Dirty Duck (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses of the title "Dirty Duck", see Dirty Duck.
| Dirty Duck | |
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| Directed by | Charles Swenson |
| Produced by | Jerry D. Good Roger Corman (uncredited) |
| Written by | Charles Swenson, with additional story material by Howard Kaylan, Mark Volman, and Robert Ridgely |
| Distributed by | New World Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 1974 |
| Running time | 75 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Dirty Duck is an X-rated animated film directed by Charles Swenson, and starring Flo & Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan).
Following the release and success of Fritz the Cat, a film based on a character created by Robert Crumb that was also the first animated movie to receive an X rating in the United States, several animated films geared towards adults rather than children began enjoying varied success. Producer Roger Corman wanted to cash in on the popularity of these films. Luck came when New World Pictures bought a screenplay written by Charles Swenson (originally titled "Cheap"), which concerned a strait-laced blue collar worker named Willard who finds (or is found by) a duck who decides to take Willard on an adventure to try to involve him in sexual intercourse.
Along with former Mothers of Invention band members Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, and actor Robert Ridgely (who all provided additional story material), the script was made under the title The Down and Dirty Duck, and released in 1974, following the box office demise of the Fritz the Cat sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat. New World released The Down and Dirty Duck with the title on the poster shortened to Dirty Duck. The title on the print itself was never changed. Dirty Duck, as the film is now known went unnoticed when it was originally released, but later became a cult classic among Flo & Eddie fans when it was released on home video and DVD.
People have often criticized the comedy film as being a rip-off of Fritz the Cat (despite the fact that the two films' stories bear little or no resemblance to each other), or for its lowbrow humor or the low quality of the animation (all of the animation was drawn with pens and then transferred onto animation cels, and some of the backgrounds were done the same way)--some of the backgrounds even have photographs pasted onto them.
Crude and often pornographic, among the other visuals presented in the film are graphic depictions of sexual acts. However, since a majority of the film was drawn so poorly, it made for weak masturbation material, thus its failure at pornography theaters.
As the title song states, Dirty Duck is a "Cheap little movie."
[edit] Trivia
- Some of the songs written for the movie, such as "Cheap," "Livin' in the Jungle," and "Kama Sutra Time" later became reoccurring titles in Flo & Eddie's concert act. Live versions of all three songs were released on their 1975 LP Illegal, Immoral and Fattening.
- The film's poster title, Dirty Duck, was also the title of a similarly raunchy comic strip created in 1971 by Bobby London that appeared in National Lampoon magazine (and presently appears in Playboy). Creator Bobby London claims that this film is a knockoff of his comic strip, and that "[Robert] Crumb's lawyers, by the way, refused to help me stop these guys." [1] Aside from the title, this film is not related to the 1971 comic strip of the same name.
- In one animation sequence, caricatures of John Lennon and Yoko Ono pop out of a toilet. In another animation sequence, Frank Zappa's face rises above our film's main characters as if it were the sun. Flo and Eddie have performed with all three artists. Another Zappa reference appears later in the film: the Duck shouts out: "I saw 200 Motels! I know who I am!" The animation for this film was done by the same company and director that did the "Dental Hygiene Dilemma" cartoon sequence from that movie.
