Lord Love a Duck

The term "cult movie" might have been invented for this little-known satire. Lord Love a Duck was the directing debut of screenwriter George Axelrod, who wrote The Seven Year Itch and adapted Breakfast at Tiffany's. He displays little feel for directing, and the movie's ideas spray out in a dozen directions (academic absurdity, Drive-In Churches, psychoanalysis), yet the thing is so weird it becomes distinctive. Roddy McDowall and Tuesday Weld are the every-which-way nonconformists, and Weld leaves no doubt she was a movie star who understood exactly how silly movie stars were (maybe that's why she never broke through). Weld's character has a scene modeling cashmere sweaters for her father that's one of the loopiest Freudian pranks ever pulled in a movie. It never jells into something solid, but this film deserves a spot between The Loved One and The Knack on the shelf of 1960s pop satire. --Robert Horton