Customer Reviews

Lord Love a Duck

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

If you haven't seen "Duck", you have no idea what a treat you've missed. This way-ahead-of-its-time, outrageous black comedy has held up amazingly well, despite it being made 35 years ago.

Tuesday Weld (in what is arguably her best performance) plays an "Everygirl" with a somewhat mercenary edge, Roddy McDowell plays her best friend who will do anything to please her-ANYTHING.

The action centers around Consolidated High School in Los Angeles, a school so "progressive" botany is called "Plant Skills"; and where the only way Tuesday Weld can be accepted by the popular girls is by joining something called the "Cashmere Sweater Club"

The movie skewers the youth culture, Southern California, sexuality, teen romance, public education, so effectively and hilariously you would think it was made yesterday. My favorite line: "Honey, in this family, we don't divorce our men, we bury them".

Roddy McDowell performs with comic melancholy opposite a comely Tuesday Weld.Roddy weaves a hillarious romp through the sacred and profane-defrocking insincere preachers,youth culture, and love itself.Armed with Barracuda jacket and Classic T-Bird ,McDowell shines in this well directed film.A toe tapping soundtrack will keep you yelling "Hey,Hey,Hey" for the nexy twenty year

The only way I can imagine this movie got made was that some Hollywood executive who was completely confused and clueless about what would appeal to younger viewers in the sixties agreed to allow this very strange George Axelrod film to be filmed. In a vague way, it seems almost to be an updating of FAUST, with Roddy McDowell as Alan "Mollymauk" Musgrave playing Mephistopheles to Tuesday Weld's Barbara Ann. Through all manner of devious means Mollymauk brings Barbara Ann's every dream come true.

Viewers are either going to love this or hate it. I showed it to my daughter, and she thought it one of the strangest films she had ever seen. And so it is. It is one of those films, like BEING JOHN MALKOVICH or THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T that seems too off-the-wall for anyone to have agree to finance it.

If you are feeling like something different, and completely unlike anything else you have ever seen, you could do worse than give this film a chance.

This 1966 black comedy, directed by the prominent screenwriter George Axelrod, was way ahead of its time. He satirizes American teenage culture, new concepts in modern day education, psychoanalysis and just about anything in society that requires scrutiny. There's a terrific score composed by Neal Hefti. Neal Hefti was in such demand for his unique style of comic scoring during the 60s and then he was gone. This film is like a trip back in time. They were modern times but people still used to take the time and look at something new or different. I think that's what so great about this movie. Roddy McDowall and Tuesday Weld as they were will remain eternal on this film.

First time I saw this I could hardly believe the many, many visible boom mikes throughout the film. Loved the picture regardless, and now I've come to accept those boom mikes as characters as central to LORD LOVE A DUCK's frazzled beauty as Roddy McDowall & Tuesday Weld, its stars. Most knowledgeable film fans hold 70s films in reverence for their embracing of a deeper, richer reality more inspired by novels than by prior Hollywood films. 60s cinema tends to suffer by comparison: it often seems like a clumsy standoff between the death-throes of the old studios and their formulas, and the insisting beating on the door of a new, artistic, more experimental aesthetic: DUCK is one of those, subverting the soundstage-bound Mickey & Judy cliches by emulating that shot-on-indoor-sets look, with the vital modification of peopling this familiar artifical environment with the hyperAmerican grotesques who routinely populate Geo Axelrod's universe. Thus, like a lot of the best 60s movies, DUCK is part-fish, part-fowl and suffused with an atmosphere of strangeness beyond its subject matter - yet, given how Real Life in that decade similarly swayed on unsteady footing in two seperate realities, it works beautifully. And it definitely doesn't hurt that Tuesday Weld is a goddess of apple-cheeked carnality and conspicuous consumption. She may not be Everywoman exactly, but she IS Everywoman who ever dreamed of marrying Elvis, and that's good enough - like the King, you can't help falling in love with her. As has been noted, the 'cashmere sweater' scene is among the most erotic ever caught on film - unnervingly so, given she's playing the scene with, and for, her father. The movie is chockfull of scenes that similarly push black humor and social satire past the threshold of good taste or story logic; you're either going to go with it, or reject it altogether. I recommend the former: like a lot of underrated and outright ignored 60s movies that don't comfortably fit into any standard category, LORD LOVE A DUCK rewards the viewer who's willing to suspend disbelief for an hour-and-a-half with a totally absorbing and unique unreality all its own. It's a buzz you can only get from an American film made between JFK's fall and the rise of Tricky Dick, and it's a hoot besides.

Awfully strange flick. I have seen this a few times, and it's still hard to tell who's side Roddy McDowall's character is on. He is causing mayhem because he really loves Tuesday Weld's character, or is he furthering his own interests? You be the judge. First, you have to suspend belief and accept McDowall playing a teenager. Watch for the obvious screen gaffe where a boom mike can be plainly seen.

Hey-hey-hey! This "crazy" film helped me stay sane. KTLA TV in Los Angeles used to play it on a semi-regular basis in the bleary-eyed hours of the morning. That's when Lord Love a Duck first did its magic and made me see the light. Of course, since then, it's been on VHS and DVD (with a bonus auto-bio on director George Axelrod), so now there's no excuse but to put aside everything and see this movie now.

Just off the top, there's nothing quite as satisfyingly bent as the father & daughter go cashmere sweater shopping sequence. It defies print. For that achievement alone I would give the film 5 stars! Fortunately though, there's lots more to appreciate.

As much as I LOVE "Love a Duck", it does have its flaws. The comic momentum sags a bit in the middle, especially the lead-up and suicide committed by Barbara Anne's mother. That's where the smart and darkly-styled comedy veers into staid drama. And mixed-genres do have way of going afoul (or a-FOWL, in this case). But this was Axelrod's first go as a director and there are way more gains than losses here. His anarchistic approach is, after all, consistent with the theme and persona of lead character Maulymuck, played by McDowall.

When discussing movies, I often recommend that people see this film and they almost never know what I'm talking about. Lord Love a Duck falls undeservedly off the radar. I think this is due to its unique but worthy quirks which seem to broadside people's expectations. How do you place LLAD in term of its' antecedents or influences on other films? --best not to. Its humor is spread subtly and not hung up on a single peg. It's not that easily "branded" -- the most overused buzz-word of the last decade.

The Lord Love a Duck soundtrack by Neil Hefty is a great find too, if you can fish it out of Ebay.