Product Details

• Actors: Roddy McDowall, Tuesday Weld, Lola Albright, Martin West, Ruth Gordon
• Directors: George Axelrod
• Writers: George Axelrod, Al Hine, Larry H. Johnson
• Producers: George Axelrod
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304237707
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #172,476 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The term "cult movie" might have been invented for this little-known satire. Lord Love a Duck was the directing debut of screenwriter George Axelrod, who wrote The Seven Year Itch and adapted Breakfast at Tiffany's. He displays little feel for directing, and the movie's ideas spray out in a dozen directions (academic absurdity, Drive-In Churches, psychoanalysis), yet the thing is so weird it becomes distinctive. Roddy McDowall and Tuesday Weld are the every-which-way nonconformists, and Weld leaves no doubt she was a movie star who understood exactly how silly movie stars were (maybe that's why she never broke through). Weld's character has a scene modeling cashmere sweaters for her father that's one of the loopiest Freudian pranks ever pulled in a movie. It never jells into something solid, but this film deserves a spot between The Loved One and The Knack on the shelf of 1960s pop satire. --Robert Horton

Product Description

You can't always get what you want unless, of course, you've got Alan "Mollymauk" Musgrave on your side! Featuring outstanding performances by Roddy McDowall, Tuesday Weld and a supporting cast that includes Lola Albright, Ruth Gordon and Harvey Korman, this "hilarious" (Variety) satire on teen excesses is "superbly comic" (Los Angeles Times)! With a special gift for manipulating the outcome of any situation, high-minded high schooler Mollymauk (McDowall) sets out to helpbeautiful new girl on campus Barbara Anne (Weld). Trouble is, Barbara Anne wants everything,and Mollymauk's "help" is making a mess out of everyone's livesincluding hers!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Odd Little Movie, February 9, 2002

By 

hille2000 "hille2000" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lord Love a Duck [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I really don't know what to make of this movie. It seems like an allegory of changing events that were occurring exponentially during that fragile time smack in the middle of the decade of the 1960s. Being photographed black & white it has a feel of some of those high school teenage movies made during the 1950s. However we see many influences from the year it was released in 1966. For instance we see teenage girls clad in bikinis on a beach behind the film's credits. The film also suggests that it may actually be taking place in the near future by some of the set designs found in the high school and in a scene where Roddy McDowall is being psychoanalyzed by a female psychiatrist. Overall the film has a strange feel to it. Even the score by Neal Hefti was not typical of the work he was doing in the 60s. Hefti's score seems to be making some comment on society norms in general, specifically that they shouldn't be taken too seriously. This directly reflects Roddy McDowall's sentiments. And that's where this movie is so odd. Is it a comedy, a parody or is it trying to make some series statement on where we were headed as a country? This movie almost has a "Twilight Zone" feel about it. Tuesday Weld's character seems like she's going to languish in mediocrity. Roddy McDowall seems bent on changing here course for loftier pursuits. McDowall initially seem benevolent. As the movie unfolds McDowall becomes displeased with Tuesday Weld's love interest and he seems bent on undermining here. After a while you begin to wonder if the McDowall character is a figment of the audience's imagination. Or even more challenging is the possibility that the entire story is taking place in the mind of McDowall. For an odd little quirky film it is somewhat disturbing because it is just so unclear what the message of this film is.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This DUCK Was Better The Second Time Around, August 1, 2004

By 

Donato (La Verne, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lord Love a Duck (DVD)

Just to see Tuesday Weld (never better!), Roddy McDowall (rarely better)and Ruth Gordon (always wonderful, no matter what she's in) romp through this comic mess is worth the price of the DVD, and then some. I saw this film when it came out in the 60s and didn't like it much, but bought the DVD hoping I might find more in it than I did as a teenager. Turns out I really enjoyed it the second time around. It makes fun of a lot of different things and has an edge about it in the process. School, school administrators, authority figures, parents, shrinks, teenagers, consumerism, fame, dating, social snobism---you name it and it's a target. There are several scenes that are laugh-out-loud funny: Tuesday Weld going out with her father (she lives with her divorced mother), first to a drive-in fast food joint and then on a sweater-buying shopping spree; Harvey Korman in all his scenes. (By the way, what I really find interesting about 60s films is how much people smoked and drank, even in comedies. Lola Albright, very good as Weld's cocktail-waitress mother, just pours herself a stiff one when things get tough. It's almost jarring how that type of on-screen behavior has changed over the last 40 years.) In any event, this is an inconsistent but highly enjoyable film from the "crazy" 60s.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great dark comedy-not loved enough., September 18, 2000

By 

"skipmccoy" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lord Love a Duck [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This really is one of those cult comedies that doesn't seem to have enough people singing it's praises. Roddy Mcdowall and Tuesday Weld are marvelous here. Almost everything I've read about it declares it ahead of it's time and I agree 100%. Hats off to George Axelrod for being quite funny and inspiring!