Hello everyone! 🙂

Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!

On the off-chance you’ve come across this review following the release of the 2026 ‘Supergirl’ film at cinemas, here I am sharing my thoughts on the original 1984 ‘Supergirl’ film, which I saw recently on Blu-ray. I purchased the film in Cheltenham last weekend. 🙂

I’m in a ‘Supergirl’ mood at the time of this review, as I’m checking out the ‘Supergirl’ TV series starring Melissa Benoist, which I’m enjoying on ITVX. I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts on the ‘Supergirl’ TV series in due course. Hopefully, in season-by-season reviews.

Supergirl as a DC superhero character in one that I don’t really know much about compared to Superman and Batman. I know she’s Superman’s cousin, but beyond that, I don’t know much of her character in the comics to appreciate who she is in Superman’s world.

I’ve seen various iterations of Supergirl over the years. As well as the ‘Supergirl’ TV series with Melissa Benoist, I’ve seen Sasha Calle’s interpretation of the character in the 2023 film ‘The Flash’, and I saw Milly Allcock as Supergirl at the end of the 2025 film ‘Superman’.

The 1984 ‘Supergirl’ film is the first live-action depiction of the character, I believe, and it happens to be a spin-off film from the original Christopher Reeve ‘Superman’ movies. It was released between the films ‘Superman III’ and ‘Superman IV: The Quest for Peace’. 🙂

It stars Helen Slater as Supergirl, and I feel she does a very good job playing the character in this her only film in this ‘Superman’ film universe. It’s a shame the 1984 ‘Supergirl’ film didn’t win many people over. It received negative reviews and underperformed at the box office.

From watching the film, it’s a very 1980s film. 😀 Some might consider that a good thing or a bad thing. Me personally, I feel there were some creative decisions made that led the film to its failure and I feel they could’ve been avoided if more care and attention was given. 😐

The film focuses on Helen Slater as Kara Zor-El, Superman’s cousin, who leaves her isolated, interdimensional home of Argo City to retrieve the Omegahedron, a magical power source that accidentally falls to Earth, and ends up in the hands of an evil witch. 😐

Kara disguises herself as a high school student named Linda Lee in order to track down where the Omegahedron is. She must battle the power-hungry witch named Selena who uses the artifact to conquer the world. 😐 And she must do this as the high-flying Supergirl.

Whilst I appreciate this film being standalone from the main ‘Superman’ film series, I wish that more connections were made to tie it into the Christopher Reeve films. Heck, Christopher Reeve doesn’t even make a cameo as Clark Kent or Superman in this film. 😐

That’s a real shame in my opinion. We also don’t get a cameo of Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, especially as her sister, Maureen Teefy as Lucy Lane, happens to be at the school Linda’s at. 😐 The only character from the ‘Superman’ movies in ‘Supergirl’ is Jimmy Olsen.

Yes! Marc McClure who plays Jimmy Olsen in the Christopher Reeve ‘Superman’ films is in ‘Supergirl’. Not that I mind that. It’s nice to see Jimmy Olsen in this ‘Supergirl’ film. But I wouldn’t say he would excite ‘Superman’ fans to come and watch the 1984 ‘Supergirl’ film. 😐

In terms of the rest of the cast, there’s Faye Dunaway as Selena. I personally feel Selena was rather two-dimensional as a villain, considering she wanted world-domination, was a power-hungry witch, and there wasn’t much motivation on why she did these evil things.

There’s Peter O’Toole as Zaltar, Kara/Supergirl’s mentor and father figure in the film. I enjoyed Peter O’Toole’s performance in the movie, but there wasn’t much for him to do, especially as he exiled himself to the Phantom Zone before helping Supergirl to get out of it.

Hart Bochner stars as Ethan, Supergirl’s love interest. I felt the romance between Ethan and Linda was rather forced, especially as it could’ve easily been Ethan falling in love with Supergirl instead of Linda when he was being put under the love spell provided by Selena.

There’s Mia Farrow as Alura In-Ze, Kara/Supergirl’s mother and Simon Ward as Zor-El, Kara/Supergirl’s father. They’re mostly in the Argo City scenes. There’s Brenda Vaccaro as Bianca, Selena’s sidekick, and Peter Cook plays Nigel, Selena’s on-and-off love-interest.

There’s David Healy as Mr. Danvers, Matt Frewer as Eddie the Truck Driver, Kelly Hunter as an Argonian Citizen, Glory Annen as a Midvale Protester and Bradley Lavelle as Lucy Lane’s friend. It was fascinating to see Sandra Dickinson as a Pretty Young Lady in this film.

Sandra Dickinson was once married to Peter Davison (Tristan in the original ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ TV series and the Fifth Doctor in ‘Doctor Who’). Sandra’s been in the TV version of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ as well as ‘Superman III’. 🙂

I greatly enjoyed checking out the 1984 ‘Supergirl’ film starring Helen Slater. I know it wasn’t a success when it came out at cinemas in 1984 and it’s not as good as what I’ve seen so far in the ‘Supergirl’ TV series with Melissa Benoist. But I found it enjoyable enough.

The issues I have with the film are more to do with how the story is executed in being connected to the Christopher Reeve ‘Superman’ film universe as well as how I feel the love story between Supergirl and Ethan could’ve been handled better regarding the writing.

At this point, I’m looking forward to checking out more episodes of the ‘Supergirl’ TV series. I’m not sure about seeing the 2026 ‘Supergirl’ film, since I’m not a fan of James Gunn’s DC Universe. 😐 But I’m glad I’ve seen the 1984 ‘Supergirl’ film after all these years! 🙂

Thanks for reading!

Bye for now!

Tim 🙂