The Marvel Movies: Howard the Duck (1986)
The shame of George Lucas (OK...the other shame of George Lucas) is "Howard the Duck," a flop of legendary proportions that continued Marvel's string of misses in the '80s.
Howard T. Duck lives in an all-duck world full of duck-themed parodies of human conventions: movie posters, magazines (Rolling Egg and Playbill?), game shows and everything else in the world.
Howard is an anthropomorphic duck, about the size of an adult human little person, who speaks English and smokes cigars,
His happy little quack-u-topia is taken from him when a space vortex pulls him out of his world, through space, and into ... Cleveland. There, he meets punk rocker Beverly (Lea Thompson in all her crimped, poofy-haired glory), who takes him to her dorky lab assistant friend Phil (Tim Robbins).
Walter introduces him to Dr. Jenning (Jeffrey Jones), who promises to explain how Howard arrived on Earth and then how to return home. Soon the police get involved, and their intentions are less benevolent. Then, Dr. Jenning gets possessed by one of the Dark Overlords of the Universe, which came over at the same time Howard did.
From there Howard and the Overlord face off, with the latter first inhabiting Jenning's body, then emerging as a giant monster.
The film goes for kitschy silliness, but comes off as more juvenile and less smart, and combined with its ludicrous story turns into a mess of bad special effects and annoying, hammy acting.
Robbins is ridiculously bad, which I suspect is the point, but that doesn't make it any better. Thompson as well looks good, but talks like a smitten '50s teen, calling Howard "Duckie" and calling him her "boyfriend" at one point.
Most of Howard's lines involve variants of human cliches with duck-related replacements ("No more Mr. Nice Duck!") and hard-scrabble private detective dialogue.
A surprisingly racy film given i's PG rating. Howard passes a "nude" woman duck on his way off the world (with exposed breasts), Beverly finds a condom in Howard's wallet and there's more than a little suggestion of inter-species erotica.
Lucas famously produced this film to much hoopla in the summer of '86, and its spectacular failure most likely set comic-book adaptations back several years. It's puzzling why, of all the available properties, Lucas chose to make this one. Its existence helps explain the (lack of) quality of the "Star Wars" prequels.
Next Time: It's not just the bad guys being Punished...it's the audience as well!
Previous Marvel Movie Entries
Conan the Barbarian (1982) Conan the Destroyer (1984) Red Sonja (1985)