C/D: Howard the Duck (the movie)

God help me, I remember that too.

I somehow never realized it was Tim Robbins in that movie until years later.

I've got to agree with this. The movie SOUNDS like it would be fun to see, but really its just quite painful.

I know, but it happens! The other bad movies I couldnt get through: A revisit of "Dream a little dream" (BORR-RING!!) and the Mandy Moore vehicle, "How to deal"

I also recall the duck breasts though.

I don't really remember the soundtrack beyond the "Howard the Duck" theme song, which is nothing special.

This is something special:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKifnayS1_I

Like, I'm kinda pissed that this movie didn't take off and convince her to leave the pictures for a pop career with Dolby.

My bandmates suggested a Howard the Duck vs Big Trouble in Little China poll. Seems worthwhile.

I think I'd have to go with Lea though.

a competition in a computer mag to win this Howard game was the only competition i ever got close with, i came second and got a poster instead.

recently watched this cos i heard the "How Did This Get Made" and read a bunch about it.

i saw it as a kid and it was just another weird sci fi adventure movie to me. i re-discovered it as an adult and the badness of it was a lot of fun.

but this time its flaws as a movie were just too great. sure this is a movie where a scientist runs screaming "We have no right to tamper with the universe!" but the unfortunate fact is that the star at the middle of it all, Howard, is kind of a prick and a not very enjoyable character. I can get by his character design (some people just can't, he looks too weird or something) but he kind of is no fun at all. i know the character is supposed to be a jerk in the comics (i guess?) but there are ways to make charismatic jerks and Howard is a charisma-free character.

Lea Thompson is a treasure in this movie tho. the scene where she pulls out the tiny duck condom is insane. wtf.

dark lord of the universe is pretty scary and well done imo. i do like his eyes are glowing and his skin is rapidly deteriorating and yet everyone keeps suggesting to just get him a cup of coffee.

best ending ever though. are there other movies that end w everyone starting a rock band that makes it big singing about their adventures?

it's not a good movie, but it's still interesting how its financial failure seemed to open it up to the kind of ridicule that's reserved for seemingly one film every year (cf. waterworld, gigli, etc.), and it developed this reputation as a much worse film than it actually is.

and yeah lea thompson is a highlight! most of the human actors aren't too bad. but you're right that howard is not a sympathetic or even very interesting protagonist (and you'd think an oversized talking duck would be interesting, wouldn't you?)

Lea is constantly helping him and he is completely ungrateful and constantly whining.

Pretty true to the comics, then, iirc.

I remember seeing it in theaters and my only problem with it at the time was that the guy-in-a-suitness of Howard was distractingly obviousy; if they'd animated in a duck that looked exactly the way he looked in the comics, I'd have been able to roll with it. (This was released post-Roger Rabbit, so there was a precedent for the mix of live and cartoon.)

surely then what we need is a CGI Howard the Duck

would be down w some animated inter-dimensional underground comic duck weirdness

yeah I too saw this in the theaters as a kid, solely on the strength of it being a) an adaptation of a comic book and b) the involvement of George Lucas. My dad, already confused by his sons' interests, must have been totally baffled. Even as a kid I knew it was bad - the duck-suit really is distracting - and it hits so many false notes. Unfortunately, the child molestor is probably the best thing about it.

The film was optioned by Universal Studios after a partnership with Marvel Entertainment. According to Marvin Antonowsky, "Sidney Sheinberg lobbied very hard for Howard the Duck", because the studio had passed on previous projects that Lucas was involved in, which had been very successful. Sheinberg denied any involvement in Howard the Duck, claiming that he never read the screenplay. Huyck and Katz strongly felt that the film should be animated. Because Universal needed a film for a summer release, Lucas suggested that the film could be produced in live action, with special effects created by Industrial Light & Magic.

animated inter-dimensional underground comic duck weirdness

there's certainly precedent for this kind of thing succeeding since - live action/cartoon pop culture satire with a talking animal is hardly a tough sell, I would think

I just rediscovered the theme song recently. It kicks ass.

I also discovered recently that this was Marvel's first feature-length theatrical film. Which is just fucking weird.

soundtrack is pretty great. John Barry of James Bond fame wrote some great tunes as well. the love theme is heart-tugging in particular.

For those who didn't see Guardians of the Galaxy or its post-credits scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-O3lPJCjMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acUcjv40Jno

In the comics, H the D can be a jerk, sure, but he also has courage, integrity, empathy, and is funny, too - obviously he's an author substitute/mouthpiece, but when written by Gerber he's also one of mainstream comics few 'fully-rounded characters'. He's an everyduck. The movie doesn't indulge in any of the kind of satire/topical humour that's all over the Gerber comics, which was prob for the best given the filmmakers involved, but leaves the movie feeling pointless and empty.

yeah even being largely unfamiliar with the Gerber comics I was expecting some kind of satire/engagement with present day culture and the movie doesn't do that at all

he does go to the unemployment office to get a job. that's some social commentary.

of course the job is ..... working in a brothel.

I remember seeing it in theaters and my only problem with it at the time was that the guy-in-a-suitness of Howard was distractingly obviousy; if they'd animated in a duck that looked exactly the way he looked in the comics, I'd have been able to roll with it. (This was released post-Roger Rabbit, so there was a precedent for the mix of live and cartoon.)

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, November 19, 2015 8:00 PM (3 hours ago)

unfortunately marvel can never use the original design of howard the duck again because disney threatened them with legal action back in the 70s on the grounds that howard allegedly looked too much like donald. marvel unwisely resolved this issue by allowing disney to redesign the character; unsurprisingly, they came up with the ugliest and most unappealing design imaginable, which is why the character looks so horrible in the movie and in every other post-70s incarnation. when steve gerber finally did another howard comic in the 2000s, he resolved the issue by depicting howard as a mouse.

whaaat never heard of that! That's crazy. I thought the lack of resemblance between the film and comic book versions was strictly a problem with the suit/shitty designers.

yeah, gerber talks about it in this interview (skip to about halfway down the page):

http://web.archive.org/web/20020815054620/http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/features/99564488180361.htm

This was released post-Roger Rabbit

no, roger rabbit was a couple of years after this.

The recent Howard comics written by Chip Zdarsky are great.

Never having read anything else about it beyond casual snipes, I imagine that Bill Chambers' take is still the best thing that has ever been written on the film.

That has got to be the most positive review that has ever been written about this film.

And it's still 2/5 or whatever.

I'm assuming I'm one of the few people here who went to the cinema to see this when it came out,

I had a friend in elementary school who already had a file cabinet full of comic books. In maybe '79 or '80, during less eventful school recesses, he'd recite the events of the Howard the Duck saga. I never handled his comics, they were all sealed in these plastic sleeves, and I just wasn't interested in characters in tights at the time.

I recall seeing this during its theatrical release, at an age of surging hormones, it gave me a life long crush on Leah Thompson. Otherwise, I don't recall any surprises, its seemed faithful to my second hand recollection.

This is a lot less fun than most of the other great bad movies... especially if you think the Spielberg-or-Lucas-produced-but-didn't-direct template isn't really that fantastic to start out with.

I just don't trust my younger self anymore.

Always worth remembering that this was the first movie based on a Marvel character. This.

Hey did you know there's a new Marvel movie coming out next week.

(makes jerkoff motion)

is howard the duck in it?

post-credits cameo, portrayed by the unemployed-prankshow Stranger Things kid

If y'all are looking for something to direct your Hate Rays at for reasons other than 'it's popular and people like it and I'm literally nineteen years old and wearing a ripped Crass shirt rn' might I draw your attention to Kevin Smith's upcoming Howard the Duck cartoon series (yes, really).

*sound of steve gerber’s corpse hitting 10,000 rpm in the distance*

Lol @ ripped Crass shirt

if we're going to make completely inaccurate strawman caricatures of each other, I believe this is an actual photo of the time OL met Stan Lee
https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdailyfunfactsblog.weebly.com%2Fuploads%2F3%2F1%2F0%2F2%2F31026779%2F9444000.jpg%3F1433592217&f=1

Doodle a week-old mac & cheese stain on the shirt and basically yeah.

Rewatched this today for the first time since I was, what, maybe nine?

If you haven't seen it before, you might be inclined to think that it garnered such awful reviews partly because making a movie about a talking duck was an ill-advised decision. But the fact that it's utterly terrible and almost completely without merit has basically nothing to do with its status as a movie about a talking duck. It's just...a total piece of shit. Like it's so completely shitty that you could almost believe that shittiness was the goal from the start. And it's not even enjoyably shitty. I'm the world's biggest sucker for enjoyable shittiness and can find the silver lining in most shitty movie clouds. But watching this will just make you feel bad. There is no fun to be had here except for Howard rocking out to the theme song as the end credits start to roll, a mere two hours after you made the stupid choice to press 'play'.

I think I figured out my least favorite 'joke' construction thanks to this movie. It's the one where somebody in a heightened and comically exasperated tone says 'Talk about your ___!' Aw, man, I got caught in the rain! Talk about a cold shower! What does that even mean? Are you supposed to laugh when that happens? I don't know, but it happened kind of a lot in this movie. Towards the end, Jeffrey Jones is like...blowing this powerful wind at Howard? I guess? I don't even know what the fuck was happening or why. And I look at the screen and say 'talk about your halitosis!' And then 2.5 seconds later, Howard, in the midst of a fight for his life, says 'talk about your bad breath!' And then my jaw dropped and I said '...fucking really? I hate you, movie.'

And I did. I really hated it so much.

almost completely without merit

https://img3.looper.com/img/gallery/the-real-reason-howard-the-duck-was-a-total-flop/whos-this-for-1519823787.jpg

I mention above how Hunger City, from the soundtrack, is a favorite song of mine. In the past year, somebody has uploaded the actual clip from the movie with the song in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOUei2sYKms

Lo and behold, "talk about a rotten day!" after he ends up getting thrown into a barrel.

LOL @ "talk about your" analysis, so true. in my mind it is closely related to the joke construction of somebody doing a thing, and saying "[person whos famous for doing that thing], eat your heart out!" something almost ritualistic or traditional about it, like things that the performer and the audience have some prior agreement as representing 'a joke' rather than an actual joke intended to elicit spontaneous laughter.

great way of framing it, OEO - feel like a lot of jokes i've never laughed at fall under this umbrella.

i did find this an enjoyably bad movie, but i think it helped a lot seeing it on a big screen - packed house, big room, with an inexplicable and gorgeous 70mm print. i can imagine watching at home by myself the groany jokes and general pointlessness would have made it hard to get through, instead of contributing to the shared experience.

It's the kind of hoary joke expression parodied with "I'd buy *that* for a dollar!" or "wha' happened?!" Or, I guess, the original "Take my wife ... " joke.

I honestly think the big budget production values are what ultimately tipped this into full-bore shittiness. I might've been willing to forgive a lot more of this turd if it wasn't so overpolished. And with that weird-ass, discordantly-whimsical John Barry score trilling in the background like I was watching some heartwarming '80s family movie about two lovable scamps learning the true meaning of Arbor Day or something.

There's something about the presentation of trash qua trash which has aesthetic merit, which can be appreciated on its own level. And there's something about putting a coat of lacquer and a handful of glitter on a pile of trash and dropping it in the middle of a gallery floor that overemphasizes its trashiness, which casts excessive glare on its flaws. And if, as in this case, its flaws are already deep and abiding and almost an insult to civilization and goodness, then you've got a real mess on your hands.

It's the kind of hoary joke expression parodied with "I'd buy *that* for a dollar!" or "wha' happened?!" Or, I guess, the original "Take my wife ... " joke.

It possibly looked good on paper, in the vein of a repeating joke that builds and builds, like "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit..." from "Airplane"? That's the best I can come up with anyway.

I think it basically boils down to someone with no demonstrable ability to construct a joke writing a script which is filled with things that look to him like jokes. It's like...I know remarkably little about sports, so if I decided to write a film about sports and didn't get the assistance of someone who does know about sports, it would probably turn out like something that was written by really dumb aliens and everyone who saw the movie would hate me and they would be right for hating me.

Re: Airplane you always are taking the risk when your approach is "throw a gag at the wall every five seconds and hope most of them stick" that... none of them will stick. That doesn't fully account for Howard the Duck's perfect awfulness, but it's part of it.

n........? sfw

I learned from this movie that mammals and birds are basically the same thing.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to the tiny condom that Howard keeps, unwrapped, in his wallet. It's a detail whose inclusion in the narrative was entirely necessary.

They should have had a scene where Howard finds out how long duck penises are on our planet and had a mental breakdown from the resultant inadequacy.

and then spread the resultant inadequate duck penis in between two intact duck penises?

The revive of this thread somehow caused me to rewatch this movie, which I saw as a child and of which I retained only vague memories. It took me a few days to get through it. It is uniquely terrible, but it is redeemed in my eyes by the performance of Jorli McLain as Crystal, the waitress at the Cajun Sushi diner.

https://media-af-photos.ancientfaces.com/442/1350244/1350244-small.jpg

She has only two other screen credits. She was in "Under Cover" (1987). I wouldn't mind seeing this, but it seems the only way available is to track down a used VHS, which I am not prepared to do.

Her final screen credit is an episode of "thirtysomething". Here's her scene - she has one line at the very end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKvmiLdnnFk

She then went on to invent and successfully market a head massager with her partner, Wendy Robbins. This is from The Advocate, 2003:

https://i.imgur.com/ccGfZWo.jpg

She died in 2010.

Howard the Juggerduck

https://preview.redd.it/eyyk538qkx711.jpg

https://i.redd.it/eyyk538qkx711.jpg

Those head massagers! Back in the mid-2000s, a teenage mall kiosk clerk used one of those on me in a shopping mall without my consent. Came up behind me and surprised me with it! It was not a good feeling and I think it precipitated a cold that I had been fighting off to kick in to high gear.

"Hostility is like a psychic boomerang."

I don't hate this movie.

Worth a read? Why yes!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/howard-the-duck-turns-35-lea-thompson-chip-zien-seth-green-reexamine-notorious-marvel-universal-bomb-1234977028/