Our ambitious script called for everything from Ma and Pa Cant's rustic farm house to Rex's high-tech lab. Indeed, we had 14 major sets and locations to find and or build. But how? We had no budget to pay for expensive location rentals, sound stages or set construction. So we did the next best thing: we begged, borrowed and... Well, let's just say producer, Vern Dietsche secured over a dozen locations — gratis — armed only with chutzpah, a glib tongue and a ton of promo material. Some of the locations included the following:

Key locations

To begin with, the producer's garage was immediately converted into a sound stage: first for Kraptonian Elders sequence, which employed every white bed sheet in Vern's house. Then for Jel-lo's lab, which may seem a bit familiar, and it should. It was the old Equicon / Filmcon "Star Trek" TV series bridge set, loaned to us by soundBjo Trimble. And finally, shooting the Krapton city miniature special effects (learn more about this on the Props & Special Effects page).

We shot the Daily Comet scenes at two locations: the interior was filmed at the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, California and the exterior was lensed at the Avco Financial towers. This locations was courtesy of director Dave Teubner. In 1974 he had shot his first 16 mm film for Avco Financial Services.

Sadly, some sequences are doomed to be shot, re-shot and re-shot, again. The Pie Fight sequence was one of them. Once at Reynolds Ranch and twice at Golden West College, both located in Huntington Beach, Califonia. More about that below under "Trouble in Paradise.

Rex's Lair was the interior of a restuarant (Victoria Station) and a bank (Keystone Saving and loan). As for Rex's lab where General Zit is rescued from the "O-zone", that was the computer science lab at Orange Coast College. To make this set more convincing, Dave, who doubled as the film's art director, designed and constructed Rex's "O-zone Criminal Recaller" and "Power Rod". As usual, it was an all night, 12 hour shoot.

Ma and Pa Cant's farm house is the historic Newland House, which still sits majestically on a bluff in Huntington Beach, California. At the time we shot "Supe" the whole area was open land. Now, sadly, it's been reduced to a small plot of ground surrounded by a strip mall.

Speaking of malls, the old Huntington Center (now demolished and rebuilt as Bella Terra) was pressed into service several times. This was made possible thanks to Vern, who at the time was assistant marketing director for the mall. Two scenes were shot there including, The Kraptonian Criminals Court sequence where General Zit and his cronies are banished to the "O-zone". Of course, this was done after hours; another marathon session over-night. Things can get a little weird in a mall at 3 am and you've had no sleep.

Trouble in Paradise

Now shooting on location is always fraught with unexpected situation, and we had our share.

For the Daily Comet exterior (Avco Financial towers) we had two deadly henchmen all set to kill Ms. Lois Lame. But they weren't as deadly as the Irvine Police Department; they killed three hours of precious daylight. Near the end of the day three officers showed-up (it must of been a slow day in Irvine) and forced us to halt production all because they couldn't find proof of our shooting permit; It seems someone had failed to pass it on to the right person.

On another day, we had borrowed a phone booth from GTE. By the time we picked-up the booth, set-up the lights and were ready to shoot a summer storm flew in and rained us out.

Rain plague us once more; this time it was in the middle of August. At the time we were young and naive, and weren't aware of the summer monsoon that blows in from the south and dumps rain on the desert. Oh well, live and learn.

Perhaps our greatest obstacle was shooting the Pie Fight sequence, which was shot three times.

On the first go around we had over 40 extras and all the pie fixin's ready to go. Imagine our horror when we plugged the camera into a special power pack into and watched it promptly burn out the camera's transformer. The rental house had given us a D.C. system instead of an A.C. system. No sync sound! Fine. Undaunted, we turned to our M.O.S. camera (mit out soud). Unfortunatel, the cinema god's frowned on us that day. When we screened the dailies we discovered a third of our film had become solarized (our guess — a batch of out dated film), and rest ruined by a small chip of film that had lodged in the film gate, which blocked a three quarters of the image.

The second time we shot the pie fight we more prepared. We checked, double checked everything. Nothing was going to stop us — except the extras. They didn't show-up. Why? Because of the Super Bowl. Being more interested in film than sports, none of us followed football. Needless-to-say we were mighty dissapointed that we had over-looked this national event.

Fortunately, the third time was the charm. Everyone showed-up, even the newspapers, and shooting went off without a hitch. And the rest, as they say is history.