What a curious movie! Pretty good, if you understand what it is about.

TxMike

"Lord Love a Duck" is a curious title, a reference to the nickname "Mollymauk" that Roddy McDowall's character took, because it is actually an Albatross, not a duck. McDowall was 40 when this film was made, and in his 55th motion picture. Yet, he plays a brainy, pencil-neck geek who is valedictorian of his high school graduating class. Tuesday Weld, better known for her role in the old Dobie Gillis TV show around 1960, is the cute, young aspiring starlet who is a bit spacy. And Harvey Korman plays the school principal, many years before he became a comedic star on the old Carol Burnett TV variety show.

"Lord Love a Duck" is an intelligent comedy which pokes fun at lots of things - the "teen beach" movies, high school guidance counselors, Hollywood writers and producers, those sorts of things. Tuesday Weld was actually in one of those films, in 1960, "Sex Kittens Go To College." One of the funniest running gags is Mollymauk's attempt to "bury" Weld's new husband - trying to poison him two different times, fixing his car so the door falls off, the seat belt breaks, the steering wheel comes off, the brakes fail, until he crashes through a wall. But he survives, and Mollymauk goes insane at the high school commencement ceremony outside, trying to do him in with a front-end loader.

The film was done in black and white.  The boom mike was purposely included in the frame several times.  All this to add to the absurdity of the spoof. A fine film from that era, when I was in fact graduating too, but from college.  "Reviewers" who trash this film simply don't understand what it is about.

score /10

TxMike 26 November 2001

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0093990/