We’d barely recovered from Showgirls when we got one of the most brutal stretches at B-Fest I can ever recall. Things started with Howard the Duck, which I admit I’d never seen. The film was bewildering in that I couldn’t figure out who they made it for. The budget was $35 million, a gigantic sum at the time. Let’s put it this way; Die Hard was made two years later and cost $28 million, and that was only because Bruce Willis got what at the time was a record-breaking $5 million to star. So the rest of the film cost $23 million, about two thirds what Howard the Duck did.
Despite thus needing a gigantic audience, the film is filled with raunchy elements seemingly designed to piss off parents who brought theirs kids to see the wacky sci-fi talking duck movie. Howard is seen reading a Playduck magazine, complete with nude duck woman centerfold. Before he leaves his planet we briefly glimpse the feathery breasts of a duck woman in her bath. Lea Thompson goes through Howard’s wallet and find a condom. Then she begins initiating sex with him, although they are (mercifully) interrupted. Seriously, they thought they would get back their money with that stuff? And the humor is like, “Oh, look, Howard has a Bloomingducks credit card. Get it? It’s like Bloomingdale’s, only it’s Bloomingducks, because he’s from a duck world.” It’s not even really a pun. The store here isn’t Bloominghumans or Bloomingmans.
The one element everyone loves is the incredible stop-motion monster at the end, but that was too little far too late. Especially in a film lasting nearly two hours (??). This was history’s first hint of how bad George Lucas’ film career was going to get.
