Marvel Mondays #10: Howard The Duck (1986)

Sigh...I guess we can't put this thing off any longer then. This review was originally going to go up over the Christmas period until I became aware of the three Conan films being sort-of-Marvel and decided to add them into the blog instead. However, while Christmas may now be in the past, we've definitely got one of the biggest turkeys in Marvel history to deal with today - "Howard The Duck".

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...

Marvel Mondays #9: Red Sonja (1985)

Now here's a strange one, readers. Following the critical and commercial success of the two Conan films, it's perhaps not a surprise that we would see a third instalment of the series in the form of "Red Sonja", released a year after "Conan The Destroyer". Arnie would again return as Conan (well, kind of, see later in the review) with Brigitte "crazier than a crate of stoats" Nielsen making her acting debut in the title role. Of the three Conan films, "Red Sonja" is actually probably the one that could be most accurately described as a Marvel film - while the character did originally originate from the Robert Howard novels, the version here is very much the Marvel one who was introduced as a sidekick to Conan in the mid-'70s before getting her own comic soon afterwards.

Unlike its two predecessors, the film was a critical and commercial failure with even Arnie stating in later years that it was the worst film he'd ever made. Given that this is coming from a man with such gems as "Junior", "Kindergarten Cop", "Jingle All The Way" and of course "Batman And Robin" ("Let's Kick Ice!") on his CV, harsh words indeed. So does it deserve the vitriol? Only one way to find out folks...

The film starts with a quick flashback sequence on Sonja's background - apparently she was approached by the evil Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman who confusingly played Arnie's love interest Valeria in the first Conan film) to become her lover and co-ruler (because as everyone knows, lesbianism automatically equates to being evil. Face, meet palm...) but turned down her advances with Gedren slaughtering Sonja's family, having her soldiers rape her and burning down her village. Escaping from the wreckage, Sonja is visited by a friendly spirit (a fairy I guess?) in the woods who gives her supernatural strength and agility.

We then cut to Conan riding across some mountains until he reaches a bridge across a canyon which is down. Meanwhile, in a temple nearby, a group of priestesses are performing a ceremony (which we find out Conan was due to attend before his bridge-based problems) to send an ultra-powerful talisman which is threatening to destroy the world into a sealed darkened vault where it can't get any light to power it. However, Gedren and her followers raid the temple and kill most of the priestesses before taking the talisman. We find out that the talisman can only be handled by women as when one of Gedren's male followers tries to touch it he gets instantly vapourised.

Meanwhile, one of the priestesses, a redhead, manages to cut down a few of Gedren's soldiers and escapes as far as the canyon. She tries to zipwire her way across it but is shot in the back by an arrow from one of the soldiers. Luckily for her she lands in Conan's arms who promptly dispatches the two goons who were following her. It turns out that this is Sonja's sister Varna who asks Conan to go and track her down.

It turns out that Sonja has been training as a warrior in the intervening years and has just graduated from the academy of the master Kyobo. At her ceremony she picks out a sword while Kyobo tells her that while he thinks she is one of the best warriors ever to pass through his training, her distrust of men worries him and he's worried it will one day be her downfall (yeah 'cos when you've got a film with a strong female lead it's so important to have an anti-feminist message in there, right?) Anyway, Conan arrives at the academy just after the ceremony finishes and he and Sonja ride out through the legs of a giant stone warrior (probably better not to ask).

Sonja is reunited with Varna but unfortunately the latter has been fatally wounded and she asks Sonja to retrieve and destroy the talisman to avenge her death. We find out that Arnie's name is actually Kalidor and not Conan in this film (why this is I do not know as the character is basically Conan in all but name) and he offers to come with her on her quest, an offer which Sonja not-so-politely declines. Seeing a storm over the mountains, she deduces that this must be the work of the talisman and rides off to investigate.

Arriving at the city of Hablock, Sonja is greeted by the annoying sprog Prince Tarn and his bodyguard Falkon who are the only two survivors of the city after it was sacked by Gedren's army. She saves them both from falling into a pit of boiling mud (!) with Tarn offering her a place in his court as a cook. Sonja tells him to sod off (not in those words unfortunately) and sets off towards Gedren's kingdom while Tarn and Falkon set off to the wilderness to try and recruit anyone they can find to put a new army together.

To get to the mountains, Sonja has to pass through the citadel of Lord Brytag (Pat Roach again, fresh from playing an evil wizard in the previous Conan film) who says he'll let her through the gate if she sleeps with him. Unsurprisingly, Sonja doesn't take too kindly to that and promptly kills him in a sword duel. His men try and stop her but Kalidor arrives to fight them off long enough for Sonja to escape through the citadel gate.

Passing through some woods, Sonja comes across Tarn again who has been captured and tortured by some bandits. With some help from Falkon and his giant bone club (!), they manage to fight them off and the three agree to join up to defeat Gedren.

The team eventually arrive at the entrance to the "Kingdom of Infinite Night" with Tarn and Sonja having an argument. After Sonja beats him in a sword duel and agrees to give him some lessons to help him improve, Tarn agrees to become a bit less of a brat and start being a bit more co-operative with the mission.

Gedren meanwhile has seen Sonja and her party approaching and orders her deputy Ikol (Loki backwards, and the two of them have the same headgear as well - what is it with Conan films nicking stuff from Thor?) to capture Sonja and bring her in unharmed. Oh and she also has a pet giant spider which for some reason only appears in this scene as well.

Ikol conjures up a thunderstorm forcing Sonja and her crew to take shelter in a cave where they're ambushed by a giant mechanical fish called the Icthyian Killing Machine. Kalidor arrives just in time to help and he and Sonja defeat the beast by taking out both its eyes and blinding it. The fight sequence here is just plain ridiculous as it basically involves Arnie riding a mechanical bull type thing underwater for five minutes.

Back outside the cave, Kalidor and Sonja get talking and apologise for being rude to each other earlier with Kalidor explaining his connection with the priestesses and the Talisman. Kalidor also admits that he quite fancies Sonja who tells him that she has taken a vow that only a man who beats her in combat can have her which is the cue for the two of them to have a ten minute swordfight which ends in a draw when both of them are too exhausted to carry on. Erm, no offence but given that they've only got a finite amount of time before the talisman goes boom, this might not have been such a good idea...

The team press on to Gedren's castle with Sonja, Kalidor and Falkon infiltrating through an air duct while they persuade Tarn to keep watch outside the door by persuading him that's what heroes do. While Kalidor and Falkon battle Gedren's guards in the dining hall (a fight which is clearly aiming for the award of "most innovative uses of a table"), Sonja goes after Gedren. Back in the castle meanwhile, Ikol realises that Gedren is actually a bit insane and decides to do a runner with the gold. However, he runs into Tarn outside the citadel who beats him in a swordfight and knocks him under the giant stone wheel door to be crushed. Ouch.

Sonja finally tracks Gedren down to her chamber and goes to fight her - however, Gedren has her court wizard to help her by making her teleport and use voodoo to cut Sonja. Eventually, Sonja realises what's going on and we get another gratuitous decapitation scene involving the wizard.

Gedren flees to the talisman's chamber where the device is going into meltdown with the floor being rent apart. After a fight, Sonja knocks Gedren into the lava stream below before throwing the talisman down after her, causing the castle to self-destruct and some actually quite cool explodey type special FX. Finally back to safety, Kalidor and Sonja go to duel again but just end up kissing while Tarn and Falkon just sort of go "meh" and head off back to Hablock to rebuild the city. And that's that.

While it's far from the worst thing I've reviewed on this list, it's pretty obvious that the Conan franchise was very much running out of steam by this point and it's no shock that it was pretty much abandoned after this film flopped so badly. Nielsen's terrible wooden acting really doesn't help here (I never thought I'd see the day where Arnie was carrying the acting load in a film) and some of the sequences (such as the mechanical fish robot) go beyond being enjoyably daft into downright ridiculous. And I'm sure it can't just be me who finds some of the story themes (All lesbians are evil! No matter how strong a woman is she needs a strong man to look after her!) a bit sinister in this post-Weinstein era.

A fourth Conan film, "Conan The Conqueror" was planned for release in 1987 but by then Arnie was busy with "Predator" and "The Running Man" and director Richard Fleischer and producer Dino de Laurentiis both turned it down. The script eventually surfaced in a bashed-about form as the B-movie "Kull The Destroyer" in 1997 but Marvel had actually stopped the Conan comic series four years earlier meaning we won't be covering that film in these reviews, likewise the Conan reboot from 2011 as it's outside the time frame when Conan was part of the Marvel franchise. Meanwhile, Arnie would go on to movie superstardom, Brigitte Nielsen would go on to marry Sly Stallone and star alongside him in a few films before drifting into the world of B-movies and general craziness. And us? We've got an even bigger Marvel bomb than this to review next week starring a talking duck. Oh joy...

FINAL RATING: 🗡🗡🗡🗡 4/10

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 (1979) (4/10)
6. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
7. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
8. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
9. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Fuzzy Duck? Does he f...

Marvel Mondays #8: Conan The Destroyer (1984)

Happy New Year folks and welcome to the first Marvel Monday (well okay, Tuesday, see previous blog) of 2018. This week we're looking at the second of the Conan trilogy in "Conan The Destroyer". As with its predecessor, "Conan The Barbarian", the link here is admittedly a bit tenuous as Conan wasn't originally a Marvel creation but at the time of the film's release in 1984, Marvel owned the Conan franchise and the guy who'd written the comics for them, Roy Thomas, was drafted in to help with the script for the sequel. So technically it's a Marvel film in all but name.

It's a bit easy to understate just what an influential film "Conan The Barbarian" actually was and it kicked off a swords and sorcery craze among the youth of the time that would last a good decade. If you remember Fighting Fantasy books, the "Heroquest" board game, video games like Gauntlet, Rastan and Golden Axe not to mention films such as "The Princess Bride" and "Willow", well all of that was down to Conan taking the whole thing overground in the early '80s.

Of the team of heroes from the original Conan film, only Conan (Arnie) and the wizard Akiro make a return for this second outing. Obviously Valeria was killed in the first film but Subotai has also gone to be replaced by a new thief companion called Malak, a much more cowardly companion than Subotai who's mostly there for the comic relief. The film opens with a close-up of Arnie in a loincloth (awkward) chilling in the mountains with Malak. Of course, in Conan's world peace never tends to last for very long and the two of them are confronted by a gang of soldiers who are quickly massacred by Conan until their leader Queen Taramis comes forth to explain that she needs Conan's help with a quest. Okay, funny way to do that by letting half of your team of guards get hacked up by a big dude with a sword but hey...

Conan is initially reluctant but Taramis promises that if he helps her then she'll resurrect Valeria which is enough to get him to say yes. They return to Taramis' castle via the town outside with Conan punching his second camel in as many films. Because, y'know, when you're a barbarian you can do that kind of stuff. The quest involves Conan and Malak escorting Taramis' niece Jehnna who is the child chosen in a prophecy to retrieve the horn of the god of dreams Dagoth. However, in order to get through a set of magic flames to the horn, she must first retrieve a jewel which is being held in the castle of an evil wizard. Got all of that?

Taramis also says that the trio will have some back-up in the form of her head guard (and eunuch) Bombaata. However, Bombaata is actually working as a double agent with orders to kill Conan once the horn has been captured.

Realising that even four adventurers are likely to struggle with such a large itinerary of stuff to remember, Conan decides the group need some extra firepower from the old magical side and opts to track down his old ally the wizard Akiro. Unfortunately Akiro has got himself into a spot of bother and has been kidnapped by cannibals who are about to eat him. Conan saves the day including a gratuitous decapitation of one of the headhunters whose body falls on the barbecue. So even though they lost Akiro, the tribe still get something to eat. So everyone's happy.

The group then pass through a village on their way to the wizard's castle where the locals are about to put the leader of a band of raiders Zula (Grace Jones!) to death. Upon Jehnna's insistence, Conan rescues her (or rather severs the chain holding her allowing her to fight her way to safety including the inevitable shot of one of her captors getting a well-placed kick in the nuts). Despite Bombaata's reservations, Conan offers her a place with the team completing the awesome sixsome.

The team reach the wizard's frozen palace which is set in the middle of a lake (cue unconvincing '80s special FX!) and decide to set down and camp there for the night. Unfortunately the wizard (played by Pat Roach aka Bomber from "Auf Wiedersehen Pet") transforms into a giant bird and swoops into the camp kidnapping Princess Jehnna, somehow doing so without actually waking anyone up. Wizardry and all that I guess...

The team set sail for the island to rescue Jehnna and enter through an underwater gate but Conan gets separated from the group in a big chamber full of mirrors where he's ambushed by a troll and forced to participate in a wrestling match with it (seriously, there's some neat moves on there!). However, after getting his arse kicked for a few minutes and realising his sword doesn't damage the creature, Conan ends up breaking one of the mirrors with his sword which wounds the creature. Several more broken mirrors later, he defeats the thing with an impaled Bomber wandering out from behind one of the mirrors and dematerialising in a burst of light.

Jehnna grabs the jewel (she's the only one who can touch it as per the prophecy) and the castle starts to disintegrate leading the group to beat a hasty retreat and the castle to crumble into the lake (cue more hilariously bad '80s special FX). On the way back, they're ambushed by a group of Taramis' guards with Bombataa "inadvertently" colliding with Zula as they try to spring into action leading Conan to have to fight the group off on his own. Conan asks what's going on but Bombataa apologises and says he was just worried Jehnna was going to get hurt.

The team reach the chamber where the horn's being kept in the middle of the mountains (with Jehnna, Malak and Zula having a none-more-awkward conversation about the birds and the bees en route). After Conan manages to open the stone doors via brute strength, Jehnna uses the jewel to walk through the flames surrounding the horn and retrieve it although Akiro is panicked after reading some hieroglyphics in the chamber explaining that according to the legend Jehnna must be sacrificed to Dragoth to allow the god to assume human form although the others dismiss this as superstition.

However, the group are interrupted by a group of Taramis' soldiers turning up and they beat a retreat with Conan and Bombataa hacking a few of 'em up (erm, why is Bombataa attacking his own men rather than blending in with the herd and running off?) Jehnna finds an escape tunnel with her and Bombataa running off up ahead only for the latter to whack the ceiling with his sword causing a cave-in leading to Bombataa riding off ahead with Jehnna back to Taramis' court and the others being trapped in the cave until Conan picks up some rocks and throws them to one side to clear a path out.

The now awesome foursome return to Taramis' castle and gain access via a secret cave under a waterfall that Malak knows about. As they get in, the head priest who was with the soldiers back at the chamber with the horn in it is about to sacrifice Jehnna but Zula manages to impale him with a spear. Elsewhere in the back chamber, Conan battles Bombataa and kills him.

Unfortunately this creates a problem - Jehnna was due to be sacrificed to Dragoth because she was a virgin and therefore pure. Unfortunately, Bombataa and the High Priest weren't "pure" (the former must have misbehaved quite a bit before becoming a eunuch evidently!) and Dragoth turns from being a noble-looking marble statue into a vile and slimy hellbeast (with none other than Andre the Giant in the costume!). He instantly gores Taramis to death then turns his attention to Conan and his crew. However, Conan manages to tear off Dragoth's horn allowing him to finish the beast off.

Post-battle, Jehnna replaces Taramis as queen and appoints Zula as captain of the guard to replace Bombataa, Akiro as her chief advisor to replace the High Priest and Malak as court jester. She offers Conan her hand in marriage and the chance to rule with her but he politely declines and sets off on further adventures. Which we'll discuss in the review of "Red Sonja" next week...

Like the first Conan film, "Conan The Destroyer" is undeniably cheesy and a bit silly with incredibly wooden acting but it's still a fun enough hour and a half of swords and sorcery silliness even if it is a bit toned down compared to its predecessor. For that reason, it doesn't quite displace the first film.at the top of the pile but it runs it close and is certainly far superior to most of the rest of this list. Or at least it will be until we get something genuinely decent coming along anyway...

FINAL RATING: 🗡🗡🗡🗡🗡🗡 6/10

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. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
5. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
6. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
7. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
8. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Arnie is back for a third dose of Conan. Except under an alias. And with Brigitte Nielsen in tow. Hmmmm...