Bacon or Duck?
Week two of 80’s /Bacon month is in the can. We have had to bring in some substitution due to missing movies. Seriously, ‘License to Drive’, ‘White Water Summer’ and ‘The Air Up There’ must not actually exist anymore. For the life of me, I can’t find a copy of them anywhere. Lucky for us, there is no shortage of Bacon or 80’s. So, in short, it wasn’t the night that we had expected, but it will be one that we remember, and try very hard to forget. We submit for your approval, Howard the Duck and Stir of Echoes.
Howard the Duck
Person Responsible: Ally & David
What a mistake. A very bad mistake. It’s a movie that all of us had watched before, but many years ago. The fact that even as kids we thought this movie was terrible should have been a warning. It wasn’t. This is an 80’s movie about a walking, talking duck. It is also a comic book movie. It’s directed by George Lucas, who as we all know, found a hatred for movie goers as soon as he finished the original trilogies for Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
The story? Well, how to put this. There is a duck world. Yes, a world where ducks are the dominant race. They have normal lives and jobs like we do. And karate, and drugs and porn. Ya, our main character is sitting in his living room looking at a ‘Playduck’. And on his wall are pictures of him in his Quack-fu outfit, and another picture has him standing in a field of pot. That’s not the most disappointing thing on his wall though. There is a mock ‘Indiana Jones’ poster with a duck instead of Indy. The title? ‘Breeders of the Lost Storck.’ George Lucas, you should be ashamed of yourself, for a great many things.
Anyway, back to the plot. While Howard is relaxing in the living room, he is suddenly pulled through the walls and into outer space. He flies through space, all the while, a way too serious narrator gives a way too serious voice over. Howard finally lands…in Cleveland. Yep, that’s the best that they could come up with. He wanders around for a bit and ends up befriending a girl he meets in an alley. By meets, I mean uses Quack-fu to save her from two would be rapists. And by girl, I mean a rock singer played by Leah Thompson. She takes him home and they become quick friends due to her being the only person he knows, and due to…..well, we really can’t explain why she befriends a talking duck. Maybe the rescue, maybe because it’s the 80’s, who knows?
So, she takes Howard to see her scientist friend played by Tim Robbins. He plays an astrophysicist, or according to his dialogue, an “astrolophysicist.” Well, this scientist calls another scientist, who calls another scientist. Eventually we find out that it is science’s fault that Howard was brought to Earth. Apparently, there is a giant astrophysics lab in the outskirts of Cleveland. They built a giant laser to use for inter-planetary communication or something. Well, this giant laser actually sucked Howard off of his planet and pulled him all the way to Earth.
Yep, that’s what happened. Unfortunately for Earth, the laser also pulled down a galactic warlord bent on world domination. So, ya, the rest of the movie is the duck, the rock star, and the “astrolophysicist” trying to stop the overlord from bringing his evil space buddies down to Earth. They succeed in stopping him, but destroy the laser in the process. This means that Howard now has no way of ever getting home. What’s a stranded talking duck to do on an alien planet? Become Leah Thompson’s manager and have a concert at the end of the movie. Makes perfect sense. As does the “Howard the Duck” theme song that they are singing at the concert.
Ready for some highlights? I don’t think that you are.
1.There is a shot of a girl duck in a bathtub. All I can say is….duck boobs, complete with nipples.
2.Leah Thompson calls some guys “sleezoids” and “mungholes.”
3. Fifteen minutes into the movie, we get a flashback to something that happened eight minutes into the movie.
4.Howard snores. We just weren’t sure if ducks could do that.
5. Howard threatens that his bite can give you space rabies. And then claims that it has been all over the news.
6. Howard is arrested and charged with being an illegal alien.
7.Howard gets a job at a hot tub parlor. People are everywhere half naked and foolin’ around. Gross.
8. There is a ‘Cajun sushi’ restaurant.
9. Howard calls a white guy a “cracker.’
10. The overlord looks like a giant brown lobster.
11. “In the beginning, there was Howard the Duck.”
12. “No more mister nice duck.”
13. ”I’ve been doing too much toot.”
14. ”The planet is called Earth, I think.”
15. ”It’s a bird, it’s a plane! No, it’s a duck!”
16. “I had a duck. I could’ve been a contender!”
17. “Book him, ducko.”
18. “It’s a duck hunt!”
19. “Hostility is like a psychic boomerang.”
20. “I’m gonna Bar-B-Que your bill, bird!”
21. “He’s my favorite duck.”
22. “Bull Pucky.”
23. “I know my rights! Where’s my baseball cap?!”
24. “Trust you inner bird-ness!”
25. “No duck is an island.”
26. “You little pond hopper.”
Now, this is a terrible idea for a movie, no doubt about it. What blew our minds is that from the outside, it seems like a kid’s movie. Talking duck, PG rating…not at all. Nudity, sexual content, vulgarity, profanity, and most anything else you would ever not want your kid to see. Also, I didn’t mention the awkward and hard to watch inter-species love scene that almost happened. Just gross.
Howard: “We can’t. I’ve got a headache!”
Beverly (Thompson): “And I’ve got the aspirin.”
How did we, as a society, let this happen?
Overall Rating:
2out of 5 Bruce Campbells
Stir of Echoes
Person Responsible: David
Overall, not a terrible movie, however, not a good one either. It’s a horror movie…kind of, we think. It wasn’t really scary. Honestly, I think that if you asked our opinions, we would tell you it was a comedy. The parenting in this movie is absolutely brilliant. Not to mention the top notch acting by Bacon. No, seriously, he is fantastic.
So, there’s this guy, played by Kevin Bacon. And he has a son that sees ghosts, and a wife that dresses inappropriately for her age and her stomach. And this wife has a sister that is a witch and is a professional hypnotizer. So Bacon also has some neighbors who have a party. And at this party, Bacon taunts his wife’s sister about her witch-ness and the absurdity of hypnotism. So, this sister-in-law hypnotizes Bacon. This does not sit well with the Bacon at all. In fact he goes a little crazy pants.
Actually, he goes a lot crazy. He all of the sudden starts seeing a dead girl in his house. Not so much haunting him, just kind of hanging out. He starts freaking out, naturally. Apparently, his witch-in-law “opened his mind.” So now he sees things that he normally wouldn’t. Like brake lights, and exit signs. Ya, every time he sees either of them, all he hears is a loud buzzing sound. No, they never really explain that one. Also, he can see the future. Like when all of the adults are going to the high school football game, he gets a vision. A vision of the babysitter kidnapping their son while they are at the game. Pretty intuitive for parents that left their sleeping son alone when they went to the party. Oh, don’t worry, they left the baby monitor on and took it with them. Seriously.
Anyway, we find out that the ghost is actually the babysitter’s missing sister. So, through some more visions, Bacon is told to dig for the body. And where else to start than his own back yard? Now, I have seen a lot of badly written and badly acted scenes in my life, and this one is right up there. It starts as an argument with his wife while he is digging up the back yard, and ends inside with him pouring them both a glass of orange juice. He chugs both of them. Ya, apparently, orange juice is medicine for crazy people. The fridge is full of it, literally. Nothing else in there.
Anyways, he finally finds the girls body in the basement. He jackhammers the concrete floor, and then accidently stumbles upon her body in a badly bricked over wall. Through one last vision, he sees her death. His landlord and his best friend’s sons accidentally killed her while trying to get their rape on. How did she get walled up in the basement? The two dads helped the sons cover it all up so that they wouldn’t get arrested. And then when Bacon and his wife discover the truth, the landlord tries to kill them both. Well, in the end, the best friend stops the landlord from killing them and everything turns out fine. Well, except for the fact that the kid still sees and hears ghosts.
Now on to the highlights.
- There’s Bacon vision.
- Everyone is constantly talking about what a great neighborhood it is to live in. How everyone looks out for each other. Ya, attempted rape, murder, kidnapping, fights, hiding bodies, attempted murder. Sounds like paradise.
- The little kid is at one point watching the original ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ It hurts that Night was involved at all in this movie.
- Bacon almost has mutton chops.
- “Why don’t you just lick them when they walk by?”
- “If you don’t do her thing, she may never leave.”
- “It’s just a body, it doesn’t prove anything!”
Now, there are a few other things that troubled us in this movie. Like the hypnotism scene. I don’t even really know what they were going for in this one. He is in a theatre, it is all black and dark and there is no one else in there with him. There are words on the screen, but they are fuzzy and he has to go closer to see them. How do they have him go closer? They have him float towards the screen in an armchair. Kevin Bacon floating in a movie theater in an armchair might be the most ridiculous thing that I have ever seen. Now, later on in the movie, the wife meets this black guy that apparently is going through the same thing that Bacon is going through. She goes to meet him and he apparently fills her in on what is happening to her husband and what it will take to stop it. There is a whole room of people that are apparently going through the same thing as Bacon. After the initial scene, that part of the story is never mentioned again.
Now, to the parenting. The mom takes the son for a nice leisurely stroll in a cemetery. Also, Bacon turns off what appears to be a penis shaped lamp in the son’s room. They constantly leave the kid alone, and they take the baby monitor with them instead of a babysitter. They fight and cuss at each other all of the time and the little kid is always around to watch. Not to mention the fact that Bacon includes the little guy in his crazy dig up the dead girl scheme. And of course the two parents that try to help their sons cover up murder.
Also, it must be mentioned. It was the night of the awkward sex scene. There was a Bacon love scene. He and his wife, grunting along. However, he started having his crazy visions in the middle of it and had to stop. And after stopping, he utters these words that I know every wife wants to hear after a failed romantic romp: “Wait, wait. Stop it! It’s too weird.”
What else can I say about this movie after recalling that scene? Not much.
Overall Rating:
3 out of 5 Bruce Campbells
Our quotes of the night:
Steve: “Were those duck boobs?”
Ally: “Yes, yes they were.”
Steve: “We should buy a duck and see if it snores.”
Steve: “I’ve never really thought of science and Cleveland as being joined together.”
David: “Wow, that’s a big budget. How did this happen?”
David: “Burnt….raw fish?”
Steve: “I want to meet a duck that’s an island.”
David: “Would that be a crap lobster?”
Steve: “Ye, that would be a crap lobster.”
David: “Is she grabbin’ Kevin’s bacon?”
Ally: “She’s achin for some bacon.”
Ally: “A little junk in your portside?”
Steve: “I wonder if Bacon likes bacon?”
So, week two…done. Week three quickly approaching. What does the rest of this month have in store for us? I know. Ally and Steve have an idea. And none of us are very happy about it. This weekend is ‘Footloose’ and ‘Dream a Little Dream’. It’s not going to be very pretty. Stick around and see what happens.
Thanks for listening chiiiiiildren!!!!!
