SUPERMAN 1978, Dir. Richard Donner 143 min. Rated PG. Starring: Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty. Review by Noel Wood

Okay, so in the very first SUPERMAN movie this baby comes down from Krypton and picks up a car and saves some rednecks' lives. Whoopty shit. He should have stayed home. That way we would have been spared from putting up with Margot "I live in a cardboard box" Kidder's whiny portrayal of Lois Lane in four movies. In the first SUPERMAN film, the son of Jor-El saves that useless bitch's life no less than three times. He catches a bullet aimed at her head, stops her from becoming a grease spot on the streets of Metropolis, and flies backward to turn back time after the whole earthquake fiasco. Damnit, she was meant to die. God is trying to tell her something and Superman keeps messing it up.

The only thing that keeps this movie from being a total waste of celluloid is the Otis character (The role that kept Ned Beatty from forever being known as 'the fat guy who squealed like a pig and got fucked up the ass'). I think it's kinda cool that besides the Man of Steel himself, he's the only character in the series that gets his own theme music.

General Zod from SUPERMAN II was pretty cool as well, but that's just because he played an Australian cross-dresser in PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT and shares a name with a monster from the Go-Bots. But even cameos by him and Richard Pryor and Jon Cryer can't save the sequels from sucking. Don't even get me started on Mariel Hemingway.

Any credibility whatsoever that the movie had is lost when Superman, often seen flying about in space with no breathing apparatus to speak of, is dropped in water and nearly drowns. Then in the third movie, he's put in this giant bubble thingy and he's struggling for air the whole time. Talk about your continuity problems. Even worse is when they show him flying through space, his cape still flutters as if there's a strong wind.

Richard Donner was, is, and always will be a pussy. That's probably why he hopped off the series after the first installment and left the directing up to no-name hacks. Anyone who's seen LadyHawke or Lethal Weapon or that damn Sloth love Chunk movie has to agree with me.