With the exception of the three Conan films (which as we mentioned in the blog were kind of "are they aren't they?" territory really as Marvel was only really part-involved in them), it's fair to say that the early '80s were generally a pretty quiet time for Marvel on the films front. The Spiderman TV series had been cancelled in 1979, the Hulk series was canned in 1982 (though the big green guy would soon be appearing on the big screen instead as we'll see next week) and talks to turn the Dr Strange and Captain America films into TV series were dropped after the poor critical reception both those efforts received. With the Conan film series dying a death after "Red Sonja" as well, by the mid-'80s it looked as though the door to Hollywood was firmly shut as far as Marvel was concerned.
Enter George Lucas, the mastermind behind "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones". Having read some of Marvel's off the wall "Howard The Duck" comics, Lucas decided that the character was ripe for a movie tie-in and promptly set the wheels for a big budget blockbuster in motion. Unfortunately the film absolutely tanked on release and even now is a by-word for horrific movie misfires. But is it as bad as everyone says it is? Hold on folks, we're going in...
The film starts with Howard, an ordinary every day duck in a dimension where ducks rather than apes evolved into being the dominant species on the planet, getting home from a long day at the office and sitting down to watch some TV. Suddenly he's zapped by a beam which drags him through space into our dimension, crashlanding in a back alley in Cleveland where he saves a girl named Beverley Switzer (Back to the Future's Lea Thompson) from a gang of muggers using the ancient art of quack-fu (yes, it sounds daft I know but it does tie in with the comics so we'll let it pass).
Upon realising that Howard has nowhere to stay, Beverley invites him to stay at her flat until he sorts himself out. It turns out Beverley is a struggling musician (unlike in the comic books where she's an artist's model) in an all-girl rock band who are being exploited by their greedy manager. She takes him to meet her friend Phil (Tim Robbins whose ridiculous overacting in this film makes Jim Carrey look vaguely reasonable) who works at the local science museum to see if he can work out a way for Howard to get home. Unfortunately, Phil isn't a scientist, he's a janitor. Furious, Howard storms off to try and work things out by himself.
Cue Howard trying to integrate himself in modern society including signing on at the dole office and taking a job cleaning out the saunas at a brothel (umm, yep, wasn't this film supposed to be directed at kids?). Eventually, fed up, he finds himself wandering around outside a rock club where Beverley's band happen to be playing. Wandering in, he ends up in a confrontation with her sleazebag manager and his goons at the bar and ends up beating the tar out of all three of them.
Backstage afterwards, Howard makes up with Beverley and Phil (who it turns out is dating Bev's bass player) and offers to take over as the band's manager as well as giving them the money their old manager had been stealing from them. Phil meanwhile, offers to ask around for Howard to see if anyone more senior at the science mueum might be able to get him home. Afterwards, Beverley invites Howard into her bed for a cuddle which thankfully doesn't go any further beyond that.
Okay, rain check on the film so far - after a shaky start, it actually looks as if the film is building okay into a sort of action comedy at this point with the basis of a decent story. Unfortunately, at this point the plot goes completely off the rails and it sinks without a trace. Beverley and Howard's makeout session is (probably thankfully) interrupted by Phil and a couple of the scientists he works with - apparently it was a misfire from their laser which brought Howard to earth and now they've worked out how to send him home again. They head out to the base out of town where the laser is but unfortunately the second test goes wrong and summons an evil alien overlord to earth who possesses the head scientist Dr Jenning.
The next hour or so of this film can probably be summed up thus - bad car chase scene involving Howard, Bev and Jenning (who the former two haven't realised has been possessed yet), unfunny overlong scene in a diner with the three aforementioned - Howard and Bev still haven't figured out that Jenning has been possessed and it ends up with a punch-up between Howard and a bunch of rednecks while Jenning kidnaps Beverley and takes her back to the laser base, another overlong bad car chase scene this time with Howard and Phil escaping from the cops in a microlite which feels like it drags on for about four hours. I guarantee you, if you've not lost patience with this thing by this time then you're doing better than I did.
Anyway, picking things up - long story short, Howard and Phil get back to the base and engage in a confrontation with the alien overlord (who by this time has left Jenning's body and set the laser in motion to get a bunch of his buddies down to possess Beverley), Howard, with some help from Jenning and Phil defeats him using a buggy armed with lasers (in what is admittedly quite a cool fight sequence) and rescues Bev - however, doing so means having to destroy the laser and cut off his only way of getting back to Duckworld.. The film ends with Beverley's band out on a sold out arena tour with Howard as their manager and Phil as the lighting guy. As you do.
The phrase that springs to mind with this film is "the more things change the more they stay the same". Despite having a budget that probably exceeded the six '70s Marvel films that we looked at on here combined, it's amazing how "Howard The Duck" suffers from exactly the same major problem - lots of boring scenes that go on way too long to unsuccessfully try and cover the fact that the scriptwriters had clearly run out of ideas. The difference is that while at least the '70s Marvel movies at least had the get-out clause that they were straight-to-TV movies on small budgets, the pedigree of those involved here (not to mention the budget which was eye-wateringly high for the time) mean there's really no excuse for how poor this film is.
So how would I have done it differently? Well, I think if they'd stuck with the premise of the first 40 minutes (the only thing which prevented me from dropping this film straight to the bottom of the list) and continued the story arc about Howard trying to integrate into human society and help Bev and her band out then it wouldn't have hurt. You could still have had the storyline with the aliens arriving on earth and taking over the institute, chasing Howard etc going on simultaneously with the big pay-off showdown at the end but shoving it to the front at the expense of all the other storylines halfway through the film was really what did for it. Tim Robbins' terrible overacting doesn't help either - on this evidence, it's a miracle his career recovered to the extent it did and you have to feel sorry for poor Lea Thompson who simply looks completely lost throughout this disaster. Inevitably, there was no sequel and the whole thing was rapidly buried never to be mentioned again by all concerned.
However...fast forward to 2017 and Howard (now voiced by Seth Green) has shown up as a cameo character in the two recent Guardians of the Galaxy films so maybe it's not entirely out of the question that he could be revived for a film or Marvel TV spin-off at some point in the future (personally, I think the latter would work best) so there may yet be a happy ending to this tragic tale of missed opportunity. For now, however, leave this one well alone.
FINAL RATING: 🦆🦆 (2/10)
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
2. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
3. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
4. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
5. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (4/10) (1979)
6. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
7. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (3/10) (1979)
8. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
9. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
10. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: Hulk vs Thor! It's Ragnarok '80s style...
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