Review of Howard the Duck (1986) by Bill M — 16 Jan 2011

A very, very hard film to rate, it's really a very terrible, very odd film, I put it on my wish list for christmas from a nostailgic childhood recolection of this weird film, watching it again was a strange experience.

On one hand it was the film I remembered, on the other it's a mostly unfunny, sleazy, unclassifiable oddity. One of the biggest and most notorious flops of the 1980's, howard the duck is based on a series of comic books, it tells the story of a humanoid midget sized duck person named howard from a planet identicle to ours except, you guessed it, full of mini duck people, they even have the same movies (a poster with a duck in indiana jones gear, complete with whip bearing the title "breeders, raiders of the lost stork".

....rrrrriiiight) anyhoo, this little dude gets beemed to our world by accident via a galaxy searching satelite ray...or something, meeting the chick who plays marty mcflys mum and has her own "gem" style girl rockband, then lodging with her in her appartment for a while and kinda (creepily) getting it on with her and taking over management of her band, it then turns out that demonic overlord monsters from the depths of dark space have also been beemed down and want to destroy our planet, also using a possesed scientist (played by the great jeffrey jones from bettlejuice and ferris bueller) as their ambassador of terror, only howard can stop them and save his human girlfriend.

...."so yeah".. I didnt make any of that up it's the plot of a film, admittedly through most of the run time I couldnt quite figure out what I was watching, and it was a little painfull to sit through at times, it does however come alive in the last third of the film with jeffrey jones hilarious, possed by a lobster demon, scientist, a shockingly young tim robbins riding what seems like a wright bros plane with a midget duck man and the very cool creature effects of the dark overlords themselves at the end.

What pulls howard the duck through past the finish line overall is the sense that this is a genuine cult movie with a unique and unusual cartoon come to life feel about it, and a true 80's curio. If your into left field, camp or cult cinema you'll find much to enjoy.