The cinema of superheroes didn't hit rock bottom with Roger Corman's Fantastic Four or Albert Pyun's Captain America. Nor did the carnival-esque 1966 Batman film represent a low-water mark. No, the absolute I've-fallen-and-I-can't-fly-up moment for the cape film came with Supergirl, the atrocious spin-off to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Just check out this sequence, where Helen Slater's Supergirl (who's just learned what a dingleberry is) takes an agonizingly long time to save her boy-toy from a construction vehicle that's telekinetically controlled by Faye Dunaway. If anybody ever complains that today's superhero films are too effects-heavy and action packed — or too long — point them to this clip.

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