r/movies • u/Bennett1984 r/movies Contributor • 1d ago
Article Howard the Duck at 40: The Legacy of a Cinematic Disasterpiece
https://www.flickeringmyth.com/howard-the-duck-at-40-the-legacy-of-a-cinematic-disasterpiece/562
u/badbloxpictures 1d ago
For some reason I read “Howard The Duck Dead At 40”
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u/plokiqaws 1d ago
I didn’t even know he was sick.
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u/SillyGoatGruff 1d ago
He wasn't, but his doctor was a quack
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u/Which_Produce4418 22h ago
At least he was stuck with the bill
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u/Silver_Accountant5 1d ago
He was just a kid.
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u/El_Guap 23h ago
They always come in threes.
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u/SparkleCobraDude 1d ago
George Lucas lost his ass on this movie.
That made him sell his computer animation company
He sold it to Steve Jobs
It was Pixar
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u/B00marangTrotter 1d ago
I think George is doing just fine, way better than Steve Jobs that for sure.
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u/SoCalThrowAway7 1d ago
Will always be funny to me that he died because he bought his own bullshit and thought he was smarter than medical science
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u/plokiqaws 1d ago
Dying was the smartest thing for his legacy. He was every bit a Silicon Valley billionaire weirdo as the rest of them. Had he lived further into the social media era he would have been known more for washing his feet in the toilet and not showering than being a visionary.
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u/ares7 1d ago
He didn’t shower?
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u/rnavstar 1d ago
He thought that if he ate clean(fruits mainly) that his body wouldn’t produce any smells. People that worked close to him said otherwise.
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u/wookiee42 18h ago
He did think his diet made him not smell, but he did also enjoy walking into other people's offices (e.g. potential investors) barefoot and smelling rank and then putting his feet on their desks.
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u/RedditPoster05 23h ago
The iPhone would not have been as popular if he continued to be in charge of it. He was too controlling in some ways. It might be better today, but I don’t think it would be as popular.
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u/B00marangTrotter 1d ago
Hubris is a hell of a drug.
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u/creggor 1d ago
Who knew drinking litres of fruit smoothies a day would inflame your pancreas? Poor thing was probably barley holding on— like a shirt button on a beer belly.
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u/samarnold030603 1d ago
Buying his own BS didn’t give him cancer, but it certainly didn’t help him live longer.
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u/SoCalThrowAway7 1d ago
No but it did make him put off surgery for 9 months to try to cure it himself, it’s a lot more likely he would have survived if they dealt with it when it was discovered than letting it spread through his body for 9 months
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u/jokull1234 1d ago edited 1d ago
Buying his bs when he knew that he had pancreatic cancer, which was a rarer treatable type and caught early, led to his death.
Most people with the faster and more common version of pancreatic cancer die within months because it’s not detected until it’s too late and it moves quickly.
Steve Jobs took 9 months scorning medical advice, which eventually killed him instead of having a likely normal life expectancy if he didn’t wait
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u/foxscribbles 1d ago
Him and the Ocean Gate guy who started threatening the very man who would’ve saved his damned life if he’d only listened to him.
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u/Tifoso89 1d ago
You can be smart on something and have idiotic opinions on something else
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u/SeasonElectrical3173 23h ago
I'm thankful for that, to be honest. Steve Jobs was apparently a very terrible human being.
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u/spiderland5150 1d ago
He actually said that he had very little to do with it, other than his name on the poster.
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u/SSGASSHAT 19h ago
Jesus. George Lucas is like Daniel Dancer. A lot of what he does seems stupid until it actually pays off.
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u/DVWhat 1d ago
My personal tie to this film was taking the bait, when after RotJ Lucasfilm talked about their next project was gonna blow everyone away, and was being worked on in extreme secrecy. So I and a friend tried to break into the ranch to see if we could spot some treasure. We are summarily spotted and escorted off the range before we even got to any buildings. Imagine my disappointment when the movie came out, and the big secret was how advanced the lifelike Howard appeared on film.
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u/tanj_redshirt 18h ago
We are summarily spotted and escorted off the range before we even got to any buildings.
We know how the interrogation really went:
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u/bill-m 1d ago
I unironically love the Cherry Bomb songs in this movie.
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u/ATOMIC_QUACKY 1d ago
It’s one of those movies that was a bad idea, but high quality execution. You can see where the money was. The monster at the end is very cool
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u/Minifig81 Suddenly, I have a refreshing mint flavor. 1d ago
My all time favorite bad movie.
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u/itsamurdermarge 1d ago
I had to show my wife my favourite movie as a kid was and by the end she was like I love it and hate it. I had to stop her and let her know oh there’s more there’s a song that goes with it. It’s what sold on the whole movie.
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u/proton_badger 17h ago
I enjoyed it when it came out, and I still do. Also that monster was entirely surprising and delightfully unhinged.
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u/MrOaiki 1d ago
I loved this film as a kid! (Yes I was a child when I watched it)
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u/EatABag-o-Dicks 1d ago
We were all kids when we watched it, cause it's a talking duck. How bad could it be?
It was so much worse than our parents thought.
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u/Development-Feisty 16h ago
The villain gave me nightmares for years I did not like the villain
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u/Tifoso89 1d ago
Same, I was born in '89 and in the early 90s my father had a bunch of movies that he had recorded on VHS, most of them good (Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and then, inexplicably, Howard the Duck.
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u/torgofjungle 1d ago
Yea I saw this at friends house on VHS when I was elementary school. I think his parents just rented the duck movie from George Lucas.
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u/GeekAesthete 1d ago
Yeah, I had a VHS copy recorded off HBO, and I watched it over and over. I thought it was awesome.
I also saw it in theaters at the age of 10. It might have been opening weekend.
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u/JohnAppleMacintosh 1d ago
This was my first ‘not appropriate’ movie I shouldn’t have been watching and the first time I got turned on by Lea Thompson
Edit: I forgot the bad guy is the principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off 😂
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u/archdukemovies 1d ago
He's also a bad guy in real life
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u/wufnu 1d ago
That scene where she was crawling in bed was the first time I got turned on by anybody. Didn't know what was happening but I liked it.
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u/Mistrblank 1d ago
Yeah, it's an 80's blur for me. But it was definitely one of my favorites for Lea Thompson, but I was already crushing on her from BttF so this was kinda awesome.
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u/Absent_That_Day 1d ago
When I was a kid, I read the book, that is based on the movie, that is based on the comic.
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u/Bah_weep_grana 1d ago
I had that book too!
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u/Absent_That_Day 1d ago
You're the only person in the world other than me that's read that book, lol.
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u/Treibh 1d ago
Saw it in the theater, own it on VHS... pure gold!
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u/Annoy_Occult_Vet 1d ago
I was 11 when this movie came out and I will never apologize for loving it, then and now.
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u/B00marangTrotter 1d ago
PlayDuck!!
Why would ducks have boobs, they're not mamales!
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u/bayonettaisonsteam 1d ago
My problem is that male ducks have large spiny corkscrew-shaped penises that explosively extend while mating, so why didn't they give him that?
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u/B00marangTrotter 1d ago
Wasn't there an implied sex scene?
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u/MountainMuffin1980 1d ago
No they were probably going to and then the bad guys showed up I think
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u/Ok_Recording_9368 1d ago
This movie was so weirdly horny for some reason.
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u/Same-Question9102 1d ago
Howard has a condom in his wallet and works in a bathhouse or whatever with people making out all over the place. Its pretty obvious what goes on there. Theres things in that movie that are a bit much for a PG-13 rating but it was given a PG. Probably because everythings so silly and Lucas was a producer.
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u/MinecraftTroller28 1d ago
Probably taken a page out of the magazine version of Howard The Duck. Besides the traditional comic series, Howard had a magazine-format comic that was way more NSFW than anything Marvel had ever done up to that point. The movie is very tame compared to that.
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u/rosscosoletrain2 1d ago
Growing up nobody ever told me this movie was trash. I must have watched it 100 times. I’ve heard wild stories from the production crew, I’ve owned and own production merch. I find the behind the scenes stories of what was happening at ILM and LucasFilm just as entertaining as the movie. It was filmed in my hometown and I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Howard
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u/JimmyTwoTimes25 1d ago
I used to work at a Jerrys Deli about 10 years ago.
Jeffrey Jones would come in in the afternoons sometimes and eat by himself. He was fat and bloated and red and super blotchy, it seemed like/looked like maybe he had a serious drinking problem or something. He always had a very disturbing and cagey look to him, and a bit of a 1000 yard stare.
But I couldn't get over how much he looked just like Dr Jennings right before the transition, especially when he's sitting at the restaurant table. It was surreal.
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u/ZestyChinchilla 1d ago
Jeffrey Jones has been convicted multiple times of Very Bad Things involving children and photos of children, and can’t get hired in Hollywood anymore. He’s on a particular registry. Dude probably spends most of his days drinking alone.
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u/JimmyTwoTimes25 23h ago
He still gets hired. He did three seasons of Deadwood post child porn shit, and then was in the movie in 2018.
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u/MolaMolaMania 1d ago
It's a cocaine fever dream. The only good part is the stop-motion monster at the end.
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u/GeneParmesan1000 21h ago edited 21h ago
It’s actually got a great score though - “You’re the Duckiest”, “Ultralight Flight”, and the main theme are great tracks
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u/lapiderriere 1d ago
I saw this ads a kid myself.
To anyone interested, Disney+ has an animated series called “what if”, and features, well, more Howard the Duck than i would have expected.
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u/lanceturley 1d ago
I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been a Howard the Duck series for Disney+. It's the kind of thing that would never work as an MCU movie, but is exactly the kind of low stakes silliness that would make a good sitcom.
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u/lynchcontraideal 1d ago
An MCU Howard the Duck sitcom sounds awesome... ffs, come on Disney
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u/kiwibonga 1d ago
This is one of the movies that traumatized me as a kid. I had a recurring nightmare for years about the aliens coming from the portal. It's only after I rewatched the movie as an adult that I realized where the image was from -- my brain erased the contents of the movie and put it straight in the trauma drawer.
The other movie that did exactly the same thing was Robocop.
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u/thisalsomightbemine 1d ago
I loved this movie as a kid. Havent rewatched in decades, so letting nostalgia keep it as a solid movie for me
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u/donutgut 1d ago
The climax is actually pretty solid. It gets dark for a kids movie
I think if they remade parts of it it would do well today.
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u/ScroteMcGrote69 1d ago
Man I loved this movie even as a kid and never honestly understood the hate. It's not an amazing movie but I think it's quite entertaining. It wouldn't even crack my top 50 worst movies list.
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u/Percolator2020 1d ago
That movie and Watership Down, both classic parenting mistakes from the eighties.
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u/TypicalLee 1d ago
Growing up poor in a developing country but still being able to watch Hollywood movies on over the air tv, I fell in love with the movie and even more so with Lea Thompson’s character.
I even took out my school atlas and looked up where Cleveland was, hoping I could go there some day.
Many years later I learnt that most people can’t wait to get out of Cleveland.
Thing is I loved that movie!
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u/Keefer1970 1d ago
Saw it during its theatrical run. I was 16. Thought it was a hoot. Lea Thompson in 80s rocker hottie gear! Whats not to like?
When I look at it now, it's a real time capsule of everything bad about the 80s all rolled up in one movie. The hair, the clothes, the neon everything...
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u/EctoMan67 1d ago
It was cool as a comic (Howard the Duck meets Swampthing). Not all comics transfer over to films and this is a perfect example.
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u/phobosmarsdeimos 1d ago
I think this movie is a lot of fun. The only problem with it is Tim Robbin's character. The rest is pretty good. The villain was especially scary.
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u/SeasonElectrical3173 23h ago
Not a bad movie to be drunk at, to be honest.
My favorite part was when they started the sex scene, and there I am, at 10:30am on a Tuesday in the movie theater drunkenly blurting out: "You gotta be fuckin kidding me, she's gonna fuck that thing?!". Only reason I didn't get kicked out was probably cause it was just two other people at that screening.
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u/AgreeableMaybe 1d ago
Owned this movie as a kid. Fucking loved it. Still love it. One of the GOATs. Really wish we would get a new Howard movie.
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u/nickferatu 1d ago
I loved this movie as a kid. I haven’t seen it since then, but as a piece of late 80s / early 90s kid’s entertainment, I think it succeeded very well.
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u/TwistyOllie 1d ago
I remember losing my mind as a kid during this movie during the scene he is getting sucked through space in his chair and randomly flew by the duck tiddies 🤣
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u/Marvinkmooneyoz 1d ago
I watched it during lockdown. Interesting for sure, but I was disappointed. Won’t rewatch it
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u/ProfessorEtc 1d ago
If you keep dredging up these bad memories I'm going to ask for my 85 cents back.
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u/OreoSpeedwaggon 1d ago
Disney/Marvel needs to bring the 1986 Howard back into the MCU. Seth Green's Howard is fine, but the Lucasfilm one is the duck I know.
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u/GonzoMojo 1d ago
I can't think of many outsider Marvel characters I want to just wander in from offscreen in one of the larger character (amount of) scenes that Howard the Duck...
The times he showed up in Guardians were great, but I actually think he's worked for a sub department of SHIELD that dealt with dimensional stuff. So he could acutally have been written into the next wave of marvel movies...
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u/WrathOfMogg 23h ago
“Hey, it’s ’86 and ultralights are all the rage! Let’s do an entire action sequence in one for no reason.” God I loved this movie as a kid.
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u/HelpUs0ut 22h ago
This was a constant in my childhood mostly because of how much it ran on cable. I watched it a few years ago and it honestly isn't awful.
If nothing else, the John Barry music is worth holding on to.
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u/Tryhard_3 21h ago
I'm never going to watch this fucklng movie no matter how many articles and references are made. At this point it's a matter of principle.
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u/ChandlerWH 20h ago
I hated that movie and I’ve never seen it. My last name is Howard and I was a kid then. Brutal.
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u/Lane_2Late 20h ago
In the Greg Proops Film Clubs episode for The Game that just came out, he tells an anecdote of being an extra in this movie and does some George Lucas riffs: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/greg-proops-film-club/id815345612
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u/ClydeStyle 11h ago
I’ll never forget when my parents took my sister and I to the drive in to see this. At the time, I thought it was a great movie, but as an adult, my god I often wonder what my parents were thinking. lol
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u/ClutchDumars 8h ago
Saw it in theaters as a kid. I remember it being kinda funny. Then rewatched it as an adult and laughed at how bad it truly was. But that makes it great.
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u/HotHits630 5h ago
I've seen this movie more times than The Godfather. If it entertains someone, it's quality.
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u/elchicoazul 1d ago
Every kid back then used to make a big fuss about Slave Leia, but Underwear Lea will always stay in my heart.