So last week, Shelly and I were over at M & S’s house, where we were treated to the Star Wars Holiday Special, first aired in November 1978 and never shown since. This movie is arguably the worst thing ever to be shown on network television–worse than Big Brother, worse than Barney, worse than the Super Mario Brothers TV show, worse than Starsky & Hutch and Hee-Haw combined.
The show, which was produced by George Lucas, is so awful that Lucas himself said if he had the time and money, he would “track down every copy of the show out there and smash it to bits with a hammer.” The premise: Han is trying to take Chewbacca home to visit his family for the Wookie holiday of “Life Day,” and gets sidetracked along the way dealing with Imperials and (in an animated sequence worse than the classic Hanna-Barbera saturday morning cartons, Boba Fett).
The show is done as a variety act, with long and mnd-destroying scenes of life on the Wookie homeworld (including a fifteen-minute-long conversation between Chewbacca’s wife and his son, in Wookie, with no subtitles), a transvestite Harvey Korman doing a Julia-Childs-esque cooking show about roast Bantha meat, Luke Skywalker with bleached hair and so much makeup he might as well be a transvestite, and, incredibly, Carrie Fisher trying to sing.
Yes, you read that right. Carrie Fisher, right in the beginning of her long slide into drug addiction, makes an appearance, glassy-eyed and so completely blitzed out of her mind that she can barely walk, and sings.
There’s a lot of singing here. Jefferson Airplane sings in a “Wookie Entertainment” scene. Bea Arthur sings in a bar, with footage spliced in from the original cantina in the movie–and they couldn’t afford to rebuild the entire cantina set as it was in the movie, so the design of the cantina keeps changing and parts of the cantina jump around every time the camera angle changes. (Why is she singing? Because the Imperials have closed down the bar. We know this because a bunch of stormtroopers are watching a film of the bar as part of a “moral education lesson.”)Diane Carol appears as a hologram inside some sort of gadget that Chewy’s father owns, which as near as I can tell is the futuristic version of a Playboy centerfold, and she sings.
And Han meets Boba Fett, on a planet which is for some unexplained reason entirely covered in six feet of red pasta sauce.
There’s enough material in the movie for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, stretched out to fill two hours that feel more like twelve. The show just goes on and on and on, and every time you think it can’t get any more dreadful, it does.
We definitely need to find a copy on DVD.
Oh man. Oh, boy howdy. I saw that this past summer. Or, rather, I saw the first fifteen minutes and that was too much.
It’s so brilliant!
Oh man. Oh, boy howdy. I saw that this past summer. Or, rather, I saw the first fifteen minutes and that was too much.
It’s so brilliant!
oh my god.
i need it.
now.
oh my god.
i need it.
now.
Aaagh! I’ve heard about that. I want to see it for myself, but my local video store never seems to have a copy in.
Aaagh! I’ve heard about that. I want to see it for myself, but my local video store never seems to have a copy in.
Reminds me of the Star Wars Christmas “45” (yes, boys and girls… that’s vinyl), which had a fireside-chat-style R2D2/C3PO “song”, and the infamous “What Do You Get A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb)?” on the B-side. Wish I still had that. It’d probably be worth some money. If it comes down to it, I’d sell it to George Lucas. 😀
Reminds me of the Star Wars Christmas “45” (yes, boys and girls… that’s vinyl), which had a fireside-chat-style R2D2/C3PO “song”, and the infamous “What Do You Get A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb)?” on the B-side. Wish I still had that. It’d probably be worth some money. If it comes down to it, I’d sell it to George Lucas. 😀
The source of all darkness in the universe
If you’re going to find it anywhere, it’ll be at Dragon*Con. I’ve never seen it on DVD, but there’s a bootleg set of VHS tapes going around that’s comprised of every Star Wars-related TV bit that aired between 1977 and (I’m guessing) 1980. Purchase it and know true sorrow!!!
It’s all there, my friends. From the soul-crushing Star Wars-themed episode of the Donnie & Marie show in it’s unholy entirety (including Kris Kristoferson playing Han Solo) to Mark Hamil’s shameful appearance on The Muppet Show to the Lovecraftian horror that is the Star Wars Christmas Special of which you speak. And so much more!
I have seen it all. I have seen it all and must now live with the knowledge that my soul will carry the stain of it for all eternity. Lucas’ desire to destroy every last copy is not just a holy quest, but probably mandated by the Defense Department in exchange for not putting him on trial for crimes against humanity.
I do have to question whether you actually watched the whole special, because your description of it paints a rosy picture of TV viewing paradise compared to the grim reality of eternal despair which would reduce Pinhead to uncontrollable sobbing.
Let us never speak of this again, but I close with a movie quote that’s particularly applicable to this topic. From Event Horizon, “Liberate te de infierno!”
Re: The source of all darkness in the universe
Oh, believe me, I did in fact watch the whole special. At Shelly’s insistance.
It began innocently enough; she picked up the disc, which bore no mark of the Beast or other sign of the true horror encoded on it, and said “How bad can it be?” Two hours later, as our souls lay mired deep within the darkest recesses of Hell, we knew. Oh, yes, my pretties, we knew.
The source of all darkness in the universe
If you’re going to find it anywhere, it’ll be at Dragon*Con. I’ve never seen it on DVD, but there’s a bootleg set of VHS tapes going around that’s comprised of every Star Wars-related TV bit that aired between 1977 and (I’m guessing) 1980. Purchase it and know true sorrow!!!
It’s all there, my friends. From the soul-crushing Star Wars-themed episode of the Donnie & Marie show in it’s unholy entirety (including Kris Kristoferson playing Han Solo) to Mark Hamil’s shameful appearance on The Muppet Show to the Lovecraftian horror that is the Star Wars Christmas Special of which you speak. And so much more!
I have seen it all. I have seen it all and must now live with the knowledge that my soul will carry the stain of it for all eternity. Lucas’ desire to destroy every last copy is not just a holy quest, but probably mandated by the Defense Department in exchange for not putting him on trial for crimes against humanity.
I do have to question whether you actually watched the whole special, because your description of it paints a rosy picture of TV viewing paradise compared to the grim reality of eternal despair which would reduce Pinhead to uncontrollable sobbing.
Let us never speak of this again, but I close with a movie quote that’s particularly applicable to this topic. From Event Horizon, “Liberate te de infierno!”
Re: The source of all darkness in the universe
Oh, believe me, I did in fact watch the whole special. At Shelly’s insistance.
It began innocently enough; she picked up the disc, which bore no mark of the Beast or other sign of the true horror encoded on it, and said “How bad can it be?” Two hours later, as our souls lay mired deep within the darkest recesses of Hell, we knew. Oh, yes, my pretties, we knew.