Oh boy, Enemaniacs… This week and next is gonna be a doozy at B-Movie Enema.

Near the end of 1973, the 19th issue of Marvel Comics’ anthology series Adventure into Fear, writer Steve Gerber introduced a new character that was a parody of what were once referred to as cartoon funny animals (what we would call anthropomorphic animals today). This character was cynical. He chomped cigars and was a bit ill-tempered. A little over a decade later, for some reason, largely unknown producer George Lucas… Wait… Let me double-check that. Oh… I meant to type “one of the most powerful producers, George Lucas.” My bad.

Sorry about that. But anyway, for whatever reason, one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood thought his follow-up to ending the phenomenon that was the Star Wars Trilogy should be a movie based on this character whose popularity might not exactly be as widespread outside the comic spinner racks. The movie proved to be one of the greatest missteps in film history. The movie was 1986’s Howard the Duck, directed by Willard Huyck and co-written by Gloria Katz.

Now, I have quite the soft spot for Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. For one, they were instrumental in writing the wonderful American Graffiti script. They acted as script doctors on the first Star Wars film. But they also made the fantastic and criminally underrated Messiah of Evil.

All those successes were in the 70s. The 80s were a bit rough for the couple. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a very divisive film in that series. I personally do not like that entry, but I recognize glimpses of greatness in the movie. It is also certainly important in terms of modern-day film because it was one of the movies that ushered in the PG-13 rating. That same year, 1984, they co-wrote and Huyck directed the Dudley Moore/Eddie Murphy vehicle, Best Defense. Howard the Duck was the follow-up to that disaster. They wouldn’t work again until the script for 1994’s Radioland Murders, which was also largely panned by critics.

Huyck and Katz became aware of Howard the Duck during the late stages of the American Graffiti production, as it was wrapping up filming and post-production. Lucas told the couple about how funny he found the comic by Gerber. He thought it was drenched in noir style and absurdist humor. Right then, they thought about getting the rights and producing a film. There are some differing accounts of what a discussion with Steve Gerber really was like back then, but it really wasn’t until after Return of the Jedi and Universal Studios came into the picture that the film got into production. Apparently, the studio was determined to get the rights to this project after passing on previous George Lucas projects (including Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark).

Let’s back up to Steve Gerber creating Howard the Duck for Marvel. Howard was the second of two pretty key creations of his in the pages of Adventure into Fear. The other was Man-Thing. Both of his creations became fairly popular. Man-Thing was a sympathetic creature that lived in swamps and would punish those who had fear and evil in them simply by touching them. Howard the Duck became part of the underground scene, where you had this rougher-around-the-edges character that handled things in a slightly more mature way.

Sadly, Gerber would kind of get screwed over a couple of ways. First, Gerber lost control of his characters, most importantly, Howard the Duck. The thing is, if you pitch a character that first appears in a Marvel comic, it’s hard for you to claim sole ownership of that character. You get creation credit, but you don’t have full control over the character. The second screwing came when Gerber would continue working in comics, and scheduled to work on a new Spectre series for DC, but missed a deadline, so he could be present for the final day of shooting on Howard the Duck, and DC gave the title to another writer. Despite a lawsuit against Marvel for ownership of Howard the Duck, he still worked in a freelance position with Marvel. He moved into TV work too. He wrote the episode “Contagion” for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and he worked as a script editor for several cartoons. That would lead to him winning a Daytime Emmy Award for work on The New Batman/Superman Adventures series.

Now, when Gerber began working with Katz and Huyck on the script and story ideas for Howard the Duck, things started to slip pretty fast. I don’t necessarily think Gerber had major issues with working with the couple, but it was very clear there were two very different reads on the main character. Huyck and Katz wanted a friendlier version of Howard. They focused more on a sympathetic character from an alien world being a duck in a strange pond. Gerber’s version of the character was kind of a character who is a cosmic joke. Gerber, after the film was completed, still felt the movie was a faithful enough adaptation of his original comic concept.

Another side to this is George Lucas. Naturally, he is a special effects guy. The movie started sliding further away from a cohesive adaptation to focus on the advanced practical effects that would bring Howard to life. I guess that makes sense that a movie about an alien duck needs to make sure that the duck looks like he belongs in the real world. Between Jordan Prentice in a suit and several puppeteers, the character kind of works for 1986 standards. At least, as I see it, I think it does work for the era in which the movie was made. Originally, Robin Williams was cast to voice Howard, but he quit after a week, feeling caged in by the limitations of the script, and felt unable to do what he would assume he was hired to do – be his version of the character. Chip Zien, an actor known for a bit of a nasally voice, was chosen. Both actors were kind of set up to fail. They weren’t brought in until post-production, which means they had to match what was filmed, and that hindered performances because they had to match what was filmed instead of the other way around, and they had very little room to improvise a line.

In a lot of ways, the movie proved to be a disaster in every way. Lea Thompson was cast after her work in Back to the Future. That made sense. She is playing a very key role in terms of Howard the Duck lore. She even dressed in a way to look more like something of a combo of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper when she auditioned. She ended up getting irritated that Huyck filmed Howard’s close-ups before hers whenever they started a scene. So filming was hard. Voicing the duck proved difficult. The actors’ careers were hurt by the movie’s poor performance. The script was not really adapting the attitude of Howard the Duck that readers would have expected to see, which hurt the tone of the movie. Critics hated the movie. Audiences hated the movie. I’m gonna guess Marvel hated the movie. The movie was another box office failure, unable to recoup more than half its budget, which seemed to be a recurring theme for Lucas on any projects outside ofStar Wars and Indiana Jones.

But let’s see how we feel about it, watching it 40 years later, shall we?

When this movie starts, it’s kind of amazing how easy it is to forget a few things. First, how long it takes to actually see Howard relaxing with his cigar in front of the television. It’s not entirely a terrible thing to hold off on the reveal of your lead character, but you see many pictures of him before that, so it’s not exactly a surprise that this is a fucking duck. Second, John Barry, my all-time favorite composer of film scores, does the music to this movie. That’s… That’s… unexpected, but he does great work.

Then there’s a whole hell of a lot of bird and duck puns all over the place. He’s got lots of movie posters on the wall like “My Little Chickadee” starring “Mae Nest and W.C. Fowls,” “Breeders of the Lost Stork” (a Raiders of the Lost Ark parody), and “Splashdance.” This movie is already spending that pun budget. Yes, I know this is Duckworld, and yes, this would be something that would be carried over from the Marvel comics, but I’m already pretty worn out with the duck puns, and I still have nearly two fucking hours to go. I will say I do like the various stuff Howard flips across on the TV, as well as the fact that we do already know that he isn’t just into movies, he’s a musician and used to have a band called the Heartbreakers. That last thing does play a large part later, and the seeds are already planted in the opening scene.

Also duck titties. Wait… What?

Anyway, all of a sudden, Howard thinks there’s an earthquake as his entire apartment starts shaking and vibrating. He’s also, for some reason, unable to get out of his recliner. He’s suddenly flung through the wall in his apartment, where he and his chair bust through several other apartments before finding his way out into the sky. He’s being pulled toward some sort of portal in the sky. He’s dragged out across galaxies before landing on Earth.

It is instantly a fucking nightmare… I mean, it’s Cleveland where he lands, so… Yeah, that lines up. He’s accosted by some punks who take him to a rock and roll club where Beverly (Lea Thompson) is performing with her band. They toss him out into the street, where he gropes a woman while she makes out with her boyfriend. He then gets tossed onto a motorcycle, which flings him into an alley. There, he climbs into a barrel and closes the lid for a nap.

This movie went from 0 to 194 in about six seconds.

On her way home from her gig, Beverly is snatched by a couple of punks who say they’re her biggest fans. Something about this does not sit right with me. Largely because I’m not so sure big fans of an entertainer would then attempt to rape her over a barrel that just so happens to have a little duck man inside it trying to sleep. Ooh! Remember the show Duckman? That was fun.

You’d think this is when Howard would pop out and beat the guys up, right? Welllll, not so fast. Beverly, at first, is able to do a little self-defense and seemingly doesn’t need Howard. But that’s when the guys get the upper hand once again and force Howard to drop the nice duck persona for a lean, mean, Quack Fu machine! After one of the guys says he must have had too much “toot” (the drug that all the cool punks in Cleveland did in 1986), Howard and Beverly beat up the guys, and they run off.

Beverly isn’t so sure what she just witnessed. She does reveal to Howard that this is, indeed, Cleveland, and it’s the name of a city, not the planet. The planet is Earth, she “thinks.” She seriously says she thinks they are on Earth. I get the joke by her not believing what she’s seeing at first, but it only makes Beverly come off as a total bimbo. She tries to leave but realizes Howard has no place to go. She invites him back to her place, which is a dump. I’m not sure I need to keep describing what the state of the alley, or the building Beverly lives in, or whatever. It’s fucking Cleveland in 1986.

Initially, things are a little rocky between Howard and Beverly. She’s got a duck-shaped purse. She slips and says she never had a pet before. He sits in a chair, and a big truck passes by, which causes the chair to shake. That gives him PTSD from being flung across the universe.

But things clear up a bit when he talks about his home planet. Beverly asks if everyone looks like a duck back home. They do. Otherwise, not a whole lot is different on Duckworld than it is in Cleveland. He studied to be a doctor in school at the urging of his parents. What he really wanted to do was be a musician. However, to actually have a living, he took a job as an advertising executive. The two of them ponder if maybe Howard has a more cosmic purpose, or at least if there is some sort of cosmic reasoning behind him being brought to Earth. However, Howard has no intention to stay on Earth. He really wants to go home.

The next day, Beverly takes Howard to a friend of hers, Phil (played by Tim Robbins in one of his very earliest film roles). She says that Phil is a scientist and surely can help figure out what to do to help Howard. As soon as Phil sees Howard, he freaks out. He does some tests with Howard. He’s surprised that Howard is highly intelligent and very quick-witted (quack-witted?), and wants to know if Howard might have some superpowers.

Frustrated, Howard storms out. While trying to explain how he thinks Howard came to be through the course of millions of years of evolution, Phil is revealed not to really be a full scientist. He’s actually only just a lab assistant. He’s not much more than just a gopher for the real scientists. Howard rejects any further help from Beverly because he thinks anything she might do would ultimately turn him into a lab experiment.

Now determined to make it on his own without Beverly or anyone else’s help, Howard suddenly realizes he needs a job! He’s assigned to a tough-as-nails woman who is always assigned to the misfits and others who struggle to find a job. I love how she does not, at all, react to him being a little duck man. I mean, she does say that he should take to the job she’s giving him like a duck to water. Before that, though, she calls him, “Whatever you is.” He also almost bites her big juicy butt when she has her back turned to him… I’m not sure if that was him being a pervert or wanting to get back at her for being tough with him.

The job he is given is working odd jobs at a sex dungeon. No, I mean it. It’s a massage parlor/spa/sex dungeon. I think it’s a good idea to remind everyone that this is a PG-rated movie! Howard the Duck has already shown duck titties, parodied Playboy with Playduck, he wants to bite a black lady’s big ol’ butt, he works at a sex dungeon, and, before the end of the movie, a human woman will attempt to fuck him.

PG-rated movie.

Howard is down on his duck. The sex dungeon job sucked, so he quit. Everywhere he goes, people point and laugh at what seems to be a little kid or little person in a duck costume. Oh, speaking of… It’s duck hunting season. He ultimately finds his way back to the alley he crashed into when he was pulled here from his home. He goes to see Beverly perform at the dingy dive bar.

While at the bar, Howard overhears the manager of Beverly’s band, Cherry Bomb. This guy keeps most of their money. He wants to invite Beverly over to his place for a little “career manipulation.” He tells the guy he doesn’t like how he talks about Beverly. This ends up in a bar brawl. Howard wins the fight by sticking an ice pick through the guy’s earring and threatening to pierce his other ear with another ice pick. He then tells the guy that if he bites him, he’s a dead man from… SPACE RABIES!

He gets Beverly’s money and gets this scumbucket out of the band’s lives. In their dressing room, Phil returns. Phil is one of the girls’ boyfriends. He steals a feather from Howard’s tail, saying he’s close to unraveling the mystery of his arrival.

Later, Beverly suggests that maybe Howard would be the right person to become Cherry Bomb’s new manager. After all, he still needs a job, and they need something to shake things up. At first, he refuses. Then he gets a good look at Lea Thompson in skimpy pink panties and the tiniest of tiny tops to sleep in and things, “You know what? Yeah, I’m cool with this.”

Remember, I did say that by the end of this movie, she was gonna fuck that duck.

You know… You’re never quite ready for that moment when you’re watching a movie about a space duck that gets laid. Now, I admit… I don’t blame him for suggesting to Lea Thompson that they give it a go in the sex department. I mean… She’s really really pretty. Plus, she invites him to sleep in her bed and watch Letterman together. I’d be up for some cuddling and Letterman. Plus plus, Howard, like me, is only a male-type lifeform. Her sleeping attire is incredibly fetching. I don’t blame him at all for the suggestion.

But then, calling his bluff, she starts coming onto him in a way that freaks him out. She then rubs his chest, or maybe more accurately, his duck nipple, and the feathers on his head stand at attention. This shit is insanity. It begs the question: who is this movie for?

I mean, I get it that Howard the Duck, as a character, is going to get up to this stuff. He’s from an era of parody animals like your Fritz the Cats and what have you. He was always for the more mature Marvel audiences. Yet… Who is THIS movie for? It’s PG-rated. It teeters between silly comedy and slightly edgy drama with Howard dealing with homelessness, Beverly nearly being raped, working at sex dungeons, etc. We’re stuck between a duck and a hard place here because kids aren’t going to understand why this cool chick is in her tiny underwear and why that makes Howard’s feathers stand on end. Adults are going to want A LOT more of that, or Lea Thompson at least. Howard’s appearance in this movie is also something that is much more in line with what would appeal to a younger audience, while the comic’s appearance looks more like something that older readers would want. The noir style, look, tone, and parts of the score that prop up that look and tone are much more in line with what adults would find clever.

I’ll have more to say about this split personality later because it really does become this movie’s greatest downfall.

Phil interrupts their playtime and introduces them to Carter and Dr. Walter Jenning (Jeffrey Jones, fresh off his appearance in Amadeus). Jenning knows how Howard got to Earth. He ran a test with something called the laser spectroscope. They were using it to study the gases around a distant star. Something took control of the spectroscope, and that’s what yanked Howard all the way from Duckworld to Earth.

They might be able to send him home because everything is in perfect alignment. Beverly is sad but knows that Howard doesn’t belong on Earth. So they head to the lab to beam him back home. But when they arrive at the lab, they find something has happened. There are alarms going off, and the guards are missing. A scientist collapses at the door to the spectroscope, saying that it exploded again, and they had no right to tamper with the universe. Jenning took the full force of the explosion and simply disappeared.

If the first time the spectroscope went nuts brought Howard to Earth, what came here the second time?

The Police get involved and seem to think Howard is to blame. Beverly helps Howard escape from the police. On their way out of the lab, they find Dr. Jenning. The doc is acting kinda weird. As he drives Beverly and Howard away from the lab, Jenning tells them that it feels like something is inside of him and eating him from the inside out. He also says that the Earth is very much in danger. He’s afraid that he’s about to become “something else.” He says he saw something terrible right after the accident, and he’s afraid it’s inside him. Jenning believes he will be the cause of the end of everything on Earth.

They get to a diner where Jenning says he’s no longer Dr. Jenning. He’s now “Someone Else.” In truth, he’s a “Dark Overlord of the Universe.” He tells a waitress that she is about to witness the end of this universe and the beginning of something new. This Dark Overlord says that he was the one who took control of the spectroscope. When Jenning turned it on the second time, it found him, inhabited his body, and began changing Jenning from the inside out to disguise its true form, which many might find “hideous.”

Also, I’m pretty sure this is also similar to what he looked like at local playgrounds…

The Dark Overlord wants to turn on the spectroscope to bring more of his interdimensional kind to Earth. Once they arrive, they will basically kill all human life on the planet. Before Howard and Beverly can escape with the keycard to activate the spectroscope again so he can get home… and maybe stop all that Dark Overlords business from happening, some local yokels try hitting on Beverly and making fun of Howard.

This leads to, I dunno, shenanigans. I guess. This is a part of the movie that I struggle with, also. It’s a lot of distraction and… shenanigans. Anyway, the local yokels want to literally eat Howard the Duck. These people in Northern Ohio plan on eating a sentient duck. I don’t even know how they actually perceive Howard. One of the waitresses thinks he’s a pet. Another thinks he’s Beverly’s son in a costume. One guy thought he was a dummy being puppeted somehow by Jenning. Now they all think he’s the next special for the menu.

Does that mean that if it is a little kid inside an elaborate duck costume, they are eating a small child tonight?

Yeah, I guess so. What’s more, I didn’t mention that this diner looks like Denny’s but serves sushi, so you’ve got this caricature in the kitchen. This is madness.

As Jenning continues to get grosser and grosser looking, his powers grow and grow. He uses those powers of telekinesis, Sith-style lightning, and balls of fire to lay waste to this diner. He then catches Howard and Beverly trying to escape and uses his telekinesis to get the code key for the spectroscope to call down the other Dark Overlords. Jenning leaves Howard in the diner while he takes Beverly back to the lab so one of his kind can inhabit her. If you know what I mean…

Howard finds Phil, so they can chase after Jenning and Beverly. Before he can turn on the spectrometer, though, Jenning needs to get more power. Apparently, Dark Overlords of the Universe require lots and lots of power to gobble in order to do their dark overlording. Fortunately, that gives Howard and Phil plenty of time to build a tiny airplane that someone owns to fly back after Jenning. Unfortunately, Jenning has juiced himself up by stepping into a local nuclear power plant’s reactor.

The sequence that began with Jenning taking Beverly and continued with Howard and Phil in the little flying contraption runs on for over ten minutes of runtime. Jenning needing energy is one thing. But minutes and minutes of two goofballs flying around and creating all sorts of silly stuff around them add little to nothing to the overall story.

Upon returning to the lab, Phil and Howard find an experimental neutron disintegrator while Jenning has Beverly tied under the spectroscope to beam out to the Nexus of Sominus where the Dark Overlords hang out. Phil does say that, theoretically, the neutron disintegrator can stop Jenning. The only issue is that it was never tested. Howard drives the neutron disintegrator into position and powers it up.

Howard fires the disintegrator at Jenning just as the Dark Overlord shoots at Howard. They find Jenning, who has returned to normal. The explosion of the two of them firing at each other separated them. The Dark Overlord is still present. The Dark Overlord shows himself, and it’s all teeth and spikes and goo and stop motion gloriousness…

Howard goes back to the neutron disintegrator to try to destroy the creature again. The creature snatches Howard to prevent him from getting to the disintegrator. Jenning helps by giving a blade to Howard so he can cut the tentacle to free himself. The creature has activated the beam to bring the rest of the Dark Overlords to Earth. Howard fires the disintegrator at the monster, destroying him completely. He then uses it to destroy the spectroscope, preventing the Dark Overlords from getting to Earth, but forever trapping Howard on Earth.

But hey… Howard’s now the manager of Cherry Bomb, and he’s got a really hot girlfriend in Beverly. That’s something. Oh! He’s got a song about him that happens to be Cherry Bomb’s big hit.

Everything you’ve ever heard about Howard the Duck is true. There is no adequate explanation of how this movie could honestly be thought of as a good idea to produce. This is definitely one of those “blank check” types of movies. George Lucas has the biggest hits on the planet between the Star Wars Trilogy and the Indiana Jones duology, and what does that get ya? Howard the fucking Duck.

What’s kind of crazy is that everyone seems like they are in a different movie. The duck himself is one thing, but Jeffrey Jones understands the assignment that he’s to play a cartoonish demon monster villain. Tim Robbins is straight out of an 80s comedy. Lea Thompson is absolutely fine in this, but she also doesn’t seem to take all that much seriously in this movie to either lean too far into comedy or the damsel in distress role.

I’ve said it before, but I can’t help but call out that this movie suffers from as much of a split personality as Dr. Jenning portrays in the narrative. It’s too adult for kids to care about the first half of the movie. It’s too stupid and silly in the second half for adults to want to stick around. It just ends up becoming this crazy mush of “what the hell did I just watch?” At times, the movie even feels like it is operating from two different versions of the script.

If the movie decided to go for a runtime of, oh, I dunno 90-100 minutes of one tone or the other, I’m not sure that would have changed the outcome, but at least it wouldn’t have been as much of an absolute head scratcher. Instead, it’s 110 minutes of something kind of interesting for the first half, to a complete and total shambles in the second half. I mean it, almost all of the second half is either hijinx or shenanigans.

And that really makes the movie drag. If you really think about the movie, and how the first half of it is set up and plays out, it’s bonkers. It’s the type of movie you bring your friends over and fill the fridge with, like, 4 cases of PBR and just have a great night. But basically, turn it off after that scene in which Lea Thompson wants to fuck that duck. It starts to take a dive after that.

But next week? That’s gonna be a movie that you want to stick with from minute one to minute 105. It’s a movie that I think is so well known for being so crazy and completely bonkers, with a healthy dose of fart-sniffing pretension. It’s high time I look at 1974’s Zardoz starring Sean Connery and directed by John Boorman. Talk about a guy’s filmography that is anything but a bore, man. So until next week… The duck is good, the Dark Overlords of the Universe is evil.