Forty years ago, Lea Thompson stepped into one of the strangest movies of her career, and somehow that has become part of what makes Howard the Duck so much fun to talk about today.
The 1986 Marvel movie arrived with some very big expectations. George Lucas was an executive producer, Thompson was coming off Back to the Future and Tim Robbins was part of the cast. There was plenty of reason to believe Howard the Duck could become a major summer hit. That is not exactly how things went.
The movie struggled at the box office and quickly developed a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most famous disappointments. But the story did not end there. Over the next four decades, audiences kept discovering Howard, and the movie slowly became something nobody could have predicted back in 1986. A cult classic.
Lea Thompson and Howard the Duck found a second life
The funny thing about Howard the Duck is that time has been surprisingly kind to it. What once seemed too strange for audiences has become part of the reason people enjoy it now. The movie is colorful, weird, funny and completely committed to its own world. There really is not much else like it.
Lea Thompson is also a huge part of why the movie works. As Beverly Switzler, Thompson brings an energy that keeps the whole thing moving. Beverly is sweet, funny, bubbly and completely willing to accept the madness happening around her. That is no small assignment when your leading man is a talking duck from another planet.
Thompson never acts like she is above the material. She commits to Beverly and treats Howard like an actual character standing beside her. That helps sell a movie that could have fallen apart very quickly if the actors had treated everything as one big joke.
Making Howard the Duck before CGI changed everything
Watching Howard the Duck today also means remembering just how differently movies like this had to be made in 1986. There was no modern CGI character waiting to be added after filming. Howard had to physically exist on the set through costumes, puppetry and practical effects. The actors had to react to what was actually in front of them and make audiences believe there was a real relationship between Beverly and Howard.
That made Thompson’s performance even more important. Tim Robbins, who played Phil Blumburtt, was also working alongside Howard early in what would become a remarkable career of his own. The cast was essentially making a comic book movie at a time when Hollywood had not yet figured out the formula audiences now see all the time.
At a recent Terrificon panel, Lea Thompson looked back at making Howard the Duck, working with Tim Robbins and what it was like performing with Howard before today’s visual effects could create almost anything filmmakers imagined.
Click on the media bar below to hear Lea Thompson talk about making Howard the Duck.
Lea Thompson on how Howard the Duck became a cult classic
Maybe the best part of the Howard the Duck story is what happened after the movie left theaters. It could have disappeared. Instead, home video, television and generations of curious movie fans kept it alive. Some people discovered it because they loved Lea Thompson in Back to the Future. Others found it after becoming Marvel fans and wondering how Howard managed to get his own movie decades before many of Marvel’s biggest superheroes reached the screen.
And somewhere along the way, the movie’s reputation started to change. Nobody needs to pretend Howard the Duck suddenly became a conventional masterpiece. That would almost miss the point. Fans love it because it is strange, ambitious and completely unlike the polished superhero movies that followed.
Forty years later, people are still watching it, talking about it and laughing about just how wild it was that Hollywood actually made it. For a movie once remembered mainly as a box office disappointment, becoming a cult favorite with four decades of staying power is a pretty good comeback.
Howard the Duck is available on DVD, Blu ray, 4K and digital platforms.
