Bad, with good bits. It’s main problem is that it can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be, and it doesn’t juggle its different genres well.
Musical? Comedy? Drama? Sci-Fi action?
I was in college, and remember thinking that it wasn’t awful. Like so many others, I couldn’t tell you one thing about the plot of the movie, or dialogue, or anything other than Lea Thompson and that the impression in my memory is, “I didn’t think it sucked.”
A couple of years ago I saw that it was available for streaming somewhere, so I decided to see what 19-year-old me might have seen in the film.
Good gods above, it was horrendous. I don’t give up easily on movies, and I lasted no more than 20 minutes through “Howard the Duck.” Pacing, acting, dialogue - everything was terrible. Yes, Lea Thompson was smoking hot (so, my memory of that, at least, was clear), but the rest was just really, really awful.
I saw it when it first came out, but I wasn’t a fan of the comics. still, the movie didn’t have the look or feel of the comic, and I thought the “Howard -in-a-duck-suit”, while looking good enough, wasn’t convincing or appealing. at the time the movie came out, they actually ran a feature in Playboy about the “Playduck” magazine that Howard reads – evidently they had a hand in that. Everyone was clearly thinking that this movie, if not a blockbuster, wouldn’t be perceived as World Class Awful.
it wasn’t, but it wasn’t great. The special effects at the end were pretty decent pre-CGI dimensional animation, but that probably looks pretty bad to a generation raised on CGI and older folks who’ve been watching CGI these decades. This movie ain’t great, but it’s light-years beyond “The Star Wars Holiday Special”. Or most of the movies I’ve shown through the years at my Bad Film Festivals.
P.S. – I’m not sure I like the way Howard looked in the stinger at the end of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but at least he looked more appropriate.
I saw it about 10 years ago for the first time. My *only memory of it was seeing a young Paul Guilfoyle (he played a cop on CSI) toward the end.
*Even though I remember Lea Thompson was in it, I don’t remember anything about her.
24 posts in and no mention of the WTF-ery that was duck boobs?
I took a first date to see this one.
I remember the build up:
Starring Lea Thompson!
George Lucas involved somehow!!
George Lucas!!!
Based on a popular comic book!!! (That I had never heard of.)
That film was utter crap. I think the audience was collectively embarrassed at the lameness. Walking out, I apologized to the girl I was with.
There wouldn’t be a second date.
I can.
Howard to Lea Thompson, “I can see why you need a wrench. You’ve got a screw loose!”
To which I thought, Jesus is this seriously the best you can come up with?
Hey! I mentioned the “Playduck” magazine!
This. I’d like to see it again, but not badly enough to seek it out.
Somewhere I have a photo of the theatre marquee, where someone replaced the ‘D’ with an ‘F’.
While I’m thinking of the era (in this case, 1981), I called the drive-in to listen to their recorded message to see what was playing. One of the films they mentioned was Galaxina Of Terror. The guy who made the recording conflated Galaxina (1980) and Galaxy Of Terror (1981). 
I wonder how reactions differ between people who were big fans of the HtD comics (raises hand) and those who either weren’t particularly into them, or had had no contact with them at all.
I saw the movie when it first came out. I thought it was absolutely horrible, but I’m sure a hefty part of that was that Howard of the movie had essentially nothing to do with the Howard of the comic books - the character, the art work, the situations, everything. It was all anywhere from just enough ‘off’ to be gratingly wrong, to being totally unrelated.
I see minlokwat found it as unpleasant as I did, despite zero familiarity with the comic books, so it clearly wasn’t *necessary *to be a fan of the comic books to have found the movie to be a disaster. But I wonder whether there’s a distinct difference between how bad the two groups found the movie.
A guy in Calgary sued George Lucas for infringing on his IP. IIRC, he said he invented the ewoks. Lucas came to town to testify and in a media scrum he said nobody sues over Howard the Duck.
George even knows it’s crap.
At that time, I was kid of 13 and a big reader, and for some reason I read the novelization of the movie. I think my mom picked it up at the bookstore along with a fistful of other movie novelizations (Gremlins, Twilight Zone, and I believe even Krull). I don’t remember it being bad, but I don’t remember much about it, save a couple of little snippets. The first was a bit about how Howard couldn’t swim, since he wasn’t really a duck but something evolved from ducks, and was therefore no more naturally inclined to swim than people were inclined to swinging from trees.
Another bit, and I can’t remember what the whole scene was, but one character ends up being exposed to a massive radiation source, such that he knew he was dead from the one-second exposure, even though the actual dying would take a while.
Despite having read the novelization, I haven’t seen the movie in full to this day.
I didn’t know anything about the comic book, and to be frank, I only checked it out because of Lea Thompson.
The only thing I actually remember is a scene where someone was beating up on Howard and Lea screamed, “He’s my boyfriend!” which made me remember Frau Blucher, which made me remember Young Frankenstein, which reinforced just how bad Howard the Duck was.
Hmmm. 80’s Lea Thompson vs. '70s Terri Garr. Tough call.
I like the movie in a bad-movie kinda way. It’s fun to watch every 10 years or so-- I saw it a couple of years ago, so I don’t need to see it again until 2025.
I haven’t seen it in years, but I remember liking it as a kid. I was particularly impressed with the action sequence at the end, and the monster effects were quite good for the time. The duck nipples, however, remain an image of horror that cannot be unseen.
It was a terrible movie but I recall forgiving much as Lea Thompson was so cute and hot in it. But it was terrible.
The cameos that Howard The Duck has been making in the MCU have really been kind of baffling. They could have selected any of the legions of minor characters at their disposal as a fun treat for the viewers, but they go to the trouble of selecting one that, at least for folks of a certain age, serves as a reminder of an enormous box office bomb. Perhaps they are trying to do a little rehab on the character in preparation for something more substantial? A movie of Howard’s own? I suppose it’s possible.
There have been recent new issues of the comics.
I saw it when it came out and enjoyed it; I watched it again a few years ago and liked it. I wish they’d made more of them.
I also liked Fantastic Four, Krull and X-men 3. Make of it what you will.
I suspect that “people old enough to remember a movie from 1986” and “Marvel Studios core demographic” don’t overlap much, if at all.
My guess is marvel is throwing a bone to aging Gen Xers with the Howard cameos…
Virtually every scene with Tim Robbins is a misfire. Horrible, even in a movie like this. Not sure if it was his character or how he played it.
I’m leaning towards both.
On the other hand, the diner scene, and *every *scene involving Jeffery Jones after he’s possessed by the Dark Overlord, is kind of weirdly awesome. Come to think of it, the diner scene probably comes closest to the comic, due to the juxtaposition of Howard and the Evil Overlord with the mundane waitress and truckers, in a typical all-American backdrop.
And dear God in heaven, Leah Thomson was an amazing combination of hot and sweet.