TV FILM
REVIEW – THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL.
The original Star Wars trilogy is rightly regarded as one of the cinema’s greatest achievements, and many fans were understandably disappointed that the prequels beginning with The Phantom Menace, proved to be pale imitations of the real thing.
However, episodes One to Three were not the lowest and most shamefully embarrassing events in the history of Lucas Films. The studio that gave us The Empire Strikes Back also gave us lame spin off adventure, Ewok Caravan Of Courage, and the non-Star Wars turkey, Howard The Duck. Their deepest descent into barrel scraping however remains the legendary 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special.
If you haven’t heard of this or seen it, I am not surprised, as it was only shown once on US TV, as a Thanksgiving Day special. It was deemed immediately so awful that the main studio moghul and official Star Wars director, George Lucas not only refused to allow further screenings, but also allegedly tried to have all existing copies of the film hunted down for destruction. It did get a few one off European screenings, before vanishing without trace, or so it was hoped for many years. Fortunately, for bad TV and Movie affectionadoes, copies remain in existence, and get circulated on the video and DVD black market.
The TV film was not directed by Lucas, but, withhis permission, the stars and many of the production crew were loaned out to show director, Steve Binder, who had successfully engineered Elvis Presley’s Stage show comeback in 1968. Lucas didn’t bother checking what Binder was preparing to do.
The chief embarrassment is that many of the Star Wars cast appear in character in the film, notably Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and especially Peter Mayhew. James Earl Jones provides the voice of Darth Vader, though Dave Prowse doesn’t appear in the film, other than in stock footage. Alec Guiness does not appear other than in stock footage clips from Star Wars Episode Four – A New Hope. Some scenes in the Holiday torment are filmed on the undismantled locations from the film.
The paper thin plot deals with Han Solo (Ford) and Chewbacca (Mayhew) trying to get to the Wookie home-world so Chewbacca can celebrate Wookie Life Day (a thinly disguised Thanksgiving Day) with his family of Wookies. Much of the action, or rather, the lack of it, focuses on the family, waiting in hope for Chewbacca to get home safely, past the storm-troopers looking for the rebels who blew up the Death Star. As the family wait, friends cheer them up by sending secret messages and film footage of various cabaret events relating to Star Wars, and this dire cabaret and footage makes up the bulk of the mostly tedious film.
In one entertainment, Bea Arthur, (of the Golden Girls comedy show) is seen singing a torch song in the Tatoaine Cantina Bar where Luke and Han first met in A New Hope. She sets her dire song to the tune played by the Cantina band in that memorable sequence. US comedian, Art Carney also appears, as an ally to the Rebellion forces. Jefferson Starship produced a pop video for the show too. Everyone involved ought to have known better.
This could all be dismissed as non-canonical except for one thing – the film features a short cartoon, which introduces the Bounty Hunter, Bobba Fett, a highly memorable figure in the live action personifications to come later. He was destined to reappear in The Empire strikes Back and The Return Of The Jedi. In the cartoon, which has a queasy wobble-drawing look similar to the old Rhubarb & Custard cartoons, Fett almost captures Luke Skywalker. Some fans say the cartoon isn’t that bad, but I thought it was pretty lame. Virtually no one has a good word to say about the rest of the show.
After the entertainments fail to drive the Wookies (one of them being called Lumpy) to suicide, they walk into a star (yes, walk) and find the cast there, including robots R2-D2 and C3PO, Luke, Han, Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). If you thought things could not get worse, Fisher ends the film by singing the Wookie Life Day National anthem. Profane cries of anguish and disbelief tend to come from viewers still awake by this stage in the film. Fisher simply cannot sing.
The Wookie homeworld Kashyyyk is used in The Revenge Of The Sith, but appears as a much more war-like aggressive place, rather than the set of gentle, cute monkey character tree houses depicted in the Holiday special. This a film guaranteed to drive anyone over to the Dark Side.
LINKS
The Star Wars Holiday Special on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Wars_Holiday_Special
The Star Wars Holiday Special on The International Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193524/
Arthur Chappell
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