Howard The Duck (1986)

When I discovered the allure of DVDs in the 1990's, I made a short list of films I just had to own in that format.

One was a definitive cut of Blade Runner and the other was Howard The Duck which, to be honest, I thought might never see the light of day.

I'm a massive fan of the late Steve Gerber's original Howard The Duck comic book run - which I discovered as an impressionable youngster through black and white reprints in the back of some humour magazine in the style of Mad - but not so much of the newer stuff (where he looks more like an emaciated human in a duck mask rather than an anthropomorphic duck).

Many a duck appeared in my early games of Dungeons & Dragons (including more than a few "masters of quack-fu"), although normally as non-player characters, and so imagine my excitement as I turned 20 and a film was made about Howard... by the guy who did Star Wars!

I saw it at the cinema, loved it, read the novelization, bought the soundtrack and... and... nothing. It just seemed to vanish, buried under an avalanche of unfair criticism (much fuelled, I am sure, by a backlash against Lucas for his Star Wars success).

I eagerly snatched up the VHS release when it came out, but as the years went on and technologies changed it looked as though Howard The Duck would not be making an appearance in the 21st Century.

Then in February, 2008, I caught sight of a briefly snarky preview in some film magazine and I realised my wait was over.

Viewed from a contemporary perspective, I reckon the film stands the test of time; the only elements that really look dated are the horrendous 1980s street fashions which appear to be wardrobe rejects from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

ILM's special effects - particularly those surrounding Jeffrey Jones' Dr Jenning and his gradual transformation into the Dark Overlord of The Universe are still pretty neat (although the Dark Overlord himself looks like he wouldn't have been out of place on the set of Men In Black... but then again I said that about the monster in Cloverfield!).

The script is genuinely quite chucklesome, Lea Thompson is as yummy as 'love interest' Beverly as I remember her and I still enjoy Chip Zien's voice for Howard himself, although Tim Robbins is more than a bit annoying as nerdy lab assistant Phil.

Where the film has issues is its inability to judge its target audience, the script has the leaps of logic you'd expect from a kids' film, but throws in some distinctly adult themes and ideas (from Howard's part-time job in a bath house/brothel to his cross-species relationship with Beverly; funny in the comics, but slightly uncomfortable in live action!).

There's also the rather preposterous and overlong microlite chase that segues the second act into the third, and just smacks of the kind of silliness that George Lucas seems to love (see the Ewok movies, various 'comedy' moments in the Star Wars Prequels, the mine cart chase in Temple of Doom etc for further evidence of this). 

But the '80s music in Howard The Duck still rocks!

Cloverfield (2008)

My expectations were low going into Cloverfield. Could a monster movie shot entirely from the point-of-view of the people on the ground, on a handheld digital camera, really hold my interest for 85-minutes without giving me motion sickness from all the shaky camera work... and would it really be that good?

Well, for the first three-quarters of the film, it lived up to its hype.

The story kicks off at the leaving party for yuppie Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and unfolds, for about the first 10 or 15 minutes, like a soap opera episode as characters are sketched out and emotional sub-plots revealed amidst the banter and camaraderie.

Then suddenly the monster arrives in Manhattan and things start blowing up, people panic and mayhem ensues.

The combination of Drew Goddard's naturalistic script, Matt Reeves' fine direction and totally convincing performances from the cast of unknowns give Cloverfield an incredible verisimilitude that you really believe this is how ordinary people would behave if a monster attacked New York!

There are no scenes of military commanders spouting exposition or the President reacting to the emergency; we are given no explanations and only fleeting glimpses of the giant, mutant-Godzilla monster itself... we, the audience, only ever know as much as the man holding the camera.

The important thing to remember about Rob and his pals as protagonists is that are nothing special - the monster isn't targeting them specifically and they play no role in the possible downfall of of the creature either - they are just the everyman-on-the-street... who happens to have a camcorder.

Sure, it's a YouTube version of The Blair Witch Project on a big budget, but, here the action is more visceral and less psychological, here you know there's really a big damn monster because its knocked the head off the Statue of Liberty and is stomping its way round the city... dropping off little skittering critters along the way!

Then, with about 20 minutes left, and coming on the heels of incredible sequences in the darkened subway tunnels under the city and in an emergency military hospital, the film goes all Hollywood blockbuster.

The protagonists find themselves scrambling around inside collapsing tower blocks and surviving helicopter crashes; the believability factor is stretched a bit too much and our total immersion in the story wavers.

Also, seeing the monster in daylight, as we do towards the climax, however, briefly, still shows it to be a big CGI creature that wouldn't have looked out of place in Men In Black.

As an experiment in making a different sort of monster movie, Cloverfield is a roaring success, a mix of thrills and chills that just went too far at the end, possibly - and ironically - giving the audience too much of what they were used to and not sticking to its original conceit.