Rarely have I felt more FOMO over a movie screening than summer 1984 in London. Walking home from Brixton tube station, I was practically steamrolled by a packed house spilling out from the Ritzy Cinema, after a now-legendary women-only screening of the recently released Supergirl. The crowd was in raucous high spirits, still hooting with laughter as they crossed the street to a women’s dance night at the fabulous queer club then called The Fridge.
While the Jeannot Swarc superhero flick that introduced a disarming Helen Slater as Kara Zor-El had been critically dismissed and was on its way to becoming an unmitigated commercial disaster, for this audience — women-only of course being code for lesbian — it was a riot. It would go on to become a camp classic across the queer spectrum and beyond, for anyone with a taste for so-bad-they’re-good trashtaculars.
Supergirl
The Bottom Line
More stupor than super.
