Cautiously excited to see Superman (2025), we decided to check out part of the extended Supes cinematic universe with a film built around his cousin, Kara Zor-El, a.k.a. Supergirl. Not the worst superhero movie we’ve seen, but maybe one of the creepiest, what with all the adults making out with high school girls.
Starring Faye Dunaway, Helen Slater, Peter O’Toole, Brenda Vaccaro and Peter Cook. Written by David Odell. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc.
Welcome to the Mary Versus the Movies newsletter! Jimmy Olsen sucks.
This week: 7/17/2025
MARY VERSUS THE MOVIE LIVE! 7/19/25
We are doing our first live show to celebrate our 200th episode! On July 19th, 2025, come out to Space 1026 Gallery in Philadelphia and be part of the audience as we watch Surf Nazis Must Die about Neo-Nazis terrorizing a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, and afterwards we will record our episode in front of you. It’s been wild, starting this show during the COVID lockdowns, to now be recording in front of a live studio audience, but I couldn’t be more excited.
Tickets are $15, and can be purchased at the site below:
EPISODE 195 – SUPERGIRL (1984)
Cautiously excited to see Superman (2025), we decided to check out part of the extended Supes cinematic universe with a film built around his cousin, Kara Zor-El, a.k.a. Supergirl. Not the worst superhero movie we’ve seen, but maybe one of the creepiest, what with all the adults making out with high school girls.
I’ve seen worse superhero movies, sure, but this one is so strange and full of squandered ideas and extremelyquestionable choices that we occasionally had to stop the film as we watched it. Why did she name herself the way she did? Why are these grown men sexually assaulting or attempting to hook up with these teenage girls? Is this because the director is French?
Oh yeah, Jeanott Szwarc. I went into this not knowing that this would be the third film of his we’d watch. And while I liked Somewhere In Time–sure, it’s drippy melodrama, but I have a soft spot for it–I think we can agree Jaws 2 is completely unnecessary, and Supergirl is overall a surprisingly creepy film whose best asset is, yes, Faye Dunaway as a campy, even operatic witch who takes over the world, with Brenda Vaccaro as her sarcastic sidekick, channeling Rhoda Morgenstern.
Coincidentally–and it really is a coincidence–our current episode of Hollywood Avalon is also directed by Szwarc, which makes me think Faye Dunaway’s Sabrina has more than a little of Morgan le Fay in her.
Starring Faye Dunaway, Helen Slater, Peter O’Toole, Brenda Vaccaro and Peter Cook. Written by David Odell. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc.
HOLLYWOOD AVALON – EP. 26: THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE LAST DEFENDER OF CAMELOT (1985)
An immortal Lancelot, living in 1986, is attacked by a gang of punks, kidnapped by Morgan Le Fay, and forced by a mad Merlin to battle a magic suit of armor in a desperate attempt to bring back Camelot–something Old Man Lancelot really doesn’t want.
We visit the 1980s incarnation of The Twilight Zone with this George R.R. Martin adaptation of a Roger Zelazny short story, which originally aired April 11, 1986. It’s a fun story, where Morgan is once again battling Merlin for control of the world. This time, though, there’s a nice inversion, with Morgan content in the 20th century and desperate to stop Merlin from destroying the world in order to bring back Camelot.
Starring Richard Kiley, Jenny Agutter, Norman Lloyd, and John Cameron Mitchell. Written by George R. R. Martin based on the story by Roger Zelazny. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc.
What else are we up to this week?
Mary: We went to a packed screening of Rocky at the Ambler Theater on Thursday. I’m not surprised that so many people came out, of course–it’s the Philadelphian Odyssey, our folk epic about a bum who takes on the heavyweight champion of the world and goes the distance. For a city–or region, I mean, we watched this in the suburbs–with a chip on its shoulder, that likes to tout its blue collar bona fides, and give-a-damn attitude, it’s less a mirror than an aspiration.
People brought their kids to the movie, and I keep wondering what those kids thought of it. It’s not a film for kids–Rocky and Adrienne are both adults, around thirty, both feeling like losers, washed up and unloved. It’s mostly a sad story about fear, set in a Philadelphia past its prime, full of crumbling buildings, crappy little apartments with no heat, where the best job you can get is on the docks, or a stinking abattoir, or breaking legs for a loanshark. It’s a fairy tale, of course, that this never-made-it fighter gets a chance in the ring with the heavyweight champion, who only wants to use him for a spectacle, cashing in on an American Bicentennial that no one really wants to celebrate. That Rocky gets the chance and makes it, that Adrienne finds someone who loves her and gets out from under the thumb of her abusive brother, that the city gets to put on a show and feel important for the first time in a century, well, honest to god, I’m tearing up writing this. Silly, right? But I watch this movie, and I see my city, my home, and I think of my dad and his brother, who never made it out of the factories and bars, probably never even had something to work towards like being a fighter–they just knew they hated what they did to put food on the table.
When he finally runs up the steps of the Art Museum, triumphant, a place five blocks from the house I grew up in, man, I was bawling.
We watch Rocky because we need to believe that you can train, you can work hard, and you might not come out on top, but you prove you’re not such a loser after all, that you can go the distance, that you can push yourself harder than you thought, and gain some self-respect.
So Saturday, we’re doing a live version of our podcast. I used to do theater and sing, Dennis used to be in a band, we’ve performed in front of people separately, but that’s all very long ago. I’m washed up, a hasbeen who never was, and I know it. That’s fine. But on Saturday night, I’ll be standing in front of people, hoping to go the distance.
Dennis: THEME SONG:
Episode #16 Xanadu-“now will we see the magic?”
Episode ?-“alright…”
Episode #27 Real genius-“this is Jesus, Kent”
Episode #8 Dune-“it is the year 10191”
Episode #94 My dinner with Andre-“we are bored”
Episode #62 Mystery train-“hi goodnight!”
Who’s ready for a little show history? Sometime around 200 episodes ago Mary said I should write a song for our new podcast. The theme of the show was Mary guessing the plot of a movie she hadn’t seen. She had a list of around 300 movies at the time, I picked some and put lines from those movies in the song. The song itself was made on Novation Launchpad, an ipad app, using a mix of different 80s sounding loops. I made 3 versions of it, one of which became the outro. I searched the movies I thought would be cool in YouTube and collected a couple samples from each. One movie I kept getting samples from was The Lost Boys, the one everyone shook their head at when Mary admitted to not watching it. There were some good lines but they were all too long. The first sample I copied was “Wolverines!” from Red Dawn, and I had it in there for a while until I realized it was more fun if Mary had no idea where the samples were from. Likewise lines from 9 to 5, which eventually became our first movie, seemed a little obvious, and I couldn’t find a sniveling-enough Dabney Coleman line. Ladyhawke lines were considered, but I couldn’t find any line Rutger Hauer had that was memorable enough in the clips I found and had forgotten how annoying Matthew Broderick was in it. I thought maybe I was mistaken on that last point, but when we finally watched it I knew my instincts were correct.
It was a long fun night, sometimes watching whole scenes. I watched a half hour of My Dinner With Andrebefore “We are bored, we are all bored” popped up and I scrambled to record it. I had a vague idea of trying to make the samples sound like they were talking to each other, I even tried some panning to emphasize it but didn’t want to go overboard. The final song was put together in the video editing app, LumaFusion. Previously, I had used GarageBand to mix songs, but something about the simplicity of LF appealed to me and I’ve used it for song and movie samples ever since. I don’t like too many bells and whistles. A lot of ideas were dropped, but eventually I cobbled together what you now hear at the start of an episode before skipping ahead to our hellos. Mary said it sounded just like she wanted and had no idea where any of the samples were from.
That first week before the first episode, the movie with the sample that sounds like “Alright, where’s Mary? Hi!” was discussed. I was excited for the first sample recognition to drop, but we went in another direction. By episode 8 we got to David Lynch’s Dune. Virginia Madsen’s head announces “know then that it is the year ten thousand one hundred and ninety one” and I was curled up in anticipation of recognition by Mary, but she didn’t say anything. I peeped “did you hear it?” and then she realized right away. It was thrilling. Episode 16 Xanaduwas better, I had taken the line from a video and had no idea where it was in the movie so I was in giddy excitement for the first quarter of the movie for them to get to the dark control room in the scene. When it finally comes up, Olivia Newton John’s line “now will we see the magic?” was even more noticeable since it was dubbed louder than the other lines and Mary knew it instantly. By episode 27 the line “this is Jesus, Kent” in Real Genius sparked another fun reaction, but we were already halfway through our samples. I suggested maybe I should record all new samples for when Mary inevitably heard them all, but she said no. It would be another 35 episodes before Youki Kudoh would say “hi, goodnight!” to an incredulous Screamin’ Jay Hawkins in Mystery Train, perhaps the sample Mary was least ready for. By episode 94 she heard the Andre line (that was a great run of movies, Angel, Swimming to Cambodia, and Andre all in a row) I figured soon enough we’d be all done the main show’s theme samples. By then we’d started Hollywood Avalon and I collected a new group of samples, but the premise of that show didn’t lend itself to surprises as much.
Girl, would you believe that over 100 episodes have passed since then and that elusive last sample has not been heard? Mary has asked that I steer her in its direction at times and I’ve tried but the show goes another way. There have been times where Mary has had it on a list of upcoming shows then she gets distracted. The 100 episodes since Jason Gore joined us for Highlander in the 100th episode have flown by. Maybe finding Reggie at the Lansdale punk rock flea market has something to do with it. Mary bought him after a few beers at the slight urging of our friend Rob. We’ve tried writing lines for him to say, but when Mary picks him up he seems to go off on his own thing. I guess I’ll keep trying to bring that movie up. It’s not the most obscure movie in the world, and someone in it is very famous. When I recorded it I was worried that the “hi” at the end of the sample would sound too much like the “hi, goodnight” of Mystery Train (spoiler, it is not Youki Kudoh in the unseen sample), and I was so sure we’d have seen it by now. Being the last sample it’s separated itself from the others and the amount of time it’s taken will just make it more fun when Mary finally hears it. Mostly I forget about it except when I go back to listen to an episode and remember that fun night scouring 80s movies for samples one year into the COVID era. But I do at least want Mary to hear the line in the movie proper before I accidentally spoil it for her or something.
Pizza: Our friend Mishell came over this weekend (you can hear her in the Mad Monster Party episode) and we had a green peppers and onions pie as well as a pepperoni pie from Nico’s. No surprises, the usual 3.5 out of 5 goodness. We played a movie trivia game and Mary’s sister Anne won (the two of them are trivia ninjas, don’t bet money against them). I’m not great at trivia. I’d say my memory was going, but it never did a great job of staying in the first place.
NEXT EPISODE: We watched Wim Wenders’ neo-western Paris, Texas
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