SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE: I’ve Always Considered You the Dutch Elm Disease in My Family Tree

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) – Directed by Sidney J. Furie – Starring Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Jackie Cooper, Margot Kidder, Marc McClure, Jon Cryer, Sam Wanamaker, Mark Pillow, Mariel Hemingway, and Jim Broadbent.

Watching SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE is like watching a once proud athlete sticking around just because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.

It’s probably not fair to lay the blame for the film’s failures on the actors because Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, and Margot Kidder are all still game, but this is a wretched script that looks like it was made on a budget at half of what it should have been. There’s no skill here and the whole film is just sort of a pathetic mess and an unfortunate end to a franchise that has dropped in quality with each passing film.

About halfway through this sinkhole we hit the lowest point in the franchise, when Clark and Superman go on a “double date” with Lois and Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway). Warfield’s dad bought the Daily Planet, so she gets to stick around for much of the film to flirt with Clark. This whole date nonsense was put in motion when a kid writes a letter to Superman asking him to take care of all the nuclear weapons. After agonizing about it, Supes walks into the United Nations, states, “I’m going to rid our planet of all nuclear weapons” and everyone gives him a standing ovation.

Yup, Superman basically says, “I’m in charge now” and everyone goes, “Hooray!”

After he’s taken away everyone’s weapons of mass destruction, Lacy’s dad gives Lois a set of questions to ask Superman. Somehow, Superman and Lois agree to do this interview at Lacy’s fancy apartment, and Lacy decides to turn it into a double date.

Yes, that really happens. We don’t hear from Lois and Supes on this double date-slash-interview because everyone involved with making this turkey probably realized that it’s a really stupid idea. We have to sit through this unholy abomination of having Clark and Supes run around switching identities to keep the women guessing and it’s beyond dumb.

Lex Luthor gets busted out of prison detail by his nephew Lenny Luthor (Jon Cryer), and he concocts this plan to steal a strand of Superman’s hair in order to make a new super villain called Nuclear Man, which proves that Lex just might be, as he likes to say, the greatest criminal mind of our time, but he’s too cheap to hire someone to come up with a decent name. So this Nuclear Man fellow (Mark Pillow’s body, Hackman’s voice) shows up and scratches Superman and makes him so sick that he has to heal himself with yet another “last piece” of Kryptopn.

Really. I’m not making that up. Nuclear Man defeats Superman by scratching him.

Then – and this might just be my favorite thing that has ever happened on film that doesn’t involve Kate Beckinsale in a catsuit – Superman defeats Nuclear Man by shutting him inside an elevator.

An elevator!

Not a special elevator laced with kryptonite or asbestos or magic pixie dust, but a regular elevator. Why does this happen? Because Nuclear Man draws his power from the sun, and his body has all the energy storage capability of a twenty year old laptop without a battery. Seriously, the dude steps into the shade and shuts off faster than you pulling the plug on your toaster.

With Nuclear Man defeated by placing him inside an elevator, Superman then decides the best place for ol’ Nukes is … the moon! Because the moon doesn’t get any sun! So Nuclear Man beats the crap out of Superman on the moon (with most of it done in slow motion, I’m guessing so they could stretch the action scene out), and this fight ends with Nuclear Man pounding Superman into the ground like a nail being hammered into a piece of wood.

Nuclear Man goes after Lacy and takes her to space to make moon babies or something, and then Superman digs himself out of the ground, fixes the American flag that Nukes had knocked over, and then takes the bad guy out for good by dropping him into the core of a nuclear power plant so he can energize the city. There’s a big happy ending as Perry buys back enough of the Planet‘s shares to be put back in charge and Lacy … um … disappears … and Superman tells the world he was wrong to play Supercop and just wishes that Golan Globus had given them all a bit more money to make the movie so the special effects didn’t look like they were made by high school kids in 1926.

The only spark of life in this whole film comes when Hackman and Reeve are on screen together, and some of the old magic comes back. They’re too good at their craft to not try throughout the film, but I could feel some actual energy when they were together. While that’s great, the effect is just to make me realize the rest of the movie play even worse.

When I dropped Superman IV into the Blu-ray player this afternoon, I’d hoped to be able to find something worthwhile. I wasn’t expecting something magical, but I was hoping that after all these years there’d be something here to recommend it. The first two movies (the original and The Donner Cut) offered up mythic Americana in a nostalgic way. I was hoping, if nothing else, that SUPERMAN IV would be able to tap into a sense of nostalgia for Donner’s films, but it doesn’t. Other than that five or ten minutes when Hackman and Reeve are acting together, SUPERMAN IV is hanging out at the bottom of the barrel of superhero movies. It’s nothing more than a bad action movie.

SUPERMAN III: We’re Through, Frogface

Superman III (1983) – Directed by Richard Lester – Starring Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Robert Vaughn, Jackie Cooper, Marc McClure, Annette O’Toole, Annie Ross, Pamela Stephenson, and Margot Kidder.

A lot of heat has fallen on Richard Pryor’s shoulders over the years for why SUPERMAN III is such a steaming pile of crap, and that’s unfair for two reasons.

The first is that SUPERMAN III really isn’t a steaming piece of crap as much as it is a tedious pile of stupid. There are plenty of small parts in SUPERMAN III that actually work quite well: Annette O’Toole’s Lana Lang, for instance, is completely small town lovable, Christopher Reeve is still pretty darn great as Superman, and the “back to Smallville” idea is the right one.

The second reason is that if you hire Richard Pryor to be Richard Pryor (or, at least, a family-friendly version of Richard Pryor) and he does what you want him to do, it’s not really his fault, is it? The man did what he was hired to do. If anything, Pryor is the symbol for the Salkinds coming completely off the rails.

There’s no Richard Donner or Tom Mankiewicz around this time, and without them the effects are both obvious and tragic. With Donner, the humor was used to complement the narrative, not take it over, but without Donner’s guiding hand, the narrative now exists just to get to all the silly jokes. When we’re closing in on three-quarters deep with this film and we get to the genuinely solid Superman vs. Clark Kent fight scene in the Metropolis junkyard, the seriousness of that scene feels out of place because of all the silliness that has proceeded it. Even when the film has dark scenes like Superman tossing back Johnnie Walker Red (the cheapskate can’t even spring for Johnnie Walker Black? Have some respect, Superman), the goofiness of SUPERMAN III gives that scene a really odd vibe. I almost want to laugh at the ridiculousness of Superman flicking nuts at the bottles of liquor behind the bar, smashing each of them in turn.

Is that supposed to be tragic? Because it’s just sort of tedious and silly.

There’s nothing wrong with being silly, of course, but SUPERMAN III never makes it work, never lets the rest of the film exist for too long outside of the silliness. After an absolutely wretched, extended sequence near the beginning of the film that has all manner of goofiness to it on the streets of Metropolis (hey look, a blind guy thinks the road line painter is his dog – man that’s funny!), Clark convinces Perry (Jackie Cooper) to let him write a story about his high school reunion back in Smallville. Clark goes home, meets up with Lana, does his awkward-around-girls routine again, only Lana totally buys into it where Lois rejects it.

They go for a picnic with Lana’s son, Ricky, and his dog, but we get very little interaction between Clark and Lana before Lana notices her car has sprung a leak and Ricky has gone and knocked himself unconscious. I’d rather leave Superman out of Smallville, to be honest. In the bonus features of SUPERMAN II: THE RICHARD DONNER CUT, Donner explains that one of the prime reasons he did not use the Lester “magic kiss” ending was that Tom Mankiewicz made the point that Clark Kent should never kiss Lois – only Superman should kiss her. Similarly, I favor a set-up where the Fortress of Solitude should be a Superman Only Zone, where Smallville should be a Clark Kent Only Zone, and Metropolis is where both halves of this man need to learn to work together.

The Smallville sequence is the only time in the film where Lester connects with Donner’s mythic Americana vibe. I wish we’d spend more time with Clark in Smallville and more time experiencing Superman through this lens. With the events of the first two films now in the rearview, and with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) gone off to the Bahamas for vacation, this should be a naturally reflective time for Superman, but other than some hints about a desire to rush into a relationship with Lana, there’s no evidence here he’s changed at all by his previous cinematic experiences.

The film also lets the Smallville sequences down by never having Clark reflect on his deceased adoptive parents. Lana tells us that Clark’s mom has died, but he doesn’t go back to the old farm and he doesn’t visit their graves.

For all of the silliness in the film, SUPERMAN III’s biggest crime is its tediousness. The film just lags and lags and lags. It’s not in any hurry to get anywhere and it doesn’t have anything special to do with all the standing around.

The bad guys aren’t horrible, but they’re like rejected villains from a James Bond movie. In fact, they’re the kind of villains you’d get if they made a 1980s James Bond TV movie. Robert Vaughn isn’t bad as evil businessman Ross Webster, but they’ve saddled him with two horrible sidekicks in his sister Vera (Annie Ross) and his sneaky smart girlfriend Lorelei (Pamela Stephenson), who successfully seduces Superman.

It’s not the regular Superman, of course, but a darker version of Big Blue. Webster has ordered computer whiz August Gorman (Pryor) to recreate Kryptonite. He analyzes Kryptonite floating out in space, but there’s an unknown ingredient, so Gus uses tar. The Kryptonite they create (given to Supes in a ridiculous scene where Pryor cosplays as General Patton) isn’t pure Kryptonite, so it doesn’t make Supes instantly weak. Instead, it alters his personality, making him a selfish dick. He gets all lustful with Lana, but she’s not having it. In fact, she’s really not having Supes, at all, in comparison to Clark.

With Clark descending into darkness, the film has this really odd mix of his depression mixed with the bad guys’ glee. What Supes goes through here isn’t tougher to watch than what Peter Parker goes through in Spider-Man 3, but it’s still not fun to watch.

Almost everything about SUPERMAN III pales in comparison to the earlier films in the Reeve run (Annette O’Toole’s Lana Lang being an upgrade over Lois). In going for an increased sense of silliness, the film becomes tedious, and Reeve’s fine work is wasted. Unless the Salkinds and Lester saw this strictly as a movie for kids (and they clearly didn’t), including scenes like having Gus ski down the side of a high-rise office building wearing a pink cape just comes off as inane. It’s a dumb movie, too. When Gus gets the computer to pay him all of the “half cents” that are left out of the workers’ paychecks, Webster’s old man adviser laments how in the old days it would be easy to figure out who took the money because they had a book that kept track of transactions, but now … now it’s all on the computer, which doesn’t tell them anything.

Really? They’re missing $85,000. There’s no way for them to, you know, check the payroll to see who got paid an extra $85,000 this week?

SUPERMAN III is not the worst superhero movie ever made, and it is not a steaming pile of crap, but it is not close to being a good film.

SUPERGIRL: Your Suffering Will Be Short … Mine, Forever

Supergirl (Special Edition; 1984) – Directed by Jeannot Swarcz – Starring Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway, Peter O’Toole, Hart Bochner, Mia Farrow, Brenda Vaccaro, Peter Cook, Marc McClure, Maureen Teefy, and Matt Frewer.

The most exciting thing that happens in SUPERGIRL involves Supergirl (Helen Slater) and Zaltar (Peter O’Toole) climbing up a rocky hill.

Yup.

Instead of saying that SUPERGIRL is a completely dreadful movie, I will simply say that it is a product of its time and that’s a time I really don’t want to visit. A cousin (ha, I’m hilarious) to the Christopher Reeve Superman films, SUPERGIRL has the same tone, style, and feel as those films, and quality-wise it’s less than the first two and better than the final two. In case you haven’t heard my Superman rants, I’m a marginal fan of even the first two Reeves’ films, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a derivative version of those films wouldn’t do much for me.*

I simply find the mix of a soft-glow hero, realistic setting, and cartoonish villains rather noxious.

(*Author’s Note: When I wrote this review, it had been years since I’d watched the Superman films and while it is completely true that I was not a huge fan of them as a kid, I have come to really like the original movie and the Richard Donner Cut of Superman II.)

SUPERGIRL contains all of this to the nth degree. Kara Zor-El is a precocious teenager living in Argo City, a Kryptonian establishment inside a pocket of transdimensional mumbo-jumbo. We know she’s precocious because she wanders through an impressive stage set of white walkways and weird, vaguely tree-like objects. She interrupts a class room and apologizes with a cute smile to the teacher. She’s on her way to see Zaltar, who’s the city’s designer/architect/magic man. He’s borrowed an Omegahedron, which is responsible for the city’s power supply. He and Kara have a nice grandfather/granddaughter relationship; they’re both a bit impish and when Kara struggles with knowing her sixth dimensional geometry, Zaltar assures her to use her imagination instead as artistic people often have issues with math.

I believe this to be true because Peter O’Toole says it’s true.

Zaltar gives his magic design wand and the Omegahedron to Kara so she can invent a big rubber fly for use in a Doctor Who serial, and Kara ends up losing the Omegahedron (which is roughly the size of an orange) when her fly crashes through the window (I mean, the plastic wall of the city – it’s literally encased in plastic) and the Omegahedron gets sucked out through the window. Kara’s mom and dad (Mia Farrow and Simon Ward) freak out because this means the entire city will be plunged into darkness and die within days. Zaltar first says he’ll go after it and then, when Kara jumps in his space-bubble and goes after it instead, he commits himself to the Phantom Zone.

“You’re suffering will be short,” he tells them. “Mine … forever.”

Right. Think on that: the city is dying and Zaltar sacrifices himself by living forever instead of dying within 3 or 4 days.

Kara is off on the trail of the Omegahedron on a journey that will lead her out of inner space and into outer space; which is to say, Earth. The Omegahedron gets there first and falls into the possession of Selena (Faye Dunaway), a witch who wants to rule the world but is spending the day picnicking at a lake with Nigel (Peter Cook), her warlock instructor. Selena takes the Omegahedron and because she can use it to start her car, she leaves Nigel by the lake. Kara shows up next and appears on the banks of the lake in her Supergirl costume.

Which, to be perfectly honest, is the only real reason for me to watch this movie. Helen Slater’s Supergirl is ridiculously nice and ridiculously cute, and does what she can to save this rather silly, awful movie, but it’s not close to being enough.

Supergirl (she doesn’t call herself this) flies to the city, where she lands in the middle of the street. Two truck drivers decide they want to gang rape her, and one of the truck drivers is played by Matt Frewer, so if I ever meet Mr. Frewer, I want to ask him if his desire to rape Supergirl is the jerkiest thing he’s ever done on camera. The two would-be rapists don’t do anything more than pull up Supergirl’s skirt because she seems to understand perfectly that she can knock them around, which she does.

This scene represents the inanity of SUPERGIRL, and I’m guessing one’s willingness to go with the flow with a scene like this will go a long way to determining how much one can enjoy the movie. Think this through – two drivers stop their truck in the middle of a city street to harass a girl dressed in a Superman costume. When she picks up one guy by his chin and tosses him away, the other one asks, “Oh, she works out, huh?”

“Why are you doing this?” Kara asks innocently.

“It’s just the way we are,” Frewer says maniacally.

So Supergirl uses her super-breath and blows him backwards and through a wooden fence. Read that again. She blows him through a wooden fence. The other would-be rapist’s reaction is to pull out a switchblade (remember when criminals used switchblades? God the ’80s were an awful time) and growl, “You shouldn’t have done that, baby. Come on,” he says, urging her forward. Dude, she just breathed on a guy and blew him backwards through a freaking fence and you think, what, I can totally take her? The dude can’t even be bothered to drop his cigarette, so she uses her heat vision to warm up the switchblade and cause him to drop it. “Oh, I see,” he says, proving himself to be the dumbest truck driving, would-be rapist in film history, “you really want to play games, huh?”

So she kicks him a good ten feet away and flies off, and then the growly-voiced would-be rapist makes a joke about keeping it to themselves. Hilarious.

It gets better.

She ends up sleeping in the woods, which just so happens to be near a baseball field, which just so happens to be the baseball field of an all girls’ school, which just so happens to be the all-girls’ school where Lois Lane’s sister Lucy (Maureen Teefy) goes to school, and Kara/Supergirl uses her magic clothes-changing powers to dress up like a member of the school to enroll herself in classes (because … she hates school so much?), where she just so happens to be given Lucy Lane as a roommate. Oh, and Nigel, the warlock right hand man of Selena? Yeah, he just so happens to teach there.

From that moment on, there’s lots of Supergirl vs. Selena fighting stuff, usually involving Selena’s magic and Supergirl’s cuteness, and there’s a whole pointless subplot about a hunky gardener (Hart Bochner) who Selena tries to turn into her love slave, only things go wonky and he ends up as Linda Lee’s love slave instead. Linda Lee is Kara’s human identity – she got the “Lee” from a portrait of Robert E. Lee, which just so happens to be hanging in the headmaster’s office of an all-girls’ boarding school in freaking Midvale, Illinois, and she got the “Linda” part from … I don’t know where. I think she just pulled it out of thin air, but I might have been too busy rolling my eyes at the nonsensical script that I missed something.

There is a bit of a Buffy, Season 2 vibe to the back half of the movie as the scenes in Selena’s magic castle feel a bit like Buffy’s battles in that castle where Angelus, Spike, and Drusilla were hanging out.

There’s a trip to the Phantom Zone so Peter O’Toole can fulfill his required the part of his contract that asks him to overact like he’s doing Shakespeare at a regional theater to pay for a hit of smack, and it’s here that we get the best of Supergirl, as she gets angry with him and snaps at him and uses reverse psychology on him to have him help her get out of the Phantom Zone.

How does one get out of the Phantom Zone? One climbs up a steep hill with a tornado whirling beneath you. Yup. You can see why no one has ever tried to escape before.

If all of this seems fine to you, then you’ll probably get a kick out of SUPERGIRL. It’s not an offensively bad movie, it’s just a movie with a vibe I can’t stand. Like when Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure) shows up because he’s sweet on Lucy, and I swear he’s wearing the same clothes from the Superman films and he never takes his omnipresent camera off from around his neck. Seriously, dude, you traveled all the way to Midvale, Illinois to hit on your co-worker’s sister. Leave the camera at home. Jimmy helps to illustrate that these aren’t real people in SUPERGIRL; they’re simplistic cartoons come to life. SUPERGIRL is some kind of weird urban fantasy where good guys and bad guys exist in the contemporary present but act like they’re in a nostalgic version of the 1950s.

It’s just not a world I have any interest in.