If you’ve ever wondered how the sugary, surf-sprayed innocence of the Frankie and Annette era curdled into the nihilistic, neon-soaked cynicism of the 1970s, look no further than George Axelrod’s Lord Love a Duck. This isn’t just a movie. It’s a scorched-earth policy directed at the American Dream, wrapped in a high school blazer and smelling of desperation.

Alan Musgrave (Roddy McDowall) has spent an entire year fulfilling the dreams of Barbara Ann Greene (Tuesday Weld). Anything to keep her from becoming her mother (Lola Albright), an aging waitress whose life has long passed by. Whether that means Barbara Ann getting to join an exclusive sorority, dropping out of school or marrying Bob Bernard (Martin West), Alan makes it happen. Alan is a Svengali. He doesn’t want to date Barbara Ann; he wants to curate her. When she needs thirteen cashmere sweaters to fit in with the in crowd, he gets them. When her mother stands in the way of Barbara’s social ascent, Alan helps her out of this mortal coil. He frames her suicide as an accidental drowning because, in Alan’s world, a dead mother is a tragedy, but a suicide is just bad PR.

Then, Barbara decides she’s going to be a star and T. Harrison Belmont (Martin Gabel) wants her to star in his beach movies. Bob says no, so of course he’s out. Alan tries to kill him so many times that the boy ends up in a wheelchair, only for Alan to finally kill him and most of their graduating class with an excavator. Barbara Ann lives, stars in Bikini Widow and Alan is sent to prison.

But he did it all for love.

With roles for Ruth Gordon, Harvey Korman, singer Lynn Carey, Frankenstein’s Daughter monster Donald Murphy, Sybil‘s mother Martine Bartlett, 1965 Playboy Playmate of the Year Jo Collins, Dave Draper (the body builder who became movie host David the Gladiator on KHJ Channel 9 in Los Angeles and showed peplum films) and Donald Foster (often a neighbor on shows like Hazel), this was directed by George Axelrod. He directed only one other movie, The Secret Life of an American Wife, but is best known for writing The Seven Year Itch and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

McDowell was in his late 30s when he made this, yet he played a teenager. Weld was 22. And who can say what kind of movie they were in? It’s more darkness than farce, a movie where Alan does everything to make Barbara Ann happy and asks nothing in return. It’s like he enjoys being a source of anarchy and chaos, as long as she’s happy. 

I always wondered how we went from beach movies to early 70s New Hollywood. This may be the connection.

Lord Love a Duck is the bridge between the malt shop and the Manson family. It’s a movie where the protagonist is a high-functioning sociopath, and the heroine is a void of pure consumerist greed. McDowall is genuinely unsettling as he plays the role with a frantic, wide-eyed devotion that suggests that, unlike every other male in this movie, Alan doesn’t even want to touch Barbara Ann.

He just wants to watch her consume the world.