C/D: Howard the Duck (the movie)

(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/