HOWARD THE DUCK (1986)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

I used to resent the way that producer George Lucas and his cronies had dumbed down Steve Gerber’s HOWARD THE DUCK comics-feature for movie audiences. However, having seen the way the MCU took some very classy Thor-stories and put them through a formula-making meat grinder to concoct THOR RAGNAROK, Lucas’s light-hearted kerfluffle seems like a much more piddling crime against pop-fiction.

The foremost complaint against HOWARD usually comes down to, “midget in a duck suit.” True, the suit’s not great, but those were the technical limitations of the time. I can envision a CGI Howard who would’ve been at least as good as the nineties’ “live-action” Ninja Turtles. Then again—Jar Jar Binks used the same technology, and failed to capture much appeal except for small kids. So maybe “duck suit” isn’t so bad.

More or less like the comics, Howard (Ed Gale) gets flung out of his anthropomorphic animal-universe into the world of “hairless apes,” and becomes friends with lady-ape Beverly Switzler (Lea Thompson). Considering Lucas’s diffidence regarding sex, it’s surprising that director Willard Huyck, working from a script assembled by Huyck and Gloria Katz, injects a fair number of jokes about the possibility (though never the acutality) of some human-duck interaction. 

(Side note: one of the odder sex-jokes has Howard looking at a copy of PLAYDUCK and taking pleasure in the model being "airbrushed." Airbrushed to get rid of what, an extra layer of feathers?) 

As in the comic, Howard’s natural sardonicism is only heightened by his exile from his own world, though he finds some comfort with the kind-hearted Beverly, who as an eighties gal definitely has no problem with having a he-man, or he-duck, come to her rescue. Though this Howard is a lot less petty and nasty than the comics-version, he does have a falling-out with Beverly for a time, which added a little conflict to their vanilla relationship. Thompson plays Beverly with a lot of bouncy enthusiasm, and in many scenes “sells” the duck-suited midget far better than do the rest of the actors.

I used to feel that the film misfired by not following the more satirical aspects of the comic. That said, even Gerber wasn’t totally averse to baggy-pants comedy, and that’s what Huyck is all about here. There are no laugh-out-loud lines here, but at times Howard’s quips are mildly amusing. The slapstick scenes, like a lot of the straight action-sequences in Lucas's own directorial efforts, often go on too long and tend to burn out this viewer.

Oddly, Lucas’s duck is somewhat more macho than the original. Gerber had his Howard learn “quack fu” for one story, but on the whole the duck’s conflicts were emotional and intellectual. Lucas’s Howard knows enough mallard martial-arts to kick the asses of bigger humans in three separate scenes, and he’s not really any more reluctant to play hero than, say, Han Solo.

The biggest problem with Howard’s heroics is that Katz and Huyuk tossed together a “big bad” in the form of a Lovecraftian "Dark Overlord" who has also escaped his dimension, and who must be duly prevented from menacing Earth. All the scenes with the demon-- in a clunky stop-motion form, or while possessing an unfortunate human-- are supremely dull, functioning as little more than excuses for more Lucasfilm light-shows.

If the original Howard suffered from living in “a world he never made,” this Howard suffers from living in a world Huyck and Katz made. That said, he might still get worse treatment if the MCU ever gets its hands on him.