The Star Wars Holiday Special
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, NR, 97 m, 1978
Directed by Steve Binder. Stars Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, et al.

Though its canonicity remains in dispute (frustratingly so by completists; happily so by George Lucas), the first sequel to Star Wars (which at the time had yet to be assigned a Roman numeral and a subtitle) premiered not on the silver screen, but rather the boob tube, and it gave the world its first look-see at Jabba the Hutt’s number one bounty hunter, Boba Fett. It was The Star Wars Holiday Special, a head-scratching, mind-numbing, seppuku-inducing variety show broadcast only once by ABC in November of 1978 and then dumped unceremoniously by Lucas into a garbage compactor far, far away. (Legend has it that even the resident dianoga was put off by its stench.) Lucas (whose involvement in the project was minimal at best) has stated publicly that he would like to track down every copy of the program and blast it into so much space dust—a childish want, to be sure, but indicative of an artist who loathes his past work and can’t stop looking back on it in anger. After all, he’s fiddled around with the special effects in the original Star Wars trilogy on two occasions (and will most likely do so again), often dissing his former collaborators in the process. (The sight of a leering Hayden Christensen standing next to Yoda and Obi-Wan instead of Sebastian Shaw at the end of the second do up of Return of the Jedi still makes me want to rip the ears off a gundark.) I know it’s like asking Tatooine’s twin suns not to rise, but I implore Lucas to grow a sense of humor about The Star Wars Holiday Special and release it on home video. Yes, it’s clumsier than Jar Jar on Rollerblades in an exogorth’s esophagus, dumber than a Tusken uli-ah with Down syndrome, and ranker than a tauntaun’s entrails, but it’s not without some historical value. At least the fanboys think so; they spend untold hours scouring the Internet for bootlegs of this crazy thing. I secured mine on eBay some time ago (back before the nervous Nellies who now run the site instigated a mess of regulations to ward off copyright infringement), and though the picture quality was abysmal (obviously a copy of a copy of a copy), it was kind of fun (at least for the first few nanoseconds) to revisit something that I hadn’t seen since I was a barefoot boy with cheek of tan. But watching The Star Wars Holiday Special with my older (and ever weakening) eyes only served to harden the spot that had once been soft for it. Honestly, I don’t know what the Ugnaught-sized version of yours truly saw in this steaming pile of dewback dung, but I would’ve been better off allowing it to remain a bleary piece of nostalgia. 

The Star Wars Holiday Special takes place mostly on the leafy planet of Kashyyyk, where its inhabitants, the very tall and very shaggy humanoids known as Wookiees, are gearing up for a big triennial doings called Life Day. (I fear that it’s only a matter of time before our public schools observe this day in lieu of Thanksgiving so the one or two Redskins in attendance won’t get all huffy and, er, red-faced.) But Kashyyyk’s most celebrated Wookiee, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), is off with Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in the Millennium Falcon mixing it up with a squadron of Imperial TIE fighters, which leaves his family to spend the entire show wringing their paws over whether or not he’ll arrive in time to partake of Wookiee-ookies and Hoth chocolate. Perhaps Chewbacca is purposefully dragging his size 20 clodhoppers to get back home; his brood is an ungainly and thoroughly annoying lot, to say the least. There’s his molting missus, Malla (I’ll never forgive the wicked so-and-so who cursed my noggin with tormenting images of ol’ fuzzball doing the nasty); his petulant pappy, Itchy (perhaps switching to Head & Shoulders would improve the old fart’s disposition); and his slow-witted son, Lumpy. (Was this a nickname junior picked up after receiving one too many whacks on the noggin? It would certainly explain why he carries on like such a retard.) Of course, the idea of Chewbacca being a Tree of Life-fearing family man is absurd: Before he and Han got swept up in the Rebellion, they were earners for an amoral Hutt gangster, for cryin’ out loud. (And regardless of what Lucas the revisionist would like you to you believe, Han did not shoot Jabba’s fly-faced hitman, Greedo, in self-defense.) The Star Wars Holiday Special might’ve been less torturous if it had allowed us to hang out with the “walking carpet” and the “stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerfherder” (mooie-mooie, Princess Leia had quite the acerbic tongue in that pretty, little mouth of hers) as they play cat and mouse with Darth Vader’s goon squads, but instead we’re stuck in Chewie’s tree house with a bunch of ass-scratching Rwooks who are incapable of speaking even a lick of English. (They communicate in Shyriiwook, a bestial language concocted by Ben Burtt, the sound designer on all of the Star Wars pictures, including this debacle.) Worse, no subtitles are provided, so the actors have to pantomime their lines (or, in this case, gesticulate wildly), rendering everything they rumble almost superfluous. Look, Chewie’s barking in the original Star Wars trilogy was hardly an irritant; Han’s reactions clued us into what to his shaggy cohort was saying. But listening to these critters chat it up (with nary a Corellian in sight to translate) is only slightly less annoying than what I imagine a misandric bitchfest with Roseanne Barr, Rosie O’Donnell, and Rosie Perez would be. (For the sake of the universe, I move that we toss anybody named Rosie into the Great Pit of Carkoon.) Of all the creatures in the Star Wars universe Lucas and his team of writers could expand upon, why they would go with a bunch of fur-bearing goliaths is beyond my capacity. (Lucas would continue to confound audiences by basing the next two Star Wars television movies on the dad-gummed Ewoks!) 

Though The Star Wars Holiday Special’s production costs were something in the neighborhood of $1 million (a fortune back in 1978), there’s not much on display here that can top even a stingily budgeted sci-fi fantasy like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Shots of Star Destroyers and such appear to have been stolen from a bad print of A New Hope; the panned and scanned footage doesn’t match the rest of the action, which is bluntly framed and garishly lit. And the design of the village that Chewbacca’s clan lives in looks like it was done up for a Saturday morning cartoon—there’s no feeling of depth. (And yet it still managed to be a source of inspiration for the digital artists who worked on Kashyyyk’s sets in Revenge of the Sith.) The whole shebang is lensed about as artfully as a soap opera, what with its dull three-camera set-ups and baffling attachment to ECUs. Not that there’s enough going on here to warrant a lot of camera movement: Itchy whittles, Lumpy plays with his toys, and Malla learns how to make “Bantha Surprise” by tuning into the “HoloNet” channel and watching a cooking program hosted by a bronze-skinned, four-armed version of Julia Child, played by Harvey Korman in drag. (It’s a moderately amusing bit, but someone forgot to come up with a punchline.) Like Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove or Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks!, Korman assumes more than one role here, including Krelman, a regular at Chalmun’s Cantina on Tatooine. Krelman, who takes his liquor through a hole in the top of his head (and has a schnozzle that puts Jamie Farr’s to shame), has the hots for the barmaid, Ackmena, played by the husky-voiced and always hilarious Bea Arthur. In an attempt to clamp down on suspected Rebel activity in the area, the Empire has issued a curfew, forcing Ackmena to close up shop early. This doesn’t exactly please her clientele, but she’s able to avoid a riot by paying for everybody’s last round and doing a number with “Fiery” Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes. There’s some dumb fun to be had here in watching Arthur cut a rug with the likes of Teak Sidbam (an Aqualish who could pass for Ponda Baba’s twin brother) and Bludlow (a Rodian who could pass for Greedo’s twin brother), and after being cooped up with those humorless Wookiees for so long, it’s a welcome distraction. All of our favorite alien alcoholics from A New Hope put in an appearance: Arleil Schous (who brings to mind one of Rob Bottin’s unholy creations from The Howling), Bom Vimdin (an Advozse mercenary with a baby-like visage that suggests—of all people—Don Rickles), and Pons Limbic (a precursor, perhaps, to the latest re-imagining of the Hulk’s big-brained arch-nemesis, the Leader). We’re even treated to a cameo from one of the giant rats featured in The Food of the Gods! But while this piece of cosmic vaudeville may have gone over well on “Laugh-In” (or even “The Carol Burnett Show”), it couldn’t be more out of place in the Star Wars universe. Ditto the unfortunate Art Carney as Saun Dann, the chummy owner of a trading post on Kashyyyk. It doesn’t take long before Carney’s dependence on hammy business gets under your skin (the filmmakers clearly had no sense of their demographic), but he does have the distinction of being the only Star Wars character to wear dime store reading glasses. Saun, who’s sympathetic to the Rebellion, watches out for Chewie’s family and makes sure that they want for nothing—especially on this most sacred of Wookiee holidays. Malla and Lumpy make off with top-of-the-line electronic doodads of one sort or another, while Itchy is given (somewhat discreetly) a “proton pack,” a video clip that’s fed directly into his head through a device that appears to be nothing more than a glorified blow dryer. The clip (which might’ve played better in David Bowie’s 1980 Floor Show) features Diahann Carroll (in a very sparkly, very twinkly getup) floating through the cosmos and belting the hell out a love song that’s virtually indistinguishable from a thousand other love songs. Judging by Grandpa Itchy’s orgasmic reactions, this must be the Wookiee equivalent of porn—a rather unsettling notion, I must say, seeing how Itchy and “Mermeia the Holographic Wow” are of different species. (It makes about as much sense as Jabba crushing on Oola.) The sight of Itchy getting all hot and bothered over Lady Carroll’s performance is enough to turn you off permanently; why director Steve Binder felt the need to keep cutting to the horny fuck’s drooling piehole is anyone’s guess. But most of The Star Wars Holiday Special is spent watching characters watch stuff: Li’l Lumpy (who’s a dead ringer for Adam Rich from “Eight is Enough”) takes time out from irritating his elders to watch a tiny holographic circus; an Imperial officer takes time out from ransacking Malla’s nest for Rebels to watch a tiny holographic band (Jefferson Starship); and so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee. The only segment of any true value is an animated adventure in which our intrepid star warriors—Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo, Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), et al—get caught up in quest for a mysterious talisman that leads them to the watery world of Panna and a chance encounter with a certain rogue clone named Boba Fett. The cartoon’s quirky style is reminiscent of Heavy Metal, where it might’ve been more at home if only Princess Leia had bared her royal breasts. Ah, if only. 

The Star Wars Holiday Special is chock full of howlers, but the biggest humdinger comes when Chewbacca and his family at long last reunite to celebrate Life Day. I swear, Ted Demopoulos could throw a more exciting bash: Upon presenting disco balls (or something) to the heavens, the furry oafs are magically outfitted in red robes and then transported to another dimension (or something) where they join their Wookiee brethren in a popcorn prayer (or something) around the Tree of Life. (Was the mythology of James Cameron’s Avatar based in part on this screwy item?) Chewie’s robot pals, C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2, join in the festivities, as do his human homies, though I’m sure they’d all rather be hanging upside down in the cavern of a hungry wampa. Hamill wears a good pound of makeup to conceal the facial lacerations he received in a car wreck shortly before production, while Ford looks even more lost than he did during the Teddy Bear picnic in Return of the Jedi. But these gents get off easy compared to Fisher, who’s charged with the unenviable task of regaling the Wookiees with a song set to John Williams’ Star Wars theme: 

We celebrate a day of peace,
A day of harmony,
A day of joy we all can share
Together joyously. 

A day that takes us through the darkness,
A day that leads us into might,
A day that makes us want to celebrate the light,
A day that brings the promise that one day we’ll be free
To live,
To laugh,
To dream,
To grow,
To trust,
To love,
To be!  

It’s been alleged that Fisher was coked out of her gourd when she filmed this scene. 

March 17, 2010 

© Copyright 2010 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.