Kara-Zor-El (Helen Slater) is a young girl living with her parents, Alura and Zor-El (Mia Farrow and Simon Ward) in Argo City. Argo City is an outpost that survived the destruction of Kara’s home planet, Krypton by hiding in a pocket of trans-dimensional space they call innerspace. Kara is the cousin of Kal-El, also known as Clark Kent or Superman on Earth.
Kara is friends with a wizard called Zaltar (Peter O’Toole). Zaltar is an artist and is the main scientist responsible for establishing Argo City. He built a ship he thinks will be able to withstand the pressure of moving from innerspace to outerspace called the Binary Chute. Zaltar tells Kara that one day he may travel in the chute to check out different planets in outerspace. He then shows Kara an object called the Omegahedron. It is a spherical object that helps power Argo. Zaltar is not supposed to be in possession of the object. An accident causes the Omegahedron to be jettisoned into outerspace. Kara takes off after the Omegahedron in Zaltar’s ship to try to recover the sphere.
On Earth, a witch named Selena (Faye Dunaway) finds the Omegahedron. Selena is a “wanna-be” megalomaniac under the tutelage of a warlock, Nigel (Peter Cook). Realizing the potential of the Omegahedron, Selena dumps Nigel and begins a reign of power and terror across MidVale, Illinois with her eye on expanding her power and control over the entire U.S.
Meanwhile, once on Earth, Kara has gained the same superpowers as that of her cousin, Superman. She disguises herself as Linda Lee, a student at a girl’s school. Her roommate at school is Lucy Lane (Maureen Teefy). Also at the school is a grounds keeper, Ethan (Hart Bochner). Selena decides she wants Ethan, so she tries to put a spell on him. It backfires and Ethan falls in love with Linda. Selena is now furious and is out to recapture Ethan and destroy Linda and Supergirl once and for all.
“Supergirl” was released in 1984 and was directed by Jeannot Szwarc. It is a British superhero movie that was based on the DC comic character. There are only two Supergirl movies. This one and one slated to be released in 2026, “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow”. A Supergirl Television series ran from 2015-2020 on The CW, CBS.
Some of the special effects are decent but some not so much. The tone of the film is similar in camp with the Christopher Reeve “Superman” films. As such, it is a fairly decent family movie. The movie ended up not as good as Superman I and II but better than Superman III. I don’t have an opinion on Superman IV. I still haven’t seen that one yet.
The Binary Chute is a ship that can travel the trans-dimensional pathway used for interstellar travel. The path comes out at the bottom of MidVale Lake.
The movie features Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen. McClure is the only actor who played, as Jimmy Olsen, in this as well as all the Christopher Lee era Superman films.