Weekend Watches

[Susan]

Thanks to my local library i have subjected myself to the horror of what was "Howard the Duck". Somehow i thought it would be a nostalgic trip tot he 80's, but it was a horrifying example of a really bad Bad movie. So much so that I had to turn it off halfway through. Tim Robbins went on to Shawshank..amazing. The duck planet went overboard on making pun, but the only thing I couldn't get out of my brain was why these duckettes had BREASTS?? Talk about evolution making leaps and bounds.

The other was "THEY LIVE". I liked this movie and had never seen it. I hated that it moved so damn slow however, some scenes were painfully slow making the end result unsatisfying (and i am a person of patience). Even the fight scene..just put the glasses on already! It made no sense that the guy gave this man his weeks pay, showing he cared for him, and yet wanted to kick his ever lovin ass. Must be a guy thing.  The effects were good when viewing the 'unseen world', perhaps not as scary as it could have been when viewing the aliens. This is a movie I think i'd actually like to see remade if it were well done. And i'm not a fan of remakes. It just had its porky's moments, even with the ending showing a naked woman on top of an alien and then ending credits! Yep..guess they were lacking good ideas on how to wrap the film up. I'd like to see a remake get to that part of discovery halfway through and then continue with the 'what now?'.

[Fearless Freep]

It made no sense that the guy gave this man his weeks pay, showing he cared for him, and yet wanted to kick his ever lovin ass. Must be a guy thing.

LOL!

[trekgeezer]

I really hated what they did to poor Howard, the Marvel comic was quite good and I liked  Howard's tag line 'Trapped in a  world he never made!" (sorta how I felt sometimes in my youth).  He looked like a regular duck except for the hands and he wore a coat, tie, and hat , but like cousin Donald no pants. The girl friend, like other lasses in the comics, was far more vuluptuous that Lea Thompson.  It was actually good goofy social satire.

I still have a couple of those comics stored around here somewhere.  I remember the titles  "From the oven it rises!" , Howard battles the evil , giant  gingerbread man and "When bites the beaver!" about a guy in beaver suit with a wood fetish or somthing like that.  It was the 70's and such things were best enjoyed through the haze of chemicals (it's amazing how many things make sense under those conditions).

They Live! was a rather preachy and plodding comment on the Reagan years.  That really was a long and protracted fight between Rowdy Roddy and Keith David.  After  The Thing, Starman, and Big Trouble in Little China  John Carpenter has really not done a good movie.

[JohnL]

>Somehow i thought it would be a nostalgic trip tot he 80's, but it was a horrifying
>example of a really bad Bad movie. So much so that I had to turn it off halfway
>through.

Then you didn't watch the diner scene again? That was the best part.

"She took my eggs!"

"They're laughing at you...and they've got Mr. Code Key."

"He musta had the chilli..."

"Release the small water fowl! Bring me the code key Howard!"

[Mofo Rising]

The fight scene in THEY LIVE is one of my favorites.  It's long, it makes no sense and by the end of it they're pretty much just throwing pro-wrestling moves.  It's brilliant, I tell you.

"Put on the glasses!"

[Yaddo 42]

I have to wonder what kind of library would have "Howard the Duck"? I still loathe that movie, couldn't get that awful theme song out of my head for a week. Saw it at the theater with my family, I remember feeling annoyed for the entire length of the film. As a comic reader at the time I originally hoped the movie would be good and do well, so that more movies (hopefully good ones) based on Marvel characters would get made. Boy was I wrong on all fronts. Turned out to be a long wait for decent Marvel based movies. Since George Lucas produced it, this could have served as a warning of things to come.

I like "They Live" as an action movie and mildly clever political satire of Reagan era yuppies. Not his best film, but Carpenter has done much worse since then. Isn't Carpenter a libertarian? So the sensibility makes sense. The woman with the alien at the end was a good gag to me. Plus it fit with the ending where now everyone would know just how entrenched the aliens were and how totally they controlled everything. They were literally EVERYWHERE. Not subtle, but it was more clever than the digs at fundamentalism and PC health mavens in "Escape from LA".

It used to air at least once a month on our local independent (later Fox affiliate) station, usually late at night. The local station was supposedly a bad place to work, and their channel number was 54 (just like the one in the movie). So I always wondered if this was some kind of inside joke by the staff.

[Susan]

Watching howard in intimate suggestive scenes with a human is just foul. Or is that fowl..

[Scott]

HOWARD THE DUCK is the only fim I actually walked out of the theater on. Just detested the whole Howard the Duck thing.

THEY LIVE is a film that I didn't see till about 1 year ago and I enjoyed it. Even though I've been a long time wrestling fan especially during the 80's I just couldn't stand movies with Pro Wrestlers in them, but THEY LIVE proved me wrong.

[Susan]

Scott wrote:Even though I've been a long time wrestling fan
> especially during the 80's I just couldn't stand movies with
> Pro Wrestlers in them, but THEY LIVE proved me wrong.

Hey i liked "The Princess bride". Andre the giant was the best actor of them all

[Dave Munger]

I don't know if Carpenter is a libertarian, but the sensibility of "They Live" is more like something I would characterise as "Dead Kennedy's Zappatista". That should be a font.