Many have said rough things about Willard Huyck’s 1986 Howard The Duck over the years. For instance, Scott Tobias, writing for The A.V. Club, called it “a black hole, unsalvageable as camp, as ’80s curio, or so-bad-it’s-good classic” and said it was “where entertainment goes to die.” Others (like, say, this writer) say it’s “fun” precisely because of those things—despite the George Lucas production’s divergences from Steve Gerber’s famously funky Marvel comics, it boasts Phil Tippett stop-motion work, a talking duck, and a game performance by star Lea Thompson, who makes the film watchable even when it’s trying so, so hard to be anything but. And while Thompson freely admits the film’s shortcomings, she still feels affection for it—and calls “fowl” on people telling her it was a box-office bomb.
In a recent podcast appearance (Taboo’sComics&Kicks via YouTube), Thompson defended the oft-maligned Marvel movie, saying that while it was “not perfect by any stretch of the imagination,” she doesn’t subscribe to the assertion that it was a “famous bomb of the century.” “You know what?” she said. “It made a lot of money. It made its money. I just learned that.” Even though it flopped at the box office, it appears that Thompson isn’t wrong: HowardTheDuck waddled out of theaters in 1986 with a scant $38 million box office take (per BoxOfficeMojo) against a reported $30 million budget (per TheNumbers). Of course, this doesn’t factor in the film’s various home video releases. While no numbers are available for its 1987 VHS and LaserDisc drops, its 2009 DVD and 2016 Blu-ray releases pulled in an estimated $4.7 million in sales. Not great, but something producers might justifiably shake their tail feathers over.
Indeed, home video was where many people discovered Howard The Duck and had its strange, sometimes off-putting energy tattooed into their minds. Everything from Tim Robbins’ computo-geek performance and Tippett’s Dark Overlord Of The Universe nightmare-fuel animations to Thompson’s infamous bedroom scene with Mr. The Duck would not be remembered were it not for the film’s various video releases. Speaking of that bedroom scene, Thompson says she appreciates it. “The script was kind of watered down from the comic book,” she explains. “Howard The Duck in the comic book was much more sloppy and angry and messy and trashy than [he] was in the movie. So I kind of love that scene because it felt more like the comic book.”
You can watch Thompson reflect on Howard The Duck in the video below:
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