Episode 38-Howard The Duck (1985)

Holy SHIT Listeners, this is one for the ages right here. Today, we are discussing one of the most infamous movies of all time, Howard the Duck! Melanie has NEVER seen or heard of this mid-80s atrocity, and Saysha was somehow allowed to watch it MULTIPLE times as a 7- and/or 8-year-old! We discuss a LOT of very upsetting stuff, including but not limited to duck nudity, interspecies romance, all-girl bands, animal genitalia, Cajun sushi, 80s punks, romance spas, and hentai. We also pitch the MUCH better remake, so if you are a Disney exec, TUNE IN and SEND US A CHECK!!!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to VHS Sisters, a nostalgic movie podcast with two actual real life sisters. I'm Melanie and I'm Stacia. Get into some comfy clothes, grab your favorite beverage, and come hang out with us as I forced my little sister to watch all the movies she missed growing up. You know what? It's fine. Everything's fine. It it has always been fine. Today is gonna be great. And we're gonna get through this, okay? That's all we're gonna do our best to get through this fucking. I can't I'm already swearing. You I you loved this movie, I could tell. I can tell already that you love this movie. Uh welcome to our third week of 80s month. And today we have a very, very special film for all of you because the first one Melanie loved, had never seen but loved. Second one, as we said, a family favorite, and you loved it, I loved it, mom loved it. And and today, listeners, I really wanted to treat Melanie to a special film because I was like, you know what? We've done movies from the 80s before, but I really wanted to show movies. I really wanted us to watch movies this month that were quintessential 80s. And I feel like this one is quintessential. What would would you say that that was that's the word you would use to describe it? I mean, I feel like there's no other decade that this movie could have been made in. So therefore, yes, it is a quintessential 80s movie. You know, I don't recall if this was featured on any of my favorite shows, like I had mentioned before, like the I Love the 80s and 80s rewind and what was happening. I don't really remember seeing this movie in any of those recap clips. But uh yeah, maybe there's a reason. I think if you ask people of my age, I'm going to say elder millennials or very young Gen Xers, they're going to remember this movie. They're going to remember it for a couple reasons, probably. Either it gave them a lot of trauma or it gave them a lot of sexual feelings, or a combination of both. Damn. And the movie we're talking about today, listeners, is none other than the iconic film Howard the Duck from 1986. Um, in the United Kingdom, the alternate title was Howard Dot Dot, a new breed of hero. Oh shit. So Hero, a new breed of hero. Yeah, thanks England, I guess. I guess. Wow. Yeah, so anyway, yeah, this is Melanie's first time seeing Howard the Duck. This is this is I I felt this was unmissable because, like Melanie just said, this no, there was no other time at which this could have been made. I will get into the history a little bit. I just want to ask you before me requesting that we watch this, had you ever heard of it or seen anything about it? I've not seen anything from the movie. I'm sure I've seen the creepy duck puppet. Um I don't really have any context. Like I didn't know what this movie was about. I I find it really hard to believe that you wouldn't know if you'd ever seen that duck before. Because I feel like if you've seen the duck, you know that you've seen that duck. Yeah. So you I don't think you've ever seen that duck. Maybe it was repressed, you know, like a repressed memory. So yeah, you never you never saw this at any relative's house or like on HBO by accident or anything like that. No, no, no, no, not at all. As listeners, I just want to say Melanie watched this last night and she just sent this photo of herself, which maybe I'll share on social media, of her reaction to her watching it for the first time. And the face, the face she sent did not look happy. I like to send my reaction in the moment. She looked, uh, I would dare say distressed, confused. And you know what's funny is my cat, BB, even joined in watching part of this movie with me. And the look on her face looked like like pure terror in her eyes. We'll share that picture for sure. We will share the real-time reactions of Melanie and BB because yeah, they were they were experiencing the trauma for the first time. I was very lucky. I got to experience this movie for the first time when I was either seven or eight years old. Oh boy. I was allowed to watch this for some reason. I do believe this was a VHS classic. This was rented from Blockbuster Video, probably, or Mega Video, one of the small video rental stores. Uh yeah, and and watch this repeatedly, I have to say. Uh, I is this a movie for children, would you say? I would say absolutely not. It's crazy because it's like it's definitely something that I don't want to call it like a grapey movie. You know what I'm saying? Like it's not that, but it's so lewd that I'm surprised that anyone would think that it was for a kid. But I guess because of the duck, they would assume like, oh, look, it's an animated duck or whatever. Like, let's let's show our children this. Yeah, you know, yeah, I think it's interesting because anything that's animated or anything with puppets is considered sort of a childlike thing. And I think that that is a bad assumption because there are plenty of adult type animations out there. There are plenty of adult things with puppets. Um, but yeah, it just has that sort of like, I don't know, people, yeah, you are correct. People see puppet and they're like, that's for a kid. They see they see the duck on the VHS cover and they're like, I'm gonna show this to my seven andor eight-year-old. Yeah, Timmy's gonna love this. It's gonna be fine. Yeah, it's so I'll get into the the deep lore, and there's a lot of lore with this movie. There is a lot of pre-production hell that I could get into. I really mostly just want to talk about the movie itself and what you felt about it. But fun fact, this was originally supposed to be animated. That was the original concept because Howard the Duck is based off a Marvel comic. So I didn't know that. Okay, so yeah, he, I think it was 1970. I am not a huge comic book nerd, but I do know that he was like a fun little thing that Marvel Comics tried, and people really loved the character of Howard the Duck. He was sort of like the way that he was portrayed in the comic, he looked exactly like Donald Duck, by the way. Uh-huh. Big shirt, no pants, very Donald face. It was very adult. He also was like in love with a human woman. It just got kind of bounced around between studios forever. Um, they were gonna also do sort of like an early CGI thing, kind of like um who framed Roger Rabbit. They were like everyone was gonna be human except for Howard, which I think might have been kind of cool. Yeah, maybe less traumatizing. Maybe, yeah, because I I mean I love Roger Rabbit. I don't know if you've seen that one. So I've seen it, but like I have I have no recent memory. The only like things I think about is Jessica Rabbit. It's it's pretty good. And yeah, like the stories there and the performances are really good. Um, yeah, that that's that's one that definitely like how do I want to say it ages well. Yeah, it hit. It hit and it ages well. Yeah, this one did not age well at all. Yeah, they they did not animate it, they tried to do the CGI thing, didn't work out, and then it it sort of floated around until Mr. George Lucas, who was undergoing a divorce at this time and had just made a bunch of Star Wars and was kind of just like floating around helping other people with movies. Um, he helped like Lucasfilms at that same time was helping with Return to Oz. Oh, yeah. So he he was helping with some more trauma, you know, making TikTok and all that stuff. And then these two screenwriter friends of his, who they're a screenwriting couple, actually, named um Willard Hayek and Gloria Katz, they wrote this screenplay. They also wrote Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They wrote Really, yeah, yeah, yeah. They wrote um American Graffiti, which is a really good movie about the 60s. They wrote Messiah of Evil, which is a really cool cult horror film. Like they they're all over the place. So they had this screenplay, and then they were friends with George Lucas, and they're like, okay, let's get this made. And he's like, All right, we're gonna do Howard the Duck, and we're gonna just do like the best Muppet ever. And that was the whole concept behind this. And technically, because it was a Marvel comic, this is technically the first Marvel movie. That's crazy. It is crazy. Yeah, that's like a really important piece of history that, like, if you don't know and you go back and you look at it, you realize like why no one wanted to take Marvel movies seriously. For a lot, like you just could not get superhero movies made that did well. Like there was Superman, but like it that totally tanked. Uh the only thing that went well was would have been a DC comic, but like all the Batmans and stuff from like the 80s and 90s. But it took a while, like Batman, like people knew Batman from like the 60s series, right? And it was like goofy. Like, I mean, I grew up with that, and it was like, you know, so cartoony. And then yeah, people didn't take it seriously until Tim Burton got his hands on it, and he did that whole thing with Michael Key. And like, I cannot tell you, like, I was alive during that time, and that was like that was so exciting. It was like dark and creepy and cartoony, and that's now now I want to rewatch Batman. There we go. Very an actually good superhero movie. Yeah, it was just cool. It was like, it was very, you know, the world building was cool. Yeah, and this, I don't know, with Howard the Duck, they they went through so many versions of the screenplay. First, it was gonna be like just set in Cleveland, and there was, I know, like so I was watching it and I was like, so we're from Michigan, right, listeners. And I was like, so funny that this cursed movie is set in Ohio because you know, not to start any more rivalries, but you know, it's kind of a joke that Ohio is a cursed place. Well, it's funny because it's like now, um, you know, everyone who's Gen Z and younger refers to anything that's really crappy as something that is Ohio. So I'm like Cleveland, this movie is so Ohio. Wait, is that I I'm old, I don't know that. I don't think so. Like the kids will just say, like, oh, that's Ohio, or like Ohio this or whatever, meaning like it's trash. Whoa, that's really cool trivia. That's you, that's cool youth trivia. I love that. Wow. Yeah, that's all you gotta say. It's just Ohio. Yeah. Wow. This movie is Ohio for sure. Oh, yeah, it sure was. Yeah, it's funny. Upon this last rewatch, I was like, maybe it'll be charming. Because it's one of those things, like if you go on Letterboxd, people either have this movie as like five stars or a half a star. They're like, I love this. This movie, you know, gets trashed for no reason, blah, blah, blah. Or they're like, this movie scarred me and it should be burned, and no one should ever seen this movie. But yeah, like I said, it they they try to write the story a bunch of different ways. Like Howard, his actual comic book character, sort of like a film noir, cigar chompin kind of like detective. And he's like, hey, see, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, hey, Tuts, come on up and see me, you know, like which I think would have probably been a better angle if they had stuck with that. But he kind of like becomes a little more modernized throughout the movie, like he's all like 80s, this or whatever, because the place that he had came from was like in technically the same time frame as they are. Because you have like phones and TV and Playboy magazine, play duck magazine, you know. It's yeah, so it's like it's weird because he comes from Duckworld, which is basically the same as Earth, right? Duckworld is the same as Earth, except everything is duc-fied. So Duckworld, it it is called it is, it is called Duckworld, yes. On Duckworld, an Earth-like planet inhabited by anthropomorphic ducks. Oh my god. So it's like it's it's just like I was just saying, like the the world building right out the gate is a little inconsistent because it is like Earth, like his credit cards have like ducks on them, his his money has ducks, he has play duck magazine, so it's supposed to be like a mirror image sort of satire send up of our planet, right? Right. But when he gets to Earth, he's like, This is all crazy. I'm like, what are you talking about? It just doesn't have ducks on it. It's like the same, it's the exact same, it's the exact same, except not everything has ducks. Like, uh come on, world. What a what a name. Like, you couldn't think of anything else, like astra water something, or I don't know, like something that's like waterfowl changed, but to like do an anagram or something. How about malardia? Like mallard. Ooh, that's kind of fierce. Yeah, yeah. See, that's the writer thinking. There we go. Um, yeah, no, it's Duckworld. It's Duckworld. It's it's just Duckworld. Okay, that's what we get. And thanks, George Lucas. Well, he didn't write it to be fair. He it was his production company. So, like that's saying he didn't direct it either. It was directed by the writer Willard Hayek. I think I'm pronouncing his name, his last name correctly. Um, yeah, which is based on the Howard the Duck comic. So, like all that, yeah, all the story was already there. I see kind of. Yeah. But yeah, they were just like, okay, what do we do with Howard now that he's in the world? A lot of the a lot of the the plot points are from the comic. But yeah, they they definitely like softened Howard's character. They had a lot of they had a lot of struggles like trying to design him. So that's where George Lucas. Oh yeah. Yeah. A lot, yeah. It was like they they wanted to make him a little bit more like, I don't know, like I have to, it's it's hard for me to describe verbally. Like you really have to see. He was definitely a little more like Donald Duck-ish. Yeah, if that makes sense. And like a little bit more like cartoony, but they I think they were trying to make him look like an actual like human duck, you know. They were trying to so, so that the the design that they came up with, it took a lot of work, and they also really struggled to voice cast him because they wanted John Cusack, they really wanted Robin Williams. I think Robin Williams worked on this for a week, but this is a pretty notorious showbiz story that he quit because they were so strict with the mouth movements of the puppet. And Robin Williams' whole thing was that he improved everything. Like when he did the genie in a lad, and they just let him rip and they just designed over it. Yeah. Right. And then the animators were sitting there watching him, and they were using him as a reference. As you should, but they were like, No, Robin, you have to go off the script because the ducks Bill has to do these like exact puppet movements, and he was like, I'm so confined by this, I need to be able to improv. So he left. And you know what? I'm so thankful for that because I would be very sad if this was a Robin Williams movie, and I, you know, had bad feelings about it. Yeah, no, uh, Howard was he was voiced by Chip Zean, I think I'm pronouncing his name correctly. I know him. He's a Broadway actor. He was in the original Broadway production of Into the Woods. He has this like really high kind of like tenor voice. And, you know, I mean, I think he does fine, yeah, but his voice, like the character of Howard, is so like I think they try to make him sympathetic and he comes across as like a little mean and snarky. And I just don't think that that's like a great choice for your protagonist, you know. Like it takes a lot of charm to be an anti-hero, and it's really it's really, really hard to sell that through a puppet, is all I'm saying. Like, you can get away with being mean and snarky if you're like super hot, you know. Melanie, how did you feel about the character of Howard, the duck? You know, as a duck, you know, he's not like any other duck, he's raunchy. Um, he is, I don't know. He, I don't know, is he supposed to like? I guess where I'm lost at too is like before he gets transported. Right. And I was what you know, watching the film, I'm seeing all these movie posters that are in it. I'm like, is he like an actor? I'm like, that's kind of interesting, you know. Like there was like an Indiana Jones like copy off uh poster in his apartment. And then like when he flashed forwards into you know, Earth, he's talking about how like he's a construction worker by day, but like likes to make music by night or something, and then like it kind of gets lost until I would say like the end of the movie, or like very briefly he plays the piano, and I'm just like there wasn't enough of that. Like, I don't know. I as far as a character goes, he was not my favorite. I'm not sure where you got construction worker from because that's what he said. I feel like that he's like, I work this by day and by night. I want to do music. Well, he said he does copywriting and he does like, is that what it's yeah? It's okay. Maybe you just misheard. You misheard, it's fine, it's fine. He's like, What? You're like the Tim's on, yo. He's he's working class. I like this duck. Yeah, he's blue collar. He's a he's a cop, he's like a madman kind of guy because there's like it's pretty brief, like when he meets Leah Thompson's character, Beverly later. He's like, Yeah, you know this ad? Yeah, blah, blah, blah. That was me. But you know, he the whole, I mean, she even says this within like five minutes of meeting him, that he's like a shot. I was gonna say that she wants to bone him. Uh yeah, yeah. I mean, and so well, we'll get into it. We'll get into it. But yeah, his his job is apparently a copywriter, uh uh an ad guy. We get a little sneak peek into his apartment, which I do think that intro to the movie is really cool. Like seeing his apartment, like you said, all of the sort of parody posters of like, you know, movies that we know, but duckified. I'm just gonna keep saying that word. Duckified? Yeah, just duck-ified. Um, yeah, he's got a play duck magazine. He's gonna jerk off the duck titties to duck titties, yeah. And that and as you know, he's chilling in his apartment, he gets sucked via tractor beam into space, blows through his building, and you do see, well, you see duck titties in the in the in the play duck magazine, but you also see very pronounced duck titties in a quick scene in a bathtub. There's a there's a duck in a bathtub, sipping a drink. Honestly, she's living her life, and you know, we should all take notes. She's a diva. She's a diva, yeah. What's her what's her story? And I want to note too that there was like when he was getting sucked out of the building on the street, there was one black duck for diversity hire. That's incredible. I did not clock that. They're not all white ducks. There is one black one. Wow. That's you know what? That's so woke of them back in 1985 to have that. Um, yeah, it's it's a lot, it's a really hot open. We get Duck World, we get Howard, we get Duck Titties, we get instantly transported into sort of like a sci-fi situation. Yeah, like cyberpunk sort of 1980s backstreet club that he lands upon. And there's like these, I have no other names besides like goon squad of people of punks come out and like, hey, look at this guy. Yeah, let's throw him in, let's take him in. Like, it's just like, what is happening? These are so like they're very heightened characters. Like, I feel like if they were real punks, they would just continue smoking their cigarette and pay no attention. I mean, this was a very common trope. I mean, we're we're just starting to like, how do I want to scratch the surface? We're just starting to scratch the surface with your 80s movie education. The more 80s genre movies you watch, particularly in horror, you will see that this is just the trope in the 80s. There is a gang of punks, they all have crazy voices, they have insane hairstyles, they're up to no good. They're usually like shooting up in an alley or beating up an old lady or whatever. It's just like a common like thing they'll throw into multiple movies. It's just like, oh, punks are bad. Yeah, they're they're bad, they're crazy. They're bad and they're crazy, and they're they're here to get Howard right in the mix. They're like, Yeah, let's bring him in this punk club. And in the punk club, we meet our love interest played by Leah Thompson, which I was texting Melanie. I was like, I didn't realize that we have two Leah Thompson movies this month. Now, my question is is did she get any roles after this movie or was she done? She was not done. Um, it's funny because I just recently looked up her IMBD because I was like, she had a show in the 90s. She had a TV show. I don't know if you remember called Caroline and the City. No. Which like did pretty well. Um, it was a very like, I don't know, it was like the around the time like Friends was on. Um that was on Felicity. I I the only show I remember that's like adjacent to Friends, or maybe it's not. I don't know. It was like Felicity. Yeah, it was like, yeah, that kind of era, and there's always a show about like I'm a woman and I have a job, and it's crazy, right? That women are out here working. I'm single and I'm barely making it. Yeah, but I've got great hair. Like, there are a lot of shows like that. Allie McBeal's another one. Yeah, okay. Um, but yeah, anyway, yeah. No, she's she like works, like I'm pretty sure she's most well known. Leah Thompson is, of course, most well known for Back to the Future trilogy. She was in all those movies. She was in this, obviously, and like a ton of other like 90s movies. I think she was in Stuart Little. Oh, no way. Okay, do you remember that? I would I would have to check who she was. I thought uh my mind's blanking of her last name, but Gina Davis was in Stuart Little. Wait, maybe I'm getting this wrong. No, I'm sorry. You are right. Gina Davis was in Stuart Little, Leah Thompson was in Dennis the Menace. Oh, yeah. And also the Beverly Hillbillies movie in 1993. She was like the bad woman. Oh she has just done a lot of different stuff. And she's always like, if you look at her wiki, she's done like one or two things every year. So never like a huge star. Obviously, she did have a moment in the 80s. And I just want to say Leah Thompson as her character Beverly uh looks incredible. Like she's she's full 80s glam rock. And I like that when we first see her, she's in the club and she's playing behind like a chain-linked fence, which to me, I'm like any club that has the band behind the the fence is a club that I want to go to. Yeah, you know it's it's a rowdy punk club, it's either like a punk club or a country western club, like in the Blues Brothers. Yeah. Where they're gonna throw shit at the stage. Um, whether they like it or not. Yeah, no, I I mean, this is a core memory for me. And like that was the thing too. When I was re-watching this, and I'm I am glad we did, I was like, because I watched this so many times as a kid, this was a huge core memory for me because I didn't see girls in bands. Okay. Like they're like, okay, there was Gem, the animated series, which was about girl bands. That was also huge for me. But this was like a live action thing, and I saw them at the club, not a single dude in that band. And I was like, that's cool. Yeah, I want to do that, and it stuck with me for like ever. Many years, yeah. But basically, she has crimped hair. She, all of those vocals, she sang all that. Leah Thompson, those are her vocals. Yeah, they weren't sure if they were gonna use them or not, like in the final cut, but she sang um and like learned enough choreography to like fake playing. I don't know if she could actually play the guitar, but yeah, that the band's called the Cherry Bombs, and I was like, that's cool. I wanted way to go, Cleveland. Yeah, I mean, Cleveland rocks, famously so, got the rock and roll hall of fame, many great bands out of Ohio. True. Because that's the thing, most of it sucks. Um, sorry, Ohio fans. Most of Ohio sucks. Um, but like the punks who come out, there are a lot of punks. I don't know what the punk scene is like now in Cleveland, but at the time it seemed very cool. Yeah, we see that. Well, uh, you can narrate this. How do so, how do Beverly and Howard meet? So he gets kicked out of the club because they're like, oh, no kids allowed, you know, or whatever. And I forget what exactly happens, but he ends up in a bin, like a garbage bin. Does he get picked up by my favorite scene of the movie? Uh, the motorcycle gang, Satan sluts, get picked up by them first, and they throw, they he like somehow falls upon them. He's like escaping maybe the punks that were chasing after him in the first place. And then he gets like he hangs on to something, falls down onto the motorcycles, and the girls are like, What the hell is this? You know, and you see the back of their jackets, and I'm like, I want that jacket. That's actually really cool. Again, great hair on these women, not moving an inch for them to be like perceivably on a motorcycle. Yeah. But they throw Howard off and he goes into a garbage bin and like passes out. Yes. And then as uh Beverly's leaving the gig, she's walking back, and two guys are trying to like, you know, mess with her and you know, get a little touchy feely, and they end up right where Howard is sleeping, and he wakes up and is like, I'm gonna do duck quando on you or whatever. And like, I think it's called sorry, I think this style of martial arts uh listeners correct me if I got this wrong. I think he calls it quackfu. Maybe, maybe what did you call it? Duck Kwando. Yeah, I'm thinking of Rex Kwando from my favorite movie, Napoleon Dynamite. Wow, yeah. I think it's called Quack Fu. It's yeah, he knows martial arts, he jumps out of the can, he he defends Beverly, yes, and Beverly honestly seems instantly smitten with this duck. She looks at this duck and is horny. Yeah, I don't know how that is, but she does, she really does. And I will say big props to Leah Thompson for this role because I feel like she acts her ass off with this. Like she really, I mean, she's the reason to watch. Yes, 100%. Yeah, no, she's I was I made a note here too. I was like, Leah Thompson is committed, she's not like doing it tongue in cheek. She really like loves this duck. She's falling in love fully with him at first sight, and you know, it was a night in shining armor for her because he jumped out to save the day. Um, and she realizes quickly that he's got no place to go. So she's just like, Yeah, come back to my place, Ducky. Let's go. She's she calls him Ducky. Yeah, no, she's instantly. I was like, it seems odd because the way she's reacting to him, the only way it makes sense. I mean, I hate this in romance novels where it's just like, oh, people meet and it's like instant lust. Yeah. Right. I'm like, that's not realistic. That's not really what happens, but the only way you can justify it in a narrative, be it book or movie or whatever, is if the other person is like smoking hot. And it kind of works in like rom-coms and stuff like that, which like I feel like this was the this movie focuses a lot on their romance, which is such an odd angle to take. I mean, it focused so much on it in the first half of the movie, and then the second half of the movie completely like in my mind lost the plot, even though they were going for like the resolution of all of this, but it was just, I'm like, okay, where's his romance? Like, I'm I was just witnessing all of this and I'm not getting any anymore. What's happening? There's a definite tone shift, and we'll get to that because I do want to talk. I mean, there's not much to say about the second half. I do feel like the first half is pretty strong, and yeah, you're getting like, okay, you don't need to know why, but he is sucked to earth. He's a duck out of water here. He's like he's like learning about earth people. He met Beverly and they have like an instant, you know, meet cute kind of connection. Um, and she's instantly like very familiar with him. You know, she wants to know about his job. He passes out, she's looking through his wallet. Oh my god, no. So she's going, so yeah, she they get home and she's just trying to understand him a little bit. And he's like, I want to. She's like, You want me to put something in a bowl for you to drink? Which, like, in my mind, I'm like, probably would make more sense for him to like slurp it like that. But um, he's like, No, do you have a beer? So she gives him a beer and they kind of shoot the shit a little bit, and he instantly passes out. Uh, have been there before, you know, and like she goes through his wallet and you're seeing like the credit cards, the money that's all like, you know, duck and funny. And then she goes into the back of she goes into the back of the wallet, and there's a condom, an open condom, not in a wrapper. No one, no one on the set could have managed to make a wrapper for this. No, they need the whole thing out, and it looks used, in my opinion. Like it's not like stretched out, but there's stuff in it. And she's like, oh, like ducky, like just like laughing it off. I'm like, this is disgusting. Ew, like the fact that it's open is wild. I think that was the joke, is that it is an open condom. And I was just like found myself writing notes. I was like, do ducks have a dick? Oh, yes, they do, and they are very scary. Oh, are those the kirk like the corkscrew ones? Oh, yeah. Okay, so they like unfold like a like a like a snake or something. Oh, I didn't want to know that the cats ones have the barbed wires. Oh my god. I guess you know what? I did this to myself because we know that you know a lot about animal biology from podcasts, and of course you would know what a duck's uh of course you would know what a duck's dick looks like. Of course, and yeah, that condom is gonna be all used and mangled from that corkscrew dick. And he just decided to throw it back in his wallet, you know. It is a corkscrew. I Googled it. It is. Oh, okay. Don't send me anything. Don't Google it, anyone, or do. I I guess do. Yeah, if you would if you can see why she was into it. Yeah, uh it's uh it's a lot. It's we're we're really hit in the face with the lewdness between the duck nudity and the condom. And again, oh go ahead. I'm sorry to go back. I know why he ended up in the or no, he ended up on the chase from having left the club because he goes out, like he kicks gets kicked out of the club, goes into an alleyway where this couple's making out, proceeds to lift up the human woman's skirt, and then like it's yelled at. So, like, okay, there's the lewdness there, and then now again with this condom in the wallet. And I'm like, what is happening? Well, it's it's like a continuous scene throughout the movie. There's always just like this element of like, here's the thing Howard's down, and he's down to clown, and everybody's down the duck around. He's down to duck around, and the filmmakers who were making this didn't care that people knew that, even the children who were going to see it. I mean, do you think George Lucas was like spending a lot of his uh return of the Jedi money on pure uncut cocaine and was like, yeah, this is a great idea. George Lucas did a lot of questionable things around this time, which led to his wife asking for a divorce. Right. Um, he fully lost his mind, I do think. And I think that as long as he could like make a cool-looking puppet or some sort of creature in his shop, he was he just liked staying busy. Yeah, he was just down. And and I think that they just did not know how to market this film because it is clearly adult, but just because of the nature of the 80s, you know, first of all, like we were just allowed to like watch anything, do anything, see anything. And so, like, there were movies like this that kind of like slip through the cracks where you would just be like, okay, now I'm watching like I'm watching a film in which we are like pulling out a used condom and a duck is looking up a woman's skirt, and it's fine. And none of us And I'm and I'm seven, and I'm seven, and now me now fine, obviously, great. I I feel like I really, you know, I I'm really enriched, you know. I was really yeah, I wasn't out here watching Bluey the dog or Cocoa Melon or anything like that. I was watching Howard the Duck look up women's skirts. Okay. And you know, who who's got a flourishing career in comedy now? Me, there we go. Me. Um, who's got a podcast now? Who's got a broad task? How you stupid bitch? Um, yeah, I have notes here. Like, why is everything in Duck World the same as it is on Earth? Like with the credit cards and stuff. I'm like, how do they know what any of this is? Yeah, so we get this tender little moment of Leah Thompson being very motherly towards Howard, and then she decides to take him to go see her friend, who was by the then, you know, very, very new actor Tim Robbins, playing this scientist character named this is one of the worst names that's ever been written. Phil Blumbert is Blumbert, and I'm like, how does she know him? I guess he's dating somebody in her band. Oh, yes. But oh yeah, he is. And go ahead, go ahead. I I just want to say briefly, and we'll talk about it later, too. But I thought Howard was pretty bad. Phil is the worst. Uh, Phil sucks. Phil really is the worst male of this movie, and I think maybe that's what we needed to maybe we needed more Phil's to make Howard look even better, but at least Phil was enough to really shed some light on Howard. Yeah, Phil doesn't know, he's not very like socially adept. He invites himself in when he shouldn't. Upon this most recent rewatch, when I was watching, I was like, I remember like as a kid, like thinking Tim Robbins was cute. And um I just remember like as a kid thinking he was hotter than I think he is now. Just goes to show you how tastes change over time. Yeah, desperate times, desperate measures, you know, and the concept of the size of the bubble or the pond that you live in. It's you know, you don't really get to know what other types are out there until you see them. So you're like, yeah, this tall, you know, white guy, sure, he's cute. And then it's like you look back and you're like, what the hell was I thinking? Yeah, you know, Tim Robbins, he's done a lot of great stuff. He's in some of my favorite movies. Shawshank, obviously, the player, um, Hudsucker Proxy, tons of stuff. Like, he's he's gone on to have like a long and storied career, but this movie, he's not great. I'm just gonna say it. He's he you could definitely tell it's his like his first foray. He is, he does serve a purpose because he introduces us to like the other scientists who seem to know about the the beam that was responsible for bringing Howard to the planet. And so they're gonna get to the bottom of that. But Howard's a little pissed off by everything. He's really like, he's had a bad 24 hours, and he proceeds to like tell off uh what's I already forgot his character's name, uh, to tell off Phil, to tell off Beverly. He's like, I don't need you guys, so you guys think you're gonna like figure me out? I'm out of here. So he like immediately leaves and goes to the unemployment agency. And here we get another very lewd scene. Do you want to describe it, please? Oh my god, do I have to? But I will, I will, I will. It's just uh so he goes and he's wearing like this random ass outfit, and the lady, this older woman, is helping him find a job, and she's like, Yeah, I see how you look, you know, you're trying to like get out of this and you know, not or still be on unemployment. Well, guess what? I'm gonna find you a job. And she like turns around and he goes to make this like biting motion towards her butt. Granted, she's like a older, heavy set black woman, sure, whatever, but like she's she's older is like the key point, you know, and she's he goes to bite that butt. I'm like, what are you doing? You're you're what are you saying? You're saying that older women don't deserve to have their their ass ate by a dust. I am not saying that. I'm saying that in this scenario of somebody at the unemployment agency assaulting, almost assaulting a woman while she's working, is very inappropriate. Although I feel like she might have been down the clown a little bit, you know. Like she was just like, she was giving him SAS and maybe he needed that. So she finds him a job. And what job does she find him? Well, he's like the the mop guy at this underground orgy place. Uh, I'm like, does that exist in Ohio? Like, you know, I don't know. I think it's called in the screenplay, or at least in the wiki, they call it like a romance spa. And oh my god, that's hilarious. I was like, uh I guess I want to go to the romance spa, or maybe I don't, yeah, but not with anyone else in it. Yeah, just romance for me. I'm like, that's the thing. Like, people talk about like oh hot tub sex. I'm like, do you know how easy it would be to get a fungal infection? Especially at a public place, like it's not your own personal hot tub, you know. No, it's so easy to get like some goop in in some kind of crevice, and you you don't want that. Uh you don't you don't need that. You you'll get it. So he's like the the bucket, yeah. He's got a bucket and a mop, and he's ready to go hang out at the sex club. And he doesn't find the job to be enjoyable, surprisingly. So he packs his stuff and leaves and like goes and walks to one of those stereotypical um like television shops or like electronic stores that has all the TVs playing the news outside. And so like he's able to view the news, and they're doing a segment on duck hunting and how it's duck hunting season. And I'm like, oh my God. I love that it's on the news. And they're like, let's get everyone, everyone is getting ready for this season, and you know, they raised the limit on the amount of ducks that people can hunt. And it's funny because I've been duck hunting before. So I do have experience with this, and I wish it was Howard who was out there. You w you're like, I wish I could have murdered this duck with a gun. Instead, yeah, exactly. But no. Um, so I just thought it was funny. He thought that that was like such a big deal, which I mean, he's not the same type of duck as other ducks. And I don't know if we get a scene with him and like another like actual duck on Earth. Because we don't, and I think that maybe they didn't know how to write that joke or how to justify it. Well, he was in that like fountain before when he was having the fight with Beverly. Yes. And I feel like that would have been a good opportunity for him to like say something to them and be like, you know, buzz off or whatever, you know, and then just be like, Yeah, like, or or like maybe try to communicate with them. Exactly. And they're just like just swimming around eating bread and stuff. And then he would have been like, ah, you idiots, you fools, you know. Yeah, that would have been funny. See, um, we're out here writing better jokes than I know the screenwriters. So after seeing that on the news, he feels like a sense of desperation. So he seeks out Beverly again. He heads back to the club, he overhears this conversation with her and her manager because their manager is like clearly like ripping her off. Howard overhears that gets into a tussle with more of these like scummy bar guys. There's a lot of like this is at the point of the film where I really want to like skim through a lot of it, to be totally honest. Cause it's just like it's just like set piece after set piece of like action fights, like it just slides into like action land. So he's like action land. I I know we've talked about this. It's just like because it is like you're whether you're reading it or watching it, it's like filler, you know, and like the more I write, I'm like, oh yeah, what do we what do we put when we don't know what to do with the plot? We have people fight or we have people fuck. Like that's it. And for for fights, for fights and fucking to be interesting in a story, it needs to forward the plot in some way. That's the one thing you have to remember. We can't just like stop the movie and then this happens. So I mean, I guess like we get to see that like Howard cares about Beverly some more and he's willing to fight for her. And that's where, like, you know, after all that like resolves, she's just like, Oh, maybe you could be my manager. And that's like where they plant the seed for that. Yeah, he goes backstage too after the show um with the girls and gives them their money, and you get to see the girls, which I think is cool, like meet the band members, right? Yeah, that is cool. Um, he's like laying it thick on the women too, like he's really flirting with all of them, and like, what is happening? And then good old Phil shows up, and Phil is just a mess every single time, and he's like clearly dating one of the girls in the band, and it's so funny because he's like talking about like, oh, we're gonna figure out this Howard mystery, and Howard's just like, I'm tired of this. Stop. Phil's like girlfriend's like trying to like give him a smooch or something, and he goes, No sex now. I'm working. Yeah, like like they're just gonna full on just start like in the middle of the room. I'm so confused. Yeah, the dialogue is definitely where this movie needed the most punching up for sure. Like they had the idea of like what to do with these characters, but like nobody says anything that's really like interesting or endearing. They're just sort of like saying things to each other until like the next thing happens. After this, we do get the extremely infamous, almost-I mean, people describe this on the internet as a sex scene. I would would you not like full on, but it's it was getting close, it was getting close, but we we see them like smooch in silhouette. We do see Leah Thompson's banging hot body rolling around on the bed in underwear. He's like, I'm starting to get more interested in the female human species now. Like, I'm like, oh boy. Yeah, how they're gonna bone on this in this movie. How did this scene as a woman make you feel? It felt like this is what I look like when I date a short guy. Like, because I'm significantly tall. I mean, I'm 5'11, pushing six feet, um, like 5'11 and a half, and so like Howard is maybe what like three in change. Like it's it's very drastic. And you see Miss Beverly, I mean, she's lanky, you know, so she reads very tall as well. Um, but yeah, she's she's slithering around on the bed, and he's like into it until it's actually time for her to like pursue him. Yeah. And he's very like starting to be like a boy, you know, like very young and green in the sense of like, oh no, like she's uh don't touch me. I'm not ready. I'm ready to go to bed. Ha ha. Like, I was just kidding. It was very disturbing to watch, I will say, but she just slayed it in this. I will say, like, that's the thing is that she acted her ass off and she did it again. She was making us feel like she was very interested in this duck. So you were disgusted by the scene. You did not care for it, but you do think that Leah Thompson did a good job here again. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I do know that that effect that they did to make Howard's feathers stand up on end took like many days to figure out, just to get this like visual gag of basically him getting a feather erection. And I remember just sort of like as a kid being like, is this what sex is? Like, this is one of the first movies that I feel like were more adult that I was allowed to watch. I would say pretty adult. And for a small child, a seven-year-old watching this, being like, Okay, so sex is with a duck, and you do kiss him. Sex is with a duck. Sex sex can be with a duck, it can be, and and you know what, as a woman, you can be the aggressor. Yeah, that's that's the thing that I think I liked about the scene is that she was the one who was going for it. Yeah, she was a hundred percent ready to like take that cloaca or whatever into it. I can't believe that's not what that is. That's like wait, what is that? That's when like a bird shits and pisses at the same time, yeah. But so so it like comes out, it comes out of them, right? I guess. But is this gonna be the podcast that gets us banned? Yeah, people are gonna be like, we're not listening anymore. Yeah, you know what? Go fuck yourselves because best believe this ain't the last time you're gonna see VHS sisters. Well, when talking about duck dicks, there's talking about duck. We talk about dicks all the time, but this one is just so absurd and just for lack of a better word, foul. It is, it is foul. Yeah, it's it's interesting because like we get this sex scene kind of tease, but it's immediately broken up by Phil and also um his boss or his colleague, whatever. Um, the character's name is Dr. Jennings, which bothers me so much. It should be Dr. Jennings, like plural. Dr. Jennings is not the the the all these names are just not. I mean, if his last name is Jennings, would you put an apothe like an apostrophe or like an S on that? Yeah, Jennings Jennings is like a name. Jennings is a name that you hear in the world, it is a real name. Jennings feels incomplete. This is just a writer thing. Okay, I mean that's fair. I mean, he could be Jennings. I he is Jennings, but I'm saying every time I hear it, I'm like, just put an S on it, just put an S on it, and it's gonna be even better. Like, because naming things is hard, right? That's like I've got I've got naming children or any characters. Like, I could write out a whole plot thing, I can tell you everything about characters, or like naming a DD character. You're like, what's their name? Like, oh, it's so important. Um, yeah, and uh Dr. Walter Jenning is played by Jeffrey Jones, um, you know, famously from Beetlejuice, and unfortunately, I must say it, uh, very famous child molester. No way. Wait, you didn't know that? Oh my god, didn't know that. Wow. Registered sex offender in California and Florida. Oh, yeah, it sucks. And that's why he wasn't. I don't know if you saw Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. I got it. Okay, so I know he wasn't in it. He was not in it and died. I thought he was dead. He's not dead, he is very much alive. He did some stuff with the 14-year-old boy. It's not great. Um, but anyway, oh my God. He was he was on Epstein Island. Yeah, Jeffrey John. Yes, yeah. So Jeffrey John, it sucks because I I like a lot of the stuff that he was in. Like he was in Ferris Bueller, he's in uh Amadeus, one of my favorite movies of all time. Um, but yeah, he was and is not a great guy. So I just wanted to say that. Boo boo. Um, but yeah, I do I will say, like his whole, and we can kind of like wrap up towards the end of the movie pretty quickly, because at this point, it just becomes like chasing after chasing, after like we get this very long drawn-out transformation. Cause like the whole thing is like Dr. Jenning works with this tractor beam thing, understands it, wants to take Howard back to the lab. They do so, and there's instantly like some problem with it where he gets zapped and slowly begins to turn into this creature from like another dimension, this evil, like dark overlord. Yes, he describes himself as a dark overlord. I do want to say, like, his acting and like this whole like transformation from like regular guy into this dark overlord is pretty good. Yeah, and it's very convincing. It is completely batshit, but it just I just want to say it takes too long. Like, there's a point, like at this point, it's like okay, it loses its comedic effect, you know. Well, the whole movie at this point, I just feel like they had to get the script done, and they're just like, okay, and then we know like there has to be some conflict where you know he's gonna try like Coward's gonna try to get blasted back to his home planet, but there's something stopping him. Oh, it's the evil doctor who like the they sit in this diner for like literally 45 minutes. That's funny because I wrote my note for him is blah blah blah, police now. There's a demon in the principal from Ferris Bueller. It's so true. Yes, he was in that as well. Yeah, it's it yeah, they bring in some cops. I'm like, the the cops were there, now they're gone. I I thought it feels like scenes get cut too. Yeah, but it's like this there's the movie is almost two hours long, and I feel like so much more could have happened in the two hours, including but not limited to uh bestiality. But it it the like you said, they were in the diner scene for so long and like in and around it too, because a lot had happened in it. And to me, what like seemed the most unbelievable as you know the fact that there is this duck on earth here, this alien duck, um, is that there's a 24-hour diner with a Japanese fusion concept in the middle of Ohio. Uh, yeah, I thought it, I mean, I like the idea of Cajun sushi. And I was like, okay. It's like diner. It's like diner and sushi. There's like eggs, which Howard is like, get those away from me. He's like, I guess it's like, get those eggs out of my face. Yeah, get those eggs away from my face. But it's like, I guess to be fair, you'd be being like served like a human fetus, and that would be pretty gross. I wouldn't want that near me. No, yeah, that's like, yeah, it's another opportunity to have a joke. Yeah, it's the whole concept of like the sushi Cajun Diner. It's like, again, it I I picked this movie because this movie is 80s, and there was just like stuff like that. It's very, I know you haven't seen adventures of uh Bakaru Bonsai, like or things like there were just like movies like this. It was just like, oh, there's this like crazy thing happening, like in the middle of nowhere. This is another movie like that, where they're just like, let's have an interesting set piece. Will it have any payoff? No, but it's just there. It's just there. So we can have a scene where Howard gets almost killed by the chef, and like everybody that's another thing, too. Like, they literally take Howard away from the table to murder him. And Leah Thompson, uh Beverly, like the character of Beverly, who seemed really cool, like just has nothing to do now. Like, she doesn't like try to physically screaming and going back and forth. Like, she's just like, uh, uh, uh, yeah. I was like, give her something to do. Like at the end, she's either screaming but not really helping Howard, or like getting cast out, getting tied up, just sort of like a typical like comic heroine or love interest kind of person. Right. Um, yeah, the only reason that Howard gets out is because the demon overlord like comes to his full power, like Dr. Jennings gets all super crazy with his lasers and stuff, blows up the whole diner, and the space rabies. He's yo, he got them space rabies, and then he takes Beverly and then uh Howard reconnects with Phil somehow because he has to be there. It's which is so stupid. I'm like, why would he be there? It's just like because he was in the back of the police car, yeah, and like when they escaped the lab, he was arrested, and they were called on this call to come see them at this diner. It's so stupid. It's just like, okay, this has to happen, so we're just gonna make this happen. And if they don't even try to justify it, um go ahead, go ahead. The the uh server in the place, I did like her, and I thought what she said was really touching or not touching, I'm sorry. I thought what she said was really deep and meaningful, which was like she says, Hostility is like a psychic boomerang. Yeah, they gave her like a lot of cool lines. I also wrote a note where I was like, she looks like that girl um who played Barb on Stranger Things, yeah, totally. Yeah, I was like, I wonder if like when they cast, I forget the actress's name from Stranger Things, but like were they thinking of this movie? Because it's she's like a dead ringer for her. Yeah, she's definitely her cousin. Yeah, there's so many like moments I was just like, oh, this would have been like a cool thing to explore. I'm like, this is like its own movie over here. There's just like a lot of like interesting ideas, but like not enough plot to hold it all together. So in the end, it's just like it becomes this great big chase. It's like we have Dr. Jennings who's turning into a tentacle monster, by the way. And that's another part where I was like, you know, sorry if this is TMI, but like as a seven and or eight-year-old, seeing this little um phallic thing moving towards Beverly. I remember like this tentacle thing. I was just like, That's the duck penis right there. I mean, I didn't know what hentai was yet, but I would in about seven years after that. After that, yeah, I was just like, oh, what's all what's all this going on here? It's very like it gets very anime at the end, and you know, I do like anime, so sure. Um me too. Yeah, it's it's just they everything took so long, everything took so long. They're in this plane, they flying the plane, going to the nuclear plant, uh, because you know, Jenning wants some power. The movie should have been fully 80 minutes. I don't even know if it should have been 90, and it was almost two hours. It could be like a tight 90, and I feel like you could have spent maybe a little bit more time in Duck World in the beginning. You could have put like a full and and like again, if you're gonna go hard for raunchy duck, adult, you know, X-rated, like just make it X-rated and go for it, right? Like, I don't know if you're familiar with the animations of Ralph Bakshi at all. Do you know who that is? Not off the I don't know if I would know his work or not. So he's the one who did the animated Lord of the Rings from the 70s. We we've just talked about him briefly before. Okay, no, but he also he did a lot of very I'll I'll send you some some YouTube's on him because he's an interesting guy. He did a lot of very adult animations back in the 70s, um, very like questionable like portrayals of race, uh, and a lot of things, yeah. Like very, very interesting stuff. And he has this movie called Fritz the Cat, which I also saw when I was too young. It is an adult movie about cats fucking. And it's not like it, and it's one of those sort of like X-rated, like adult animation things that you just like find by accident. This, I feel like if if this movie would have gone that hard, maybe if it wasn't like a big budget Hollywood Lucas film type thing, I think it it would have done really well in like the midnight movie circuit. Oh, yeah. Instead of completely fucking bombing. I mean, it definitely has like a cult following, and people always include it in like crazy things that happen in the 80s, even though you didn't see it on any of your compilation shows. I might have blacked it out mentally from the sheer terror that I felt when looking at him at such a young age. I'm surprised you didn't feel that way. But the 80s were a different time, you didn't have the softness of children's media that I had in the 90s. We had soft media. Definitely on TV, there was a lot of like gentle children's programming. I mean, I grew up watching a lot of Canadian and French and British children's stuff. Yeah. Um, a lot of creepy stuff, too, obviously. But yeah, this was like you said, the George Lucas had some cocaine, and he was just like, we're gonna make this happen. And yeah, no one was in the editing room at the end. We just get this wild duck chase all the way to the power plant. They're just like, let the bee roll roll, just let it roll. And then we get this standoff between Howard and Jenning, which he gets um like the monster knocked out of him, but then the monster who is living in him actually appears as a great big like bug, bug puppet, which I will say Dark Overlord, I think is better looking than the it spider. Ooh, yeah, no, that honestly, good take. Good take. Yeah, I do, yeah. No, if if like that's what it looked like, I would have been a little more creeped out. Yeah, I think it was a pretty good puppet, you know, clearly like some sort of like stop motion animation, but he had like you know, tentacles and grabby things and bitey teeth, and Melanie's doing a little crab walk right now. Um yeah, he you know, he looked pretty good. I think you need, yeah, you need the big bad in the end. It's just like a it's like the end of a DD or a video game. Well, it's funny because they send like there are more of them coming through on the tractor beam, and it's just the same one, like transposed three different times, and they're like moving the same, coming down the tractor beam like it's so funny to me. Yeah, they didn't have enough budget or time at the time to do individual monsters, so they're just like, you know what? Cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste. We're just gonna throw that down the line. It's fine, it's fine. Yeah, it's like by the time Howard decides to like, because he has to destroy the beam, that's the thing. He's just like, Well, this is the tractor beam that will take me back to my home planet, but if I don't destroy it, all these spider monsters will come and destroy Earth. And so he makes the sacrifice and he destroys it with one shot, which is just so anticlimactic. I was just like, But at that point, for me, I was like, please, God, movie, end. Please end now. Yeah, it's it's so funny, like the little things you remember from your childhood, like. I don't remember like chunks of this movie. Like I didn't remember the plain stuff, but I did remember the part where Howard slices a tentacle in the final battle and he laughs and he goes, slice salami. And I remember, I remember as a kid like running around the house, like bothering mom, being like, slice salami, you know, like that's like I don't know if she would remember that, but I'll have I'll have to ask her. I I sure remember. Um, yeah, no, I I was gonna say, did you watch this with mom? No, I didn't. She, I go, I'm watching Howard the Duck, and she goes, eh, like makes like a face. I was like, okay. See, now you know, you know what that you know what that face is all about. But yeah, so anticlimactic ending, but they end up back in the club, and Bev, like, so Howard's clearly doing some good uh music industry management and gets them at a better gig, and people are just living for the cherry bombs. This crowd is so fake hype. I love it. And um, so he has like his own theme song at the end, and it's so cringy and bad. But um, I'm surprised it wasn't Disco Duck, if you remember Disco Duck. Oh, I remember Disco Duck. Yeah, no, all of the songs in the movie that weren't like soundtracky, like the actual songs, were written by Thomas Dolby. Do you know who that is? No, but I know Dolby Sound. Is he related? Ah, that's a great question that I should know the answer to, but uh I'll look it up. I don't know if he's related to Dolby Sound. He is famous for writing the 80s one hit wonder She Blinded Me with Science. Oh. So yeah, I'm sure you've heard that on your 80s compilations shows. Yeah, she blinded me with science. Yeah, he he did like a ton of stuff, and yeah, he wrote all of the songs for this, the pop songs. Good job, guy. The Howard the Duck song, which I sang. I have a very clear memory of jumping on my bed, singing Howard the Duck, and then just going woo, and then jumping off the bed and doing that maybe like a hundred times and having mom come in and like threatening to end her life because she's like, I need you to stop. I need you to stop singing. Maybe that's why she made that face when you said Howard the Duck. Maybe so. Yeah, she's she's been traumatized. This is what happens when you have kids, period, but also kids super young. Yeah, although they say, like, if you do have them super young, you can kind of like enjoy them more because you're still a kid, I guess. Yeah, but you also like well, that can be any time, but like you also have more energy to keep up with them, but at the same time, like your young adult life is ruined essentially. Her young adult life was spent listening, having you be like, do interviews with me, mom, and then apparently screaming Howard the Duck and Slice Salami and jumping off your bed. That's it. I just yeah, no, I I I spent a lot of out outside time today, and there were a lot of parents pushing strollers on the street. And I have to say, every single one of them looked fucking miserable. Yeah, it's Sunday. Like, I don't I you got a whole nother week to deal with the pickups and the drop-offs and the snacks and the bluey, which is a cute show, by the way. My cat loves it. Oh, I should try and show Bluey to my cat. They respond so apparently Bluey has colors that like pets can see because cats and dogs aren't all totally capable of viewing the full spectrum that the human eye sees. So, like when they see bluey, they like really lock onto it because they can visually understand it. And I'm like, that's so cute. Aww. So you didn't find the Howard the Duck song to be a good song. It was, um, I guess it was necessary, but it just felt like I didn't I didn't like it. No, that's okay. You know, it's not a hot take, it's just a take. You can you can not like things, that's fine. I think it's justified. Um, yeah, they're the whole thing where at the end Phil comes out and he's like, here's a little guitar that I just had for you, just so he can start shredding. I'm like, he's not plugged in, right? He's like what he's e he's e-plugged. I guess I was like back in '85. Did they have that? Maybe. But he gets to like shred like Eddie Van Halen and him and Howard and Beverly get to do like a little shred duo together. It's a match made in heaven. The crowd's living for this duck. And that that's another thing, too. I'm sorry, like in the beginning, like when he is presented to Earth, people are responding to him like he is a literal monster. He is a monster alien from a faraway planet. And like by the end, it's fine. They Cleveland knows who he is, okay. But how is the question? Like, that's that's my real screenwriter question. How do they know who he is now? Because of publicity, they had to have had like they well, not they had to have, they should have had a scene where it's like him shaking hands with the mayor and like I don't know, being known in society, and then people are like really responding to him, and then like they get to see him, obviously, at the show that he manages the awesome band, you know, the all girls group, the cherry bombs. And like people are like, Wow, oh my god, Howard, you're such a great guy. Another great idea. Yeah, no, that that could have been 20 seconds of editing that could have been. He would have taken out like all 20 minutes of him flying the plane with Phil going, Howard, Howard, yeah, the whole time, and put that scene in for like no money, right? No money. Like, just I mean, you would have had to mock up some like fake news lines like Duck saves the planet or something. How Howard really, you know, acclimates to Cleveland and Cleveland loves you, Howard. Yeah, and I was gonna say, like, I I just want to pop this in really quick because like this is something I I pitched to Ryan last night after watching the movie. I'm like, instead of the character of Phil, or maybe there is a Phil, but instead of a scientist, he's a reporter who is trying to get the scoop on Howard, like is a like he's around. Okay, maybe he's like a music journalist and he spies Howard and he's trying to like launch his journalism career. So the conflict in the beginning of the movie is like he's trying to get the scoop. Beverly is trying to protect him, right? And then sorry, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, you're adding. No, no, no. I I I want to add on, but please finish because I will I'll add on after. I'll write a note. Okay, so I was gonna say that he gets sort of enmeshed in a love triangle where he is so Phil is a journalist looking for the scoop, falls in love with Beverly, and that adds some conflict between her and Howard. So it's like, so at the very, very end, when all that shit is going down in the power plant or whatever the hell it is, um, Phil, who's a reporter, is hot on the scene with the cameras, being like, we gotta get the story. So it's being broadcast on TVs all over Cleveland. So they get to see it in real time, and then oh, and then everybody knows that Howard is the hero. So when they leave, they leave the power plant at the end all covered with like smoke and shit. Everyone's like, Yay, Howard, and then cut to big gig. Okay. That's how that's excellent screenwriting. I would like to amend the love triangle. Not that I don't find that it's good, but because I would like to know more about the women in the band. I think having Phil as the reporter is excellent. That's staying the same. His girlfriend is the lab tech. Women in STEM. Oh, women in STEM. So we get to know more about the bandmates and like her friends, you know. And one of them works at the lab, and she's like, hey, maybe like you guys should come in here after hours and we can help, you know. But that wasn't a thing in the 80s, okay? They weren't like, oh yeah, girls, you're a scientist. That's cool. They're like, oh, it's a miracle that this lady helped us, uh, this housewife helped us invent something for NASA. Cool, like buried under other things, you know, like it. Um, I would have liked to have seen that too. But I like that that twist. I think we should just re should we rewrite Howard the Duck? I think this film to reproduce it. I mean, I'm pretty sure Marvel has like all the rights to it still. And Marvel sucks. Um, oh, I'm sorry. Um, if we're trying to pitch to Marvel, maybe they don't suck. But we could really change their lives if they just let us write for them. I don't know if Marvel needs our input. Well, you know, they do need our input because all of their movies have been, let's just say this. Have they made money? Sure. Have they been quality films that get awards? Absolutely not. No, I'm just saying, like, get some get some women like us who know how to write in the room. We're gonna write you some convincing love triangles, we're gonna give you friend subplots. I know Melanie's very interested in that. Like, let's Well, like, yeah, I think I think your concept too of having him be the reporter live on the scene. How are we getting so acclimated with this duck alien so quickly? You know, I need things to tie together. I need concept. Yeah, and if you have a character who is like an investigative journalist, you know, I was thinking too like it really allows you to, you have like conflict, right? Like you're trying to keep somebody a secret, but also somebody is like sharing information with you. It's just like I think a character who is a reporter is a great thing to add because they get to say a lot of things too. And it's just gonna take care of a lot of that, like it's gonna take care of a lot of problems for you, is all I'll say. So yeah, uh, long story short, let's rewrite this immediately. I already I feel like I already like the movie better based on our edits. Yeah, no, it's a and and maybe okay, maybe it's not Howard the Duck. We'll come up with like another anthropomorphic monster and no monkeys though. No, if there's a chimp, I'm out of here. I'm out of here. I'm out. Well, you know, we've gotten to that time. Um, what do you rate this movie, Howard the Duck? God, I mean, I'm gonna have to give it like a D, but is it a D minus? I don't know. I give it a D minus. Yeah, D minus all the way. I would I I wanna give it an F, but I'll give it a D minus. I don't think go ahead, go ahead. I'm just saying that I feel like I was uh well let me tell you, I was feeling queasy watching this movie, and I don't know if it was just because of the movie or because, you know, TMI for listeners, I was about to start my period, so like I always feel kind of like a little woozy the day before um because the hormones be raging. And um, so I'm like feeling queasy, looking at this creepy duck, not really feeling it, but watching Leah Thompson like pretend that she's fully in love and wants to have sex with this duck brought it up to a D minus for me. Yeah, I I think acting alone is worth something. It is definitely worth something. I I would give it, I would even elevate it to a solid D just for like fashion stuff and also the um what do they call the cycle sluts from hell or whatever they are? Yeah, the Satan sluts and all Satan. Satan sluts are pretty good. The the all-female band. All female, yeah. Like honestly, a lot of cool girl stuff that they could have spent more time with. Yeah, that's that's what I would say. It's like almost it had like the potential to be a very, very cool cult film. And again, it does have its fans, it's definitely like still watched. I I mostly just wanted to show you. I'm like, you have to see this movie once to know it exists, yeah, and to know not what not to do. For me, I mean the lesson that I learned is that all men are disgusting and it doesn't matter what species they are. I was gonna say human men are so disgusting that even to even to bang a duck is preferable. Sure. And and but much like we've said this in other many other films, because we've featured a lot of movies where women uh get down with non-male, non-human characters, and also where men do as well, like uh Schmendrick and the tree. That's so true. Yeah, there's there's been a lot of interspecies romance, and you know, I'm not I'm not ashamed of what I what I know. No, I like what I like. I like what I like, not everything is for everyone, and but if the plot works, it works, you know? It really doesn't matter what people look like or what the creatures are, you know, like it doesn't matter if the plot is good, if the story is good, there's no issue, you know. Buckle up. If they which one was not good, yeah. If they would have showed, if they would have showed that corkscrew dick, it would have been um Melanie almost spit out liquid, by the way. Uh you know what? That's where we're gonna end today. All right, show that dick. And oh no, where we're ending today is I'm getting you uh a four-dollar Venmo request for this movie that I had to watch because I had to rent it. Well, for surprisingly, this movie isn't free anywhere, which I know is unbelievable. Uh yeah, uh yeah, we'll work it out. We'll we'll work it out. Uh all right, we'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of VHS Sisters. We hope you've had a fun and cozy time. Please consider liking, leaving a review, and following us on your podcast platform of choice. If you'd like to chat with us, please email us at VHS Sisters Podcast at gmail.com. Love you. Bye. Ah, that's it.