Comedy fiction spoof of Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick,' in which three men feeding birds in Hyde Park quest for an elusive white rubber ducky on the Serpentine. Made with fellow students at London University. There are no titles at all in this film, and the characters have no stated names. To avoid confusion, this catalogue entry refers to the principals by the names of their corresponding characters in 'Moby-Dick.' In a rowboat on London's Serpentine, a...

Comedy fiction spoof of Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick,' in which three men feeding birds in Hyde Park quest for an elusive white rubber ducky on the Serpentine. Made with fellow students at London University. There are no titles at all in this film, and the characters have no stated names. To avoid confusion, this catalogue entry refers to the principals by the names of their corresponding characters in 'Moby-Dick.' In a rowboat on London's Serpentine, a bearded man in a bowler hat reads a newspaper as a mallard glides across the water. Flipping through a copy of 'Penthouse,' the man, hereafter Ahab, discovers a blank white picture on a blank white page, caption: 'Duck (Albino).' He examines it with a magnifying glass and begins to feed the ducks. Among the ordinary ducks, a white, blue-eyed rubber ducky appears: Moby Duck. It stoically refuses Ahab's beckoning finger and offer of bread, and Ahab shakes his fist and hurls the bag of bread at it, severely straining his leg in the process. Moby Duck stares coldly at his agony. Later, a man in a suit, hereafter Ishmael, sits on a Hyde Park bench, waves at a strolling Couple, and feeds the pigeons. When he runs out of crumbs, he befriends a birdfeed salesman in a yellow hat, hereafter Queequeg, and they flip a coin and decide to abandon the pigeons and rent a boat to feed the ducks and coots on the lake. After a slapstick argument regarding which boat they should take, the pair is approached by Ahab, sporting a peg leg, a mop and a loaf of bread, and they welcome him aboard. Ahab hangs a bottle from the mop and convinces his new friends to hunt for Moby Duck. Ishmael is dubious, but all three grab hold of Ahab's bread and swear. Queequeg rows them along the Serpentine where they encounter the Couple from the park, who are having an ordinary day out and laugh at the absurd behaviour of the birders brandishing their bread. In spite of the calm water and still trees, the three men in the boat topple about and open an unnecessary umbrella against a violent storm. Shots of the Couple, who have disembarked, searching for something they lost in the grass are inter-cut with the hands of the men in the boat performing similar actions as they pore over a detailed map of the Serpentine. They head for the other end of the lake and catch sight of Moby Duck, who floats away from Ahab as he beckons from the bow. He urges Queequeg to row faster, and water splashes onto Ishmael, who is sitting sullenly in the stern, now clad in a yellow rain poncho and glumly inscribing a journal. As Moby Duck bobs on the water, the boat speeds in the wrong direction and crashes onto the shore. The film is conventionally shot, as if it were a thrilling high seas adventure, and the triviality of the duck hunt is emphasized by both this incongruously dramatic film style and the juxtaposition of the main story with the mundane afternoon activities shared by the Couple in the park.