Howard the Duck

Howard the Duck

Howard the Duck was presumably George Lucas’s jibe against E.T which his close friend Spielberg created by utilizing a sarcastic Marvel comic book character who was largely unfamiliar to most. Ever since Howard the Duck hit theaters on August 1, 1986, Howard the Duck has become synonymous with failure at the box office as well as an easy stick to whack the genius Lucas’s back with (of course, until he gave us a much larger stick with the Star Wars prequels), I must say though, I am not one bit ashamed to say that I have a soft spot for this camp kitsch film.

I found this film rather amusing as a kid. It is the type of movie that can only exist in the 1980s. However, even as a mature 37-year-old man who can appreciate a good movie, I can’t bring myself to loathe Howard the Duck. The concept was absurd, yet director Willard Huyck was able to create something good out of it.

The voice of Howard T. Duck is played by Chip Zien. Howard is a duck living on Duckworld, which is shaped like an egg and is as crazy as it sounds. One day, while looking at the pages of Playduck, Howard gets a rude awakening. An intergalactic tractor beam abducts him, transporting him across the cosmos to The United States in Ohio.

Once there, our waterfowl protagonist quickly puts a stop to Beverly (Lea Thompson) a Cyndi Lauper wannabe who gets assaulted by some aggressive robbers – off by performing ‘Quack-Fu’ on them and is offered a place to hide. The following day, Beverly takes Howard to nutty Professor Phil Blumburtt (Tim Robbins, in an early role), who she hopes can fix Howard’s problems and bring him back home, but it appears he is just a geeky janitor. On the other hand, a bunch of real scientists must be caught up in the whole calamity of Howard’s kidnapping because it is one of them (Jeffrey Jones) who is also possessed by a monster from outer space.

I can see why the above character Howard the Duck is a collection of a lot of bizarre purple duck jokes and comic noir trash, provoking the most cynical of guffaws. Perhaps because it is all so cheap, but it has charm. Calling something so bad it’s good can never be an acceptable device because how come there are a lot of other movies that are so bad they’re just bad?

I suppose I’m rather influenced by young memories of f the Howard the Duck I have watched over and over again but never over a DVD. No doubt a young mind being exposed to Howard the Duck , in particular, a topless duck-woman with feathered breasts, attempted bestiality, Marty McFly’s mother in a brassiere, sauna shooting during the time of the season*, a cigar smoking sex SATR, reading of pornographic books, knife wielding violence, rock music and a great deal of stop motion for the crab-like Dark Overlord n by Phil Tippet the man who made it big in F/X world.

As I grew older, my entertainment shifted to the one source that I dare anyone to not enjoy without feeling any remorse: that of the American character actor Jeffrey Jones who portrays a wry astrophysicist that is possessed by a pesky malevolent crab infected. It’s as if ‘Edgar-suit’, which is the human cockroach from Men In Black but much funnier and from a decade earlier.

Consider the setting of the late-night diner, where Jenning’s character is uncomfortable at a table, while practicing his telekinesis on ketchup and other condiments placed within the table. Some great lines play out during this sequence, most of them I can remember off the top of the head:

And unlike many of the modern fantasy world baddies who are proliferating thousands of skin, Jenning’s transformation was disgusting enough to be beneficial for his character as his natural form became revealed last. The movie made a common error even in today’s films, and that was to replace human Jones actor with a puppet in the closing act of the feature but instead only his horrible monster was introduced so late that one could recall frazzled haired Jones instantly.

This film is spectacularly dumb and which is why I wouldn’t judge anyone for not liking it, but for a live-action movie about a talking duck, a sexy rock chick saving him, a nerd teaming up, and them beating an alien, what else did I expect? The effects are actually very good (even if I never got the hatred aimed at the £2 million duck-suit with its expressive eyes), all the performances are fine (Howard is a fairly amusing cynic, Thompson is always game for a laugh, and Jones is funny but also quite scary), and it finishes with an amazing overload of pre-computer ILM visuals.

Yes, the humor is juvenile with awful puns a lot of times, there is the terrible ’80s cheese which seems to only grow every year, and comic book readers would always complain that this adaption is simply too lost and mundane when compared to the chaotic comic book but, when it comes to brain dead rubbish films, Howard the Duck is far more entertaining than what people would say in public.

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