I've often pondered what is the worst movie of all time. It's easy to point at low budget disasters like CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON and TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, but those movies did what they could with no money and no talent. The fact that they were made at all is something of an achievement.
To really be fair, one has to take into consideration the budget and the talent involved to truly interpret just how bad a movie is. With this criteria in mind, I continually come back to HOWARD THE DUCK. Until I can be convinced otherwise, I have come to the conclusion that this pile of hippopotamus vomit is THE worst movie EVER.
In fact, HOWARD THE DUCK is so godawful, it almost seems intentionally so. Not like ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES, which was a good-natured parody of bad B-movies, but more as a "f*** you" to the audience. I have no idea what producer George Lucas or anyone else involved in this movie could have been so enraged about in order to feel the need to unleash this form of torture on the public, but it must have really hit a nerve.
The movie looks great. It's well-shot and the special effects (especially toward the end) are terrific; from a technical standpoint, there's not a lot to complain about. Even the actors seem to be genuinely trying their best to please, so the blame can't be laid at their feet either. Who, then, can we point at for this abomination? The obvious party is George Lucas himself. He had everything in 1986. Several blockbusters under his belt, his own independent multi-million dollar production company and an entire staff of effects artists at his fingertips, ready to bring anything that popped into his head to life. Maybe his ego got too big too fast, and he thought he could pull off this ill-advised project. Maybe he thought anything with the Lucasfilm logo on it automatically turned to gold. Boy was he ever wrong. He must have known so, as his name doesn't appear ANYWHERE in the on screen credits of the movie. Even "Lucasfilm" is buried inconspicuously in the end credits.
But the real culprits are the writer-producer-director team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. After writing a serviceable-at-best screenplay for INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, their buddy Lucas gave them Carte Blanche to create a mega-epic to end all others. It didn't quite work out that way.
The screenplay is mind-bogglingly awful. Even worse, Huyck and Katz seem to think their dialog and characters are really funny and quirky, which only causes the script to get more and more awful as it lumbers along. Add to that Huyck's clueless direction and Katz's overblown production and you've got a movie for which there are not enough derogatory words.
I can sum up HOWARD THE DUCK using ten such words: STUPID, POINTLESS, OBNOXIOUS, DULL, EXCESSIVE, ANNOYING, INSULTING, INEPT, REPUGNANT and DISASTROUS. And those are just off the top of my head.
Unless you want to feel the overwhelming urge to kick in your TV screen, never, NEVER watch HOWARD THE DUCK.
To really be fair, one has to take into consideration the budget and the talent involved to truly interpret just how bad a movie is. With this criteria in mind, I continually come back to HOWARD THE DUCK. Until I can be convinced otherwise, I have come to the conclusion that this pile of hippopotamus vomit is THE worst movie EVER.
In fact, HOWARD THE DUCK is so godawful, it almost seems intentionally so. Not like ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES, which was a good-natured parody of bad B-movies, but more as a "f*** you" to the audience. I have no idea what producer George Lucas or anyone else involved in this movie could have been so enraged about in order to feel the need to unleash this form of torture on the public, but it must have really hit a nerve.
The movie looks great. It's well-shot and the special effects (especially toward the end) are terrific; from a technical standpoint, there's not a lot to complain about. Even the actors seem to be genuinely trying their best to please, so the blame can't be laid at their feet either. Who, then, can we point at for this abomination? The obvious party is George Lucas himself. He had everything in 1986. Several blockbusters under his belt, his own independent multi-million dollar production company and an entire staff of effects artists at his fingertips, ready to bring anything that popped into his head to life. Maybe his ego got too big too fast, and he thought he could pull off this ill-advised project. Maybe he thought anything with the Lucasfilm logo on it automatically turned to gold. Boy was he ever wrong. He must have known so, as his name doesn't appear ANYWHERE in the on screen credits of the movie. Even "Lucasfilm" is buried inconspicuously in the end credits.
But the real culprits are the writer-producer-director team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. After writing a serviceable-at-best screenplay for INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, their buddy Lucas gave them Carte Blanche to create a mega-epic to end all others. It didn't quite work out that way.
The screenplay is mind-bogglingly awful. Even worse, Huyck and Katz seem to think their dialog and characters are really funny and quirky, which only causes the script to get more and more awful as it lumbers along. Add to that Huyck's clueless direction and Katz's overblown production and you've got a movie for which there are not enough derogatory words.
I can sum up HOWARD THE DUCK using ten such words: STUPID, POINTLESS, OBNOXIOUS, DULL, EXCESSIVE, ANNOYING, INSULTING, INEPT, REPUGNANT and DISASTROUS. And those are just off the top of my head.
Unless you want to feel the overwhelming urge to kick in your TV screen, never, NEVER watch HOWARD THE DUCK.