Latest Updates - Jeffrey Jones

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

I feared the worst... and was very, very pleasantly surprised.

For those younger movie fans, you will be familiar with this guy via an end credits scene in one the Avengers movies, where "The Collector" has a Duck in a glass case, smoking a cigar, and mutters something I forget (A little easter egg for all us old enough to remember Howard).

I recall having seen it a couple of times on a pirate VHS back in the day, and not being enitirely unhappy with it, according to memory, although intervening years seem to have played to the cirtics opinion of the time, that it is one of the worst movies ever made.

It isn't. Far from it.

Granted, it is not a masterpiece, by any stretch, but great fun, and worthy of an amused smile thoughout.

Duck gets accidentally transported through space form his duck homeworld, via earthman laser, which also accidently unlocks and transports a demon form nether regions of space, and Howard must become the hero.

Of course, it's absurd, stupid, and surreal, but, I think, knowingly so... I must place the caveat here that my recent watch was of the "uncut" version, which internet reveals has more adult oriented humour added (nothing obscene, just more of style only adults will get), and this context allows you to enjoy it for what it is - the 12 certificate is technically accurate, but i'd say that's stretching it a bit for that age group, maybe a couple of years older might allow them to "get" the self effacing, self depredating absurdist element a bit better.

I was worried about one thing, which I thing had been implanted as a false memory in my mind in the intervening years, I think through popular urban myth: That Lea Thompson's character has sex with Howard...the duck. Phew, thankfully not, but it does for a moment, seem like it's going that way, until it is revealed as a tease, or "prank" by Thompson's character, so you can rest assured on that one, but it does indicate the level of humour this movie operates at.

The animatronics and effects are still top notch, and the whole production is great quality for the time, given this is a Lucasfilm production too.

And the DVD I watched it from, looks cracking, really crisp, clean and spiffy, even on a big telly.

Worth revisiting, and reappraising, if you've not watched it for a while.

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

Well this is a sticky one for physical media / home video...

...I found the original theatrical version on DVD the other week, and it's one of those: "Flip the disc" issues, where only a little over half the movie is on one side, with the remainder on the other side (1hr 38 on side one - 58 mins side two) - what a pain in the crack!

...And it gets worse:

A more recent issue has the whole movie on one side, but from this point on, only the "Director's cut" is available this way, and even - form what I can find - the blu ray etc. are "director's cuts" editions.

The director's cut, in my opinion, kills the dramatic impact of the movie, by disrupting the "flow" of the film, and only serves to make the film drag, spoiling all the, um... cinematic poetry of the experience.

So it seems the only way to get the theatrical version of the movie all in one go (on one side of any media format) is to seek out the original VHS, which is now a goal I've set myself.

(Sometimes, although you'd, on the whole, prefer the studio to butt out, and let the director give us the intended experience, I'm finding, ever more frequently, that actually, the studio / powers that be, are in the right to give the director a light metaphorical slap, when such requests are made, and say: "No! - you'll kill the thing!").