Everything's Fowl

I was lucky(?) to get home last night to catch the 1961 ham-a-thon Everything’s Ducky. This low-budget comedy features Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney as sailors who befriend a talking duck named “Scuttlebutt”. The duck has memorized the formula for a special rocket fuel, and the Navy brass want to extract it from Scuttlebutt’s brain.

Predictably, Hackett and Rooney do their best to save the duck. They hide from their superior officers, lie to them, and fool them; but instead of waterboarding the two tars, their commanders allow them to wander around the base, at one point even recruiting their secretary to “spy” on the pair.

There are funny parts: when Hackett and Rooney try to teach the duck to swim, someone is obviously pulling the duck’s head in the water with a string. But mostly there are unfunny parts. Particularly dull is when the boys try to teach Scuttlebutt to quack.

Richard Deacon (Lumpy’s dad) finally decodes the formula, saving Scuttlebutt’s life, but too late -- the duck has been selected as a test animal for a space mission. Still intent on saving the bird, Hackett and Rooney slip past NASA security (please don’t show the Al-Qaeda how this is done!) and end up in the space capsule with Scuttlebutt. The movie abruptly ends as Rooney, Hackett and Scuttlebutt float around weightless. They apparently survive, as they team up two years later in Mad Mad World (except for Scuttlebutt).