In the summer of 1986, Howard the Duck was anticipated to be the next biggest thing. Commercials and trailers teased the titular character. George Lucas spearheaded it as executive producer.
The husband-wife duo of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz wrote the script with Huyck directing. They had co-wrote American Graffiti with Lucas. What could go wrong?
Lots to say the least.
Huyck and Katz also wrote Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which was heavily criticized for its brutal violence against children and gore that included a man getting his heart ripped out. There is also the racist portrayal toward Hinduism and people of India as they eat snakes, beetles and monkey brains.
Huyck hadn’t had too much luck directing. His previous movie, Best Defense, sat unreleased before Paramount studio executives offered Eddie Murphy what he called “a huge paycheck” to film additional scenes. And the movie was re-edited and still bombed.
So Howard was the last chance. And boy did it dive beak first.
The production skyrocketed to about $37 million more than twice what Top Gun cost. Tim Robbins said filming of his scenes took twice as long. Lea Thompson had to eat crow and go back to working on a John Hughes movie Some Kind of Wonderful she initially turned down. (She did meet and marry her husband, Howard Deutch, and begin a life-long marriage with kids so that’s not bad.)
But it got worse. Executives at Universal/MCA got into a shouting match after seeing a first screening that escalated into a fist fight. Audiences stayed mostly away as the movie is too mature for kids and too cartoonish for teenagers and adults. The sexual implications as well as bestiality probably had some parents dragging their kids out of the theaters.
And that’s good considering that two of the cast members, Ed Gale and Jeffrey Jones, were later connected to child sex crimes. Jones was arrested in the early 2000s on charges of soliciting a 14-year-old boy to pose for sexually explicit photos. Gale was arrested in a 2023 sting on allegations of soliciting sex of a minor on the Internet. He passed two years later before being adjudicated.
Huyck and Katz, sensing the bad press, decided to take a vacation to get away from it all and stayed there. There were credited as writers for the 1994 flop Radioland Murders but Katz passed in 2018. Huyck did some work in television but hasn’t done anything since 2008, which is the same year the Marvel Cinematic Universe began with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk.
Despite a few cameos, Howard remains a property that has never fully transitioned to live-action. It still holds the distinction of being the first feature movie released in theaters. Even the biggest oaks are born of the smallest acorns. Coca-Cola wasn’t a tremendous success its first year in operation selling only 25 bottles. Rodney Dangerfield had failed twice before becoming big in the 1970s. Stephen King threw away the first pages of his first published novel, Carrie, before his wife read them and told him to continue it.
You never know what will happen.
Zane Says 