning of Spaceballs was when they lost their air and it's now about the hunt to change the vacuum from suck to blow? Right. Yeah. I think many people would suggest that this mostly sucks.

[00:23:30] But I have to say, I kind of love Faye Dunaway as Selina. It isn't your usual supervillain. I mean, we'd had Superman one where he was against Lex Luthor, who is a classic villain. You had him against the three Kryptonian crime lords, which is probably the best of the bunch, certainly the most popular. The third one was like Robert Vaughan and Richard Pryor the Hacker. I don't know. That one didn't work terribly well.

[00:23:58] But this one, it sort of reduces the stakes quite a lot because Selina... Quite a lot. She seems to just determine from touch that the softball that's landed in her Thousand Island dressing is something that's capable of allowing her to achieve world domination. But instead of that, she decides to just woo a landscape gardener with a nice chest. And she doesn't woo him with the magic ball.

[00:24:27] She woos him with a spider-related spell. And she only seems interested in him because her friend is interested in him. Yeah. Is it just me? Because we have Brenda Vaccaro there as Bianca. I love the energy between these two. Am I imagining that they're queer-coded? Is it just me wanting to see queer-coding everywhere? Because that couple... I read so much queer-coding into this. Between the two of them, between Lucy and Cara.

[00:24:54] And I think you get the mid-80s of it all and the big budget. So we shoehorn in Tree Guy. But yet, there's no motivation. I mean, Selina could be so iconic. Her hair, amazing. Her clothing, amazing. But it just... You're never on her side enough as the villain because her plan is so whatever. But it's never fun enough for you to be like, yes, Selina! Take over the world, my queen! It's just like, that's who you want? Yeah. You want the list? That? Yeah.

[00:25:24] Her goals are so small. And there's no kind of sense of evil as well. She doesn't actually really hurt anyone. Not really. And it feels like they're going for witchy, but they're not going all in on witchy. This is kind of proto Agatha Hartness kind of... It feels like it could have been like hocus pocus. They could have gone really into the magic and the evil witch aspect of her. But they never quite go there.

[00:25:53] She just seems like she doesn't know what she's doing all the time. Yeah. It's like, oh, drat. It didn't work. I'll try this next time. It's like, what are you trying to do? And what is her end goal with taking over Chicago? Just to have a palace on top of an ugly mountain? Not sure. It seems to be. Yeah, she just... What is this place called? Midvale, Illinois. Yeah, she just takes over a small town. And then she thinks she's going to spread to Chicago. And then the next state.

[00:26:23] And then the next state. But do what? She's... There's no final plan. There's no system of governance. You know, if you're going to be the all-powerful ruler, you need to come up with a plan to rule. Yeah. And when they're coming up with this plan, this flimsy plan, they've got all these maps and things laid up on the floor. There's no table or anything. It's like an empty room. And they're just sitting on the floor.

[00:26:49] The whole, like, evil lair and the weird amusement park that they're in, the abandoned fairground. It's a great idea for a villain's lair, an amusement park. Yeah, but they could have gone really campy with the rest of the film, but it doesn't quite mesh because it feels very separate to Cara's story, which is like, I'm going to school. I'm doing math. Yep.

[00:27:12] And then you've got these, like, middle-aged women just hatching some flimsy plan in, like, an abandoned amusement park. It just doesn't quite feel like the same movie. No, it doesn't. These two women getting excited about the Diet Coke break guy. It does feel like two different movies. And they never truly come together. It's just, like, why is this what's happening? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:36] Because I kind of like the whole Cara part where she's going to school and everything's weird and there's pranks and she's using her powers for, like, little things. Like, that, I would watch that. But maybe as a TV show, like, that could have been a cool, like, TV series. Well, and that's kind of like what Sky High was, that Disney movie that came out in the early 2000s where it is a school where all the kids are superheroes. And so everything is centered around the school.

[00:28:05] And that actually works really well. And then it... I like that movie a lot. Right. I did, too. And it never loses its plot because it's not like, oh, and now we have a secret bad villain somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah. Like, the villain is at the school. Yeah, you never see Selena or Bianca in the other parts of the movie. Like, they're always in their lair doing things from afar. Like, it did feel very separate. I think it's the math teacher who's supposed to be the connecting thread. Oh, yeah. Not enough. No, not particularly.

[00:28:34] I think she does do a little parade through town with her jack-booted motorcycle helmet wearing secret police that she somehow suddenly has. I don't know whether the Omega Hedron does that or if... Magic. The local police just thought we'll quit the donuts and start wearing black. I don't know why. But it's also not meanie police as well. There's like, what, six guys? Yeah, it's like three guys around her.

[00:29:02] It's a really small brigade. It is. Yeah. There are more protesters and there's only like 10 of them. Yeah. It's a lesson in power, isn't it, really? There are more of us than there are of them. Because the movie on the whole does feel very small. Like, everything's small. Small motivations, hardly any cast. Like, it feels like it's on a backlog in Hollywood or something for the whole movie. Like, that town looks super fake.

[00:29:32] Like, it looks like they'd probably filmed westerns in that town. Like, it just doesn't... It does look like they filmed westerns there. And that is probably what set they're using. But yeah, this movie's like a massive budget, right? Like, this is not a cheap movie. Well, it's cheaper than Superman. So Superman was supposedly 55 million. This is about 35. That's still a budget. That's a lot for 84. It is, yeah. But it's that awkward mid-budget range that films never get made in anymore.

[00:30:02] Because you either have to go really big or be independent and be tiny to pull things off now. I miss the mid-budgets. That's how we got all those great thrillers. And mid-budget thriller is one of my favorite things. Yeah, absolutely. The 90s was when they died, pretty much. Yes, yes. Well, the 90s was really the heyday of that mid-budget thriller. And then, goodbye. And I'm still pissed. Yeah, me too. Physical media died, so the secondary market was not as lucrative as it used to be.

[00:30:32] Our streaming has ruined everything. Everything. Everything. Yes. So this is filmed predominantly in the UK, Scotland and Pinewood. And that town was built outdoors on the Pinewood lot. Okay. So it's an American town recreated. I mean, it's a nice attempt. And it is probably a huge build for a mid-budget movie to pull off. It still makes the world feel very small. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:00] I'm not opposed to something that looks like a set. That can be done really interestingly, especially if you're dealing with comic books. But this feels like a set almost in a cheap way. Yeah. I feel like you don't really get to know any other characters. Like, you can achieve small town well if you kind of get to know these people. But you don't know anyone. Nigel, Lucy and Jimmy. That's it. And Ethan. Yeah. And they're all out of towners mostly, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. Nigel is British. She clearly does not belong there.

[00:31:29] Lucy's there for school and probably does not come from there. Jimmy's visiting from Metropolis. So... Which also leads me, how old is Jimmy? Too old for Lucy. Actually, I did look up Maureen Teefy's age. She's quite old. Oh, no. I don't mean the actors. I mean the characters. Well, yeah. Jimmy is a professional photographer. Yeah. And Lucy is a high school student. Still in high school. What is their age difference? What is going on here? Yeah. It's not great.

[00:31:59] But, I mean, actress age. Maureen Teefy, who plays Lucy, she was around 29, 30 at the time. She does not look that old. Wow. That's amazing. I would have pegged her at like 22. Yeah. I know. I was quite shocked. Good for her. And Mark McClure was 27. So she was older than Mark McClure. Wow. The time of filming. I mean, he looks really young. They look the same age. I just know that the characters are not. I mean, it's not as bad as Tree Man.

[00:32:29] And also, like, why did we even need that plot line? Why did we need the love potion? Why does that matter? I feel like that's just 20 to 30 minutes that we could cut out. Yeah. The whole love story felt weird because Ethan falls in love with Kara because of the love potion. So it's fake to start off with. That's a fake love. But then Kara falls for it for some reason.

[00:32:53] And then the love potion is broken because the nut is cracked and the spider is flicked away by Nigel. But Ethan still loves Kara? Yeah. He says, I think. Magic. He's not entirely sure. Yeah. Because that's what the writer wrote. Yeah. Well, it might just be that, you know, you get used to relationships. It becomes sort of a reflex action. It's been a day. You know, he's been madly in love with her for a whole day. It's been a day.

[00:33:23] Spouting poetry. It's been one day. And speaking softly and gazing into her eyes. That's the other thing. I mean, this is just a ridiculous form of romance. I mean, he is not the person that he was. He's just this bizarre love lawn puppy wandering around spouting Shakespeare. You don't buy it? You don't see them as so, so enamored of each other? No. This is not what true love looks like?

[00:33:49] There's not some listicle about the best chemistry you've ever seen on screen with this duo at number one? Well, apparently they were cast because they had great chemistry between the two. They were instant friends and got on really well. Okay. Good for them. It did not translate. No. It did not translate to the screen. Not an inch of chemistry on screen. If that was the best chemistry they could find in the auditions, then...

[00:34:18] I would argue that they may well have had chemistry. It's just that the writing did not give them a circumstance where they can actually behave like normal human beings. I mean, I appreciate the kind of role reversal, though, that they were going for. They were trying. So she's the girl. She saves the guy. And he tries to step in and be like, hey, no, I want to save you. But she's like, nah, you have no chance. I'm way stronger. So I kind of appreciate it, but it just doesn't quite land. No. Yeah.

[00:34:48] There's just, I think, so much that they could have... And I'm not opposed to it being small scale. That's the thing. I think there are ways to do a superhero thing where it is small scale. But the stakes need to still feel important, even if it's smaller. And they don't feel important here. No. And there isn't an awful lot of action. I mean, if you're coming to this Superman spin-off movie for action and adventure, first of all, you've got to deal with the fact that you've pretty much taken a hard shift into fantasy.

[00:35:17] Now, I know Superman is more fantasy than hard sci-fi, but it did certainly in its original incarnation with Richard Donner, it did try to go for some form of verisimilitude, take itself quite seriously, establish a set of rules. Whereas this is a world with literal magic in it. So you've got that to deal with. But then you've also got to deal with the action when it comes.

[00:35:42] I mean, I think it's like an hour into it before she rescues somebody, ignoring her, stopping Lucy getting hit in the face with a hockey ball or whatever. Oh, yeah. There's that plot line with the bully girls. Right. That's in there, too. But it's like an hour in before she has her first big rescue scene, which is a bulldozer goes wild in the town. Yeah. And mind you, she leaves Lucy passed out in the driver's seat. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:10] And she doesn't do what you would expect Superman to do. There's a runaway bulldozer. Lift up the bulldozer into the air. You are strong. You can fly. Just do that. And it won't cause destruction, but she doesn't do that. She rips the front of it off. And she waits so long to get involved. I know. It's like when that sequence happened, my husband was like, okay, what do you think's longer, this or the car chase in Jade? Right. Right.

[00:36:37] Because this scene, it just, it goes off for like 10 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. And it should be thrilling. But they drag it out so much that you're sitting there like, okay, it's still going. It's still going. Oh, wow. We're still. Okay. Oh, boy. Yeah. So the action when it comes along, it's fairly sparse. You pretty much get this and Supergirl diffusing an electrical storm with a lamppost. And that's somehow getting rid of the invisible monster that's been sent to her dorm room.

[00:37:06] It's very anticlimactic. Yeah. Because that scene is kind of one of my favorites in the movie because it felt very fantasy. It felt like never ending story almost. But then it kind of just ends. Yeah. She has the lamppost and then she does the zappy zap and then that's done. That was it. Zappy zap. I love it. She does the zappy zap. I just felt like, oh, that seems cut short. All you need to do is say, leave this place and do no harm. And that's it. Oh, yeah. Of course. Top done. Yes.

[00:37:35] There are no good one liners in this movie. Like there's definitely some lines where I went, um, did they think that through? But there's no good one liner. There's no iconic dialogue. No. Well, if there is, save it for the Moobly Awards. We've got a few corkers for that. I have a few lines for sure. Now it's time for Random Trivia. Wow.

[00:37:59] Okay, Dan, what fabulous piece of trivia did you discover through your binary shoot today? Yes. Well, we have talked about some of the effects, but there is one scene that made me chuckle when I found out about how they achieved it. It's the scene where Supergirl is flying up out of the lake and it's actually a cardboard cutout of her being pulled by a wire.

[00:38:27] And if you rewatch that scene, you can clearly see it's a cardboard cutout and it is hilarious. Um, she is completely two dimensional. Yeah. It's a cardboard cutout of her. That's, uh, that's what $35 million can achieve in this movie. Yep. They could not figure out a way to pull a stunt woman on wires out of a lake.

[00:38:55] So they did it with cardboard instead. They could have used a mannequin at least and use something three dimensional. Yeah. You would have thought. Yeah. No. Two dimensional. Oh my God. It's so cute. Good for them and their $35 million. Yeah. And that's our trivia.

[00:39:23] Who do you think the audience is for this movie? Oh, it's tough, isn't it? It's supposed to be a four quadrant crowd pleaser, isn't it? Right. But I feel like a kid might be entertained, but also they might be bored because then the main plot is just about romancing the landscaper. Yeah. That could have been the title. Hugging Mr. Tree. You've nailed it.

[00:39:51] Like, they spend so much time on that. And I don't think a kid would be that interested in that plot line because they also don't do anything with it. So I don't know who this is for. Yeah. Because the love story feels like aimed at girls. Like they want a soppy love story, but it's fake. And I guess the low stakes as well. Girls or kids? Because it's less scary. I'm not sure. But I don't know whether guys would like this movie because there's not a lot of action.

[00:40:21] I mean, I think it's kids, but we've seen significantly more action packed and much scarier media for children than this. Yeah. And I'm not sure how well this would land for boys and girls going to the theatre just because, as you say, the stakes are so low. Basically, it's a spat between a grown woman and a teenager over a landscape gardener. Yep. That is all it is. And one of them isn't even interested. Neither of them is actually interested.

[00:40:51] So it's two women fighting over a landscape gardener that neither of them care about. Yeah. I mean, there's the point at the fairground where he shows up with chocolates and roses and she's like, get away. Like, you're in the way. Go away. Yeah. And then somehow it's like, I love him too. Why? What happened? Yeah. Did I miss a scene? Well, possibly. Which cut did you watch? I think we all agree to watch the international cut.

[00:41:20] Is that right? Yes. I watched the international. So the two hour and five minute cut. Yes. That was the cut that the director was sort of happy with. And then when it was released in the US, I don't know whether they had like a preview and it was disastrously bad. And they thought, well, the answer is just to take whole chunks of the movie out. Because if it goes faster, it's better. It's like bad sex.

[00:41:46] If you just head to the climax as quickly as possible, it's okay. Or you just fake it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think the real answer is if it was bad sex, just don't even bother climaxing. You just end it in the middle. Just say, you know what? I'm done here. Thank you very much. Well, I've gotten to the age now where leaving the theatre is a possibility in both circumstances.

[00:42:11] But there is a 105 minute cut out there that apparently, I haven't watched it, but apparently it just lifts out anything that's sort of character related. Anything that doesn't quote unquote advance the plot is removed. What plot? Quite. So it's faster, I guess, faster paced perhaps. But perhaps lacking in all of the nuance and the character shadings. Yes, because this was so nuanced.

[00:42:38] You'll be pleased to hear that there is an even longer cut. Oh. The 138 minute director's cut. I wanted so much more. Well, maybe that one works. Yes, because if it didn't work the first time, just add more. Add more. So this was released in the summer of 1984. It did not do well, sadly. No, you don't say. Yeah.

[00:43:08] I think it garnered $14.8 million on a budget of 35. Wow. So, yeah. Wow. I mean, it has a really low critics rating as well. It does. And it hasn't really garnered much of a cult following after the fact, except I think for people who just love the campness of it all. Right. Yeah. But that's the thing. It's not even camp enough. Not quite. I mean, it's fairly camp.

[00:43:35] I mean, if you've got women with big hair fighting over a shirtless guy. Yes. It's pretty camp. But it doesn't hit the levels of like, death becomes her camp. No. You know? Or Barbarella. Yeah. Because the entire movie isn't camp. Like, you don't have Kara doing campy things. Yeah. And like, ridiculous superhero stuff. Like, it's very low key, all the things that she does. Yeah. It's like a little school drama. Yeah.

[00:44:03] Like, it felt very like Rory Gilmore coded. Like, we're watching just Gilmore girls now. It does. Like, the uniform looks exactly the same. I mean, what did we think about the costume? I mean, I think there was a lot of contention when the movie came out about, does the costume look good? It looks kind of cheap. I didn't mind it. I mean, of all the things to nitpick in this, the costume is the costume. It's there. Is it the best looking version of this costume? No. Definitely not.

[00:44:32] It definitely looks a little cheap. I think it looks cheap from our perspective. Like, if you go back and watch the original Superman movie, that looks cheap as well. But at the time, it was kind of, you know, comic book accurate. And I feel like this movie as well, it does the costume pretty well. I don't know. I think it kind of does work. I don't understand how she changes her hair color, though. Like, when she goes from Linda Lee to Kara. We don't know what her powers are. They're never explained.

[00:45:00] And she just pops out of the window's screensaver and has a whole bunch of powers. Yeah. And she discovers them straight away. Also, she does know about Superman and Clark Kent and his secret identity and all of that. She knows all of his backstory. And that's how I'm assuming she knows what the powers are, because it's the same powers that he has. Yes, because he's her cousin. Yeah, he's her cousin. And she seems to know everything about his life on Earth, which is really odd.

[00:45:31] I mean, does he send postcards? What's the deal there? Well, also, right, because in Argo, they seem pretty convinced that you can't go back and forth between Earth and Argo. So how does information from Earth get back to them? No, I don't know. Not sure. No, I don't understand how any of the rules work. And in terms of her abilities, it does just seem like magic. Like, she shows up in her Supergirl costume. Yeah. After going through the binary chute. Yeah, yeah.

[00:46:00] Which is what they call it, the binary chute. Nice. And then she magically transforms herself into a school uniform because she magically understands what a school is and what a school uniform is and what she should do at a school. So she's... Yeah, I know. She seems to have information that we don't know how she got that information. Like, at one point, she doesn't know what a train is. Yeah. But you know what a school is? Or a bra. She has no idea what a bra is. Oh, yeah.

[00:46:28] I was going to ask you about the bra scene. Oh, that scene is coming up. Okay. I have that in my Movie Awards. I won't spoil it. Because what the fuck? I'm sorry. What is life like on Argo? Because everything that I've seen, it seems pretty similar to just Earth life. Why does she not know basic things? I don't know. On Argo, all they seem to do is wander around on multiple levels having to put up with Peter O'Toole's terrible sculptures.

[00:46:58] I think they're just hippies. Yeah. Like, maybe they're all tripping all the time. They feel very hippie commune cult community. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like one of those Star Trek The Next Generation planets where everyone's in pastels and happy. I hate those planets. It feels like they're all going to sing Kumbaya. Yeah. Another thing that we should talk about, of course, that we always love talking about is the score. Yes. Or the soundtrack in general.

[00:47:25] Because I don't know if anybody else loves Howard Jones as much as this movie. Oh, boy. The score. This, like, big score. And you're just like, I'm not sure that this is doing anything with what's going on in this movie. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's compensating, right? Yes. It's going big, but there's not much happening. And I don't dislike the score. I'm just not vibing it with this movie.

[00:47:51] This is one of those rare cases where Jerry Goldsmith, probably my favourite film score composer, I think laid a turd. I don't like this score at all. I can feel what it's going for. I mean, you are left with the impossible task of following John Williams, which is no small feat even for a composer as great as Jerry was. I think he's got the fanfare and the heroism, right? Yes.

[00:48:19] The love theme is beautiful for a romance that just does not exist, which is peculiar. But he's in that early 80s phase where he is really enamoured with synthesizers. And I think this, although I love his work on things like Explorers and Gremlins, which is around the same period, 84, 85, this, the synths are egregious. They're really awful. And in particular, that whoosh noise that's over the top of the fanfare. Honestly, it's awful.

[00:48:49] Yeah. I do feel like the synth stuff dates it older than it actually is. Like it felt very 70s. There is a lot of this that feels very 70s. Yeah. And some of the scenes, like some of the effects in some of the scenes felt like 50s almost. Like we were watching some sort of like B grade 50s like horror film or sci-fi film. Like the vortex in the forbidden zone felt very like, is this the best you could do in the 80s?

[00:49:18] Like surely something's better than this. It's the best that this movie could do. Yeah. They struggled with that one. It shows. It doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Or at the end, the big climactic scene, the big battle between Supergirl and a monster that gets conjured up. And it's just her image, like blue screen image being stretched out optically. And it's just like, it's like laughably bad. That's the thing.

[00:49:43] There are movies from around the same time with significantly lower budgets that did so much more with effects. Like I'm a big fan of the Hellraiser movies. And for one of my other podcasts, we just covered Hellraiser 2. That had a $3 million budget. Yeah. And it's 1988. And it looks so good in terms of the effects that they do. And then you get this with a budget that is more than 10 times. Yeah.

[00:50:12] And this is what it looks like. And it's not as though the budget's going on the cast or anything. It's not like Christopher Reeves come back and demanded half the budget. No. No, it's all unknowns pretty much. Yeah. Peter Tull probably got the highest and Faye Dunaway. And even still. You've got Mia Farrow in like a tiny scene. Oh, in one scene. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of like the parents in the original movie. It's sort of a cameo almost. Yeah. I mean, I have to say some of the flying scenes were pretty good. Like. Yes.

[00:50:41] Must have been a massive crane because some of those shots are quite wide for her to be lifting off. And it's not some of them, not all of them. It's not blue screen. Some of them you can see the wires. Yeah. They were trialing a new flying system because this is the thing. They wanted to make Supergirls flying graceful rather than powerful or fast. Okay. Credit to Helen Slater.

[00:51:07] Not only does she pull off the feat of wearing the costume and not looking stupid, because I don't think she looks stupid. No, I don't know. And her hair looks fantastic. Yeah. But she also looks really good in the air. And I know that she was training constantly throughout production, swimming and gymnastics and on wires and everything, trying to, you know, build up her core so that she can hold those positions in the air and transition from the ground to the air smoothly.

[00:51:37] And I think she does a fantastic job of all of the flying sequences because most of the time it's her unless there's something dangerous involved. Oh, okay. I mean, the flying sequence in the forest. That is kind of a fun sequence. Yeah. It doesn't like, it leads into weird things, but it is fun on its own. It's very like Disney Enchanted Forest, the way, you know, it's almost reminiscent of some of those older Disney cartoon forest scenes. And I mean that in a good way. And there's some sound effects that add to that.

[00:52:07] And then she ends up in school. Yeah. Well, there have been comparisons made with Snow White. You've got, you know, an ingenue and a witch. Ah, of course. And instead of an apple, we've got an omegahedron or Wizard of Oz. I was thinking Sleeping Beauty, but yeah. That's a good comparison too. And apparently Wonder Woman 84 is very similar to this as well. Citing the same year. I can't attest to that because I haven't seen it because I don't hate myself.

[00:52:34] Wait, you mean Wonder Woman that came out in 1984 or the one called Wonder Woman 1984? The one called Wonder Woman 84. The sequel. I have seen that. Yeah. That movie is bad. It's bad. Yeah. But apparently that is also magic and questionable romances with people not consenting to what's happening to them. Yes. Sure, if you want to say so. Yeah. I watched it once and was not into it.

[00:53:02] I was like, I won't be watching this again. Yeah. Talking about magic. Magic does exist in a DC universe. And it is actually one of Superman's weaknesses, apart from Kryptonite. He's also got a weakness to magic as well. So it's not completely foreign to the universe. It just seems like quite foreign to the Superman universe. Like they've never had something like that before. And it feels very different to the Superman franchise.

[00:53:31] Well, these witches also feel like they're not out of a comic book, but they're out of the craft. Yeah. I kind of wanted Selina to be an actual witch to start off with, with like simple magic. And then for the Omegahedron to just enhance her powers. But she's not. She's just like some cranky 50 year old. Like having picnics with dip and stuff. Who tells fortunes at a defunct amusement park. Yeah.

[00:54:00] Like it just doesn't quite. Yeah. There's no sort of sense of like progression. And her powers. No. She gets the Omegahedron and it's just like, I'm great. Yeah. How about Supergirl? Do we sense an arc there? I mean, she gets to know more about kissing, I guess. What an art. Wow. I actually like Helen Slater as Supergirl and Kara or Linda Lee or however she wants to be called.

[00:54:30] I think she is well cast. I don't think the movie does the character justice, but I think she is. She suits that character. Yeah. I think she has the nobility of the superhero from Krypton. The sense of an unquestioning moral center to her that's indefatigable. Sure. She seems older than her years. Does she? At the beginning, does she seem older than her years? Only when she gets to Earth, weirdly. Yes. Yeah.

[00:54:59] I mean, she does show up in Chicago and immediately gets sexually assaulted. But, you know, hey, welcome to Earth, I guess. Well, and I wonder if part of her learning things is that, like, going through the binary shoot transforms her in some way. I'm sorry. I can't say binary shoot with a straight face. I don't think anyone should. But they don't explain that.

[00:55:25] Like, Peter and Twill's character should explain that going through the binary shoot will transform her in some way. Yeah. I mean, is it the thing where she's on Argo and she's simple and then she comes to Earth, she has powers and she's smart. Is that it? Yes. I think so. I think it is. Because she does say that in the maths class where she says, oh, yes, six dimensional trigonometry. I could never do it before. Now I suddenly can. Yeah. She's just smart now.

[00:55:54] She's just smart now. Also, what kind of question is he asking a bunch of average high school students? I know. Yeah. I have no idea. Well, it's a computing class. I thought it's computer science they're doing, isn't it? Not maths. Lucy calls him her math professor. Yeah. But they're all sat there with computers. Yeah. It's because the script really understood school. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Coming to you live from the Movie Oubliette Theatre.

[00:56:23] It's the prestigious Movie Awards. It's the Movie Awards where we nominate our favourite X-ray vision, exposing parts of the film, and a number of Phantom Zone banished categories. Best quote. Put your fingers here, Kara. Press hard. Yeah.

[00:56:50] I did make the mistake of sometimes not keeping my eyes on the film. Like, I'd look down and make notes. I'm still one of those people that makes notes when I watch movies for our podcast. I do, too. I have my computer open. I'm typing as I go. Yeah. Yeah. So, I looked away from the screen at the moment when Put Your Fingers Here, Kara and Press Art came out of the speakers. And I just looked up. What? Wait, what? Sorry.

[00:57:20] It's unfortunate timing. My goodness. My favourite little nugget came from Selena. She has many great lines. But the one that I picked was, I can make the sky rain coconuts with pinpoint accuracy, but I still can't control men's minds. Whoa. Whoa, it's mean. Somebody wrote that for a real live woman to say. Yep. Yep.

[00:57:50] Yeah. The script is by David O'Dell, Dan, who also authored Masters of the Universe. Oh. What? It's a script by a man? No. Crazy. Best hair or costume? Selena's curls. That hair. Her. Huge. Red. Crazy curls. That's it. It is rather fabulous.

[00:58:16] I was going to pick out Sandra Dickinson, who is probably most famous for playing Trillian in the BBC adaptation of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the 80s. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And she shows up as the blonde girl at the party that Nigel interacts with. Yes. The best voice. And the glasses. The glasses. Yeah. She's in this green strapless 80s dress with more tears of ruffles than a Walls Vionetta.

[00:58:46] And her glasses. And her voice is all the way up here when she talks. It is. It's lovely. It's great. And she has these glasses that look like open red glossy lips. Yeah. Which, yeah. That's exciting. Yep. Most ericies moment. Those opening credits. Oh. Yeah. Just those opening credits. Yeah. The font. The way they did them. And they're long. They are so long.

[00:59:15] Those opening credits. Yeah. People don't really have the patience for an opening credit sequence anymore. Yeah. They want to get to the action. I mean, this is... I like a good sequence. This is just the names popping up in, like, clip art almost. For much longer than it should be. Hmm. Well, it looks like they've been hand cast in silver and flown past the camera, which, yeah, I guess that's something. I mean...

[00:59:43] It's different from the Superman opening titles. Yeah. Are they 80s? Most 80s for me was during Nigel's math stroke computer class. In the background, you can clearly see a large row of BBC microcomputers. Oh, of course. Yes. Which made me go, yay, there they are again. That's two films we've seen this year which featured the BBC, either visually or sonically,

[01:00:12] because we had the opening chime, the startup sound of a BBC micro in hardware. Yeah. I had those computers on my list as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, well, this is dated. Favourite scene. The bra. When Kara has no idea what the bra is. Okay. Explain this to us.

[01:00:33] There's a scene in Kara as Linda and Lucy's dorm room where Lucy is inviting Linda to come home with her for the weekend because they can leave the school grounds on Fridays. Linda is just sitting on Lucy's bed. And she picks up a bra and has no idea what it is. So she's sitting there playing with it, trying to figure out what it is.

[01:00:59] And then she puts it around her bust, but over her shirt. Like, is this what you do with it? And then Lucy catches her and asks, what are you doing? Yeah. Oh, nothing. She just throws the bra to the side. And I just... How does she not know what a bra is? But is she also currently wearing a bra? Like, when she, like, magicked her costume on? Her uniform? Yes. For sure. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

[01:01:28] She's got to be wearing a sports bra underneath that thing. Yeah. Do they not have bras on Argo? Maybe they don't have gravity, so it's fine. Yeah. I don't know. My favourite scene, we haven't really talked about it, but it's the Phantom Zone scene. It's before the Vortex, but when she gets...

[01:01:52] When Kara gets banished to the Phantom Zone, it's just this barren, apocalyptic, dark landscape. And I really, really love that. And then she meets Zoltar again, and he's like, squirt? Squirt? Yes. He's addicted to squirting, what, washing up liquid into his mouth or something? But I did love that sort of world that they were kind of thrust upon.

[01:02:22] Yeah. It's quite abstract, that piece. Most cliche moment. Oh, you know, when the magical device just magically falls into the villain's lap. Yeah. She's not sticking out. It just magically falls from the sky. While she's talking about her desire to be an evil witch, boom, there's the device. It's lucky, isn't it? It's really fortunate. What a coincidence. Yeah. Mine is there's a British man in the movie, and he's called Nigel. Yeah. Of course.

[01:02:52] It also happened in another film the same year, A Baby Secret of the Lost Legend, which is a dinosaur movie, which we could do with Surge at some point. I've never heard of it. I guess we just associate British men with being named Nigel. They're all called Nigel. How about you, Dan?

[01:03:11] Cliché for me would be the climactic moment when all seems lost and our hero is failing, and then she hears the voice of someone who has died that goes, You can do it. You have the strength or whatever. And then she does the thing and saves the day. Yeah. Use the force, Supergirl. Yeah. Use the schwartz. Best special effect.

[01:03:39] My favourite visual effect was the scene of Kara flying alongside some horses at magic hour, because there is a moment where a flare blows out the image, and they have done the same thing to the superimposed footage of Supergirl flying. Like she suddenly is silhouetted against the sunset, and then once the flare goes away, she's back to normal again.

[01:04:09] And they've colour timed it throughout so that the compositing pulls the two images together really effectively. And I thought, this is actually better than Superman's flying sequences. I was really impressed. For 1984, this is tricky stuff to do optically. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the flying sequences, it was hard to tell whether they were blue screened or not. Yeah. That's how good the blue screening was. Some of it not. Yeah. Some of it not. Yeah. Not all of it, but yeah. Not all of it, but some of it.

[01:04:40] My favourite special effect was that invisible monster, because it really felt like this is full-blown fantasy. We've got trees uprooting and the ground sort of being heaved up. It's amazing. Really, really amazing scene. Yeah. I love when he crushes the car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's good fun stuff. Really good stuff. Favourite sound effect. When she first comes to Earth, and she's in the forest,

[01:05:08] and she's jumping around and kind of exploring how high she can jump and fly, there's a little like trill sound every time her feet touch the ground again. And I really liked that. It was very fairy tale, and I thought it was cool. Yeah. Yeah. That is nice. I'm not sure if that's on the score or a sound effect. I'm not sure. I think it's part of the score. I mean, my pick for sound is, I think, is also score. But there is kind of a grey area between like, is this the score,

[01:05:36] or is this the synth making the sound? I mean, you've got all the orb sounds. I'm very synthy. And also when Ethan wakes up from the love potion slumber, there's this kind of really weird detuning, descending synth sound that sounds like everything's just melting. But it adds to the wooziness of the scene. Yeah. I like that one as well.

[01:06:00] I do find generally this film over relies on synthesizers for sound effects, rather than the sort of Ben Burt finding real world organic acoustic noises that he can treat in some way and use out of context. And yeah, I love all of that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all the synth sounds made it sound older than it was. It made it sound like 60s. It does. Yeah.

[01:06:28] My pick was the Maelstrom, because although visually it doesn't work terribly well, I did think the sound effects gave it a sense of it being powerful and terrifying. Much more so than I was expecting for a 1984 soundtrack. It's really loud. Mm. Yeah, yeah. Most funniest moment. There's so much. But at the beginning of the movie, after Peter Atul hands Kara the wand,

[01:06:57] she goes, she sits down on the ground, spreads her legs. This wand looks like a vibrator. And so the camera then just shoots to her. And it looks like she's taking this wand vibrator and her legs are spread. And then thankfully the camera angle cuts, but it's like, um. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't help that the thing that she's holding is spinning around and vibrating. Frankly. It is vibrating and it is ribbed.

[01:07:26] For her pleasure. Yeah. Oh my. Funniest for you, Conrad. For me, I quite like the big build up to the Omegahedron landing on Earth. There's music, there's meteorite style sound effects. Selina and Nigel see it and they run, scatter for cover. And then the music just cuts out dead and it plops into a bowl of dip. Yeah.

[01:07:56] And I thought, if this is the tone we're going for, go with it. This is great. Yeah. But then we don't go with that tone. No. We don't. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that's our Moveleys. It is. This is Kelly Maroney and you are listening to Movie Oubliette. Alright. Final verdict time.

[01:08:22] Should Supergirl be set free from its Phantom Zone prison to be praised once more as a forgotten gem? Or should it be zapped with the power of the Omegahedron and be made to do Selina's bidding in the darkness of the Oubliette lost once more? Alright. Supergirl. Would you recommend this movie? Anyone? Anyone? This is my... Okay.

[01:08:51] It's my three-peat time on Movie Oubliette. For the first time, I am saying we can relegate this to the Oubliette because it's never campy enough. It's never funny enough. It makes no sense. It's very long, so it's not that great. It's not a fast watch. There's some pacing issues. And it's never so bad that it's truly funny throughout, which means it just kind of is. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:09:20] I would really agree. Like, it just doesn't go in all the different directions it goes fully. Like, it should have gone fully camp or fully comedic or had more of Kara and less of the villains. The villains had nothing to do as well. Like, the motivations and goals were... Make them iconic, queer-coded, like, give me fun villains. They're not... I mean, Conrad, you're right.

[01:09:47] It's a teenage girl and a 50-year-old fighting over a landscaper? Yeah. It's very small goals, right? It just doesn't quite work. I do feel like Helen Slade is the best part of this movie. I don't think the writing or anything that she is made to do is great, but I think she is well cast. And she has turned up in a lot of Supergirl-related things or Superman-related things since, which is amazing.

[01:10:16] She plays the adoptive mother Eliza Danvers in the Supergirl TV series. She's been in Smallville as Lara L., the biological mother of Superman. She's voiced Martha Kent, the adoptive mother of Superman in the animated TV series DC Superhero Girls. So she's kind of...

[01:10:40] I think the fans loved her as the character, and she's gone on to other Superman and Supergirl-related things. And I'm sure she's probably going to cameo in the new movie, highly likely, but I'm not sure. But yeah, I do feel like she's the best part. The rest of the movie, hot garbage. Just really bad. Yeah. Don't hold back, Dan. It's just bad. It really is just bad.

[01:11:12] Yeah. I have to say, this isn't a nostalgia item for me. I didn't really enjoy it as a kid either, and I didn't return to it with any frequency or feel an urge to buy the 4K edition or anything along those lines. There are some things I do enjoy about it. Faye Dunaway's Villainy. There's some wonderful camp fun in it.

[01:11:37] Her and Bianca's queer-coded relationship where they're just snarking at each other all the time. And I feel as though the poor landscape gardener is just a pawn in their latest lover's spat. And that would be so much fun if that's where we went. Yes. If it were Witches of Eastwick, I would really enjoy it. But it's not. It feels so, yeah, small scale and not fully committed to any of its tones. And yeah, it is long.

[01:12:05] Goodness only knows what the director's cut is like. You mean none of us put ourselves through watching that after watching the over two-hour cut? No, I don't think so. I mean, I do admire... Jeanne Swalk really did approach it earnestly in an attempt to create this character as a franchise starter for this character. Helen Slater, I think, is doing a fantastic job.

[01:12:31] I think they really did try to advance the flying effects, even though their budget was smaller. But the end result just doesn't hold together. Yeah, it's the script. It's the script. Script is king and this script is a dud. It is. Yeah. They should have tried it with some British accents. They would have been able to see that something was not right. Okay, so...

[01:13:00] What the box wants, the box gets. Bad British accents. It's got to be bad. It's got to be bad. Because it's the worst. And if you can deliver it in the worst British accent and it still works as a line of dialogue, bingo, you're good. Yeah, there you go. It's a true test. So, unfortunately, we are voting to throw this back, but we should check in with our patrons, Dan. Oh, yes. So, hello, Gary. Very well.

[01:13:28] Can we have the patrons vote, please? They set it free. Lessons were not learned. I am quite shocked by that. Yeah. Why? Yeah. I know. I'm impressed because the comments, the people who took the time to comment, not that supportive. So, Jasmine, whose opinion I was really waiting for. Faster than a crawling steam shovel. Less transparent than an invisible monster.

[01:13:56] Unable to leap small tar puddles in a single belly flop. Look in the dormitory showers. It's a bird brain. It's a plain Jane. No, it's Stupo Girl. Vacuous visitor from a floating space city that invaded Earth with powers and abilities just slightly beyond those of apprentice. Oh, my God. Stupo Girl.

[01:14:20] Who can change the course of hot water in shower pipes, shatter hockey balls with her bare back, and who, disguised as Linda Lee, callow-mannered student of a great metropolitan girls' school, fights a never-ending runtime of schmaltz buffoonery on its merry little way. Back to the oubliette, I hope. Yes, I would agree with you, Jasmine. I concur with you. Very well said. Yeah. Old Johnny Devick says,

[01:14:48] It's an odd movie with some strange choice in villains, but I do adore the flying and the effect work. Slater is a likeable character, and the parts with the Phantom Zone and her home city gives it a sense of grand adventure. A bit weak in the plot and loose in structure, but at least it tells a whole story. Superman should have had a cameo. It's a missed opportunity. And it's miles better than Superman 4. Put it in the Phantom Zone for a decade, and then set it free.

[01:15:16] So it's sort of not fully supportive. And Keeper Anthony says, I remember watching this one in theatres when I was younger. I remember not liking it then, and I still don't like it. The story is just too cheesy, and too many things just seem to happen without any reason. Yeah. To the Phantom Zone. So yeah, this thing's going to go and have to learn how to enjoy Squirt, I'm afraid.

[01:15:46] No. Squirt? There's way too much in this movie that sounds like it's coming from a porno. Yes, I know. Maybe it's intentional. I don't know. In any case, come on, Supergirl. Forget you can fly and go back in the Oobliet. Yes, not into the Phantom Zone. There you go. Well, Amanda, thank you and sorry.

[01:16:16] It's been wonderful having you on this journey into 80s cheese with us. Where can our listeners find more of your content and hear more of your views on film? Yes, I've got a lot of views. You can follow me on social media on Blue Sky or Instagram at Amanda Jane Stern and Letterboxd at Witchy Wanderer.

[01:16:40] You can also hear me podcasting on Pleasers and Punishers, Murder Made Fiction, and Don't Be Crazy. Wow. Wow. So much. Your recording schedule must be insane. You should see my Thursdays. It's Thursday morning with Joe and then Thursday night with Pleasers and Punishers. Wow. Wow. Okay. Well, it's all great work, I'm sure. So everyone should check it all out. Yeah, yeah, please.

[01:17:08] And if you want to see me on screen, not just hear me talk about things, you can watch my movie, Perfectly Good Moment. It's the script where my husband read out Brad British accents while I was writing it. And you can tell because the dialogue is all perfect. Perfectly good. Thank you. Indeed. Indeed. On Amazon Prime now. Yes, it is. It's on Prime. It's on Tubi. It's on all the other stuff.

[01:17:33] And listeners, of course, you can follow us on all platforms as Movie Oubliette and you can email us at movie.oubliette at gmail.com. And if you want to support the show, head on over to Patreon where for a dollar you get bonus extended parts of the show. For $5 you get voting rights and access to our monthly minisodes.

[01:17:54] And for $10 you can be an executive producer like Chazilla, Isaac Sutton, Dr Doggy, Serge, iconographer, Ryan A. Potter, Nick Hardy, Luke R., Keeper Anthony and Jasmine. It's quite the list. It is, isn't it? So these days, thanks everyone for the support. And also please give us a rating and review if you haven't already. All right, Conrad, what's up for the next episode?

[01:18:24] What are we doing? Well, you'll probably be relieved here, Dan, that we are escaping the 80s as well as remakes of comic book heroes and the such like. And instead we will be looking at a remake of a classic Russian film, 2002's American science fiction drama Solaris. Ah, yes. I have seen this.

[01:18:53] I haven't seen the original though. So I think I need to check that one out first and then re-watch the George Clooney, right? George Clooney remake. George Clooney directed by Steven Soderbergh with Natasha Macaloni, Jeremy Davis and Viola Davis. Okay. Yes. It's quite a cast. Yes. I remember it being a bit weird.

[01:19:23] Some strange things happen in the outer space. I think so, yes. It's much more of a psychological drama than a hardware science fiction style movie, if I remember rightly. And I think it's got a beautiful score by Cliff Martinez. In fact, I know it does because I've got the vinyl. Ah, yes, of course. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that and we'll be joined by a new guest. Yes. Oh, yes.

[01:19:52] Well, I can't wait for that. And keen to get into proper like in-space sci-fi. I feel like we haven't done that for a while. No, it's all been a bit magical and sword heavy for a while. Yes. Yes. All right, listeners. Until then, goodbye. Bye for now. Back to Argo.

[01:20:22] Ha, ha, ha. Next time, remind me to do this outside.