Howard the Duck

September 6, 2009

For the second movie night, my son was given a choice between Space Chimps and Howard the Duck – Howard the Duck won. While I giggled with glee, my husband just groaned.

Holy shit, this movie was worse than I remembered. Like The Pirate Movie, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Earth Girls are Easy, Howard the Duck is one of those films that I loved as a kid, but are embarrassingly bad in retrospect. Our mother must have really loved us to take us to theater to see Howard the Duck. Her ability to fall asleep within 5 minutes of entering a darkened theater must have really come in handy during films like this.

Howard the Duck is from a parallel universe in which the prevalent life form evolved from ducks. Howard gets sucked out of his universe and dropped in Cleveland, Ohio. He gets taken in by Beverly, a singer in a rock band, but they get in a big ass fight after she brings him to her wannabe scientist/janitor friend, Phil, and he starts plucking his ass feathers for experiments. Howard then gets a job in a Jerk Joint, cleaning used condoms out of hot tubs, but runs back to Beverly after that doesn’t work out. Just as Beverly is about to sexually assault Howard, the scientists return with promises of sending him back to his own universe.

Howard the Duck toes the line when it comes to bestiality – he never gets to consummate his relationship with Beverly. It would take almost 9 years for comic book bestiality to return to the big screen with Tank Girl and her relationship with a mutant half dog, half kangaroo super soldier and even then, the sexual relationship was seriously downplayed…come on, it’s just a movie! Loosen up…this is hardly Caligula.

We actually haven’t gotten to finish watching Howard the Duck yet. My son got severely freaked out when the scientist got possessed by the dark overlords and he demanded that we turn it off. He was crying, so I took him seriously at the time, but I guess it’s possible that he put one over on us and figured that crying was the only way to get Mommy and Daddy to turn this stupid shitty movie off?

Next up…Batman.