Bad Movie Club: The Star Wars Holiday Special

1978 television event

Bad Movie Rating: 4/5 (Josh: 4/5; Libby: 3/5; Johnny: 4/5; Fred: 5/5; Dylan: no rating; Mark: "whatever the worst score you can give," but I don't know if that means 1/5 or 5/5)

Rating: n/r

Plot: Han Solo's trying to get Chewbacca to his family in time to celebrate Life Day. George Lucas loses his fucking mind.

I'd seen very tiny bits and pieces of this despite George Lucas's efforts to keep it hidden from me. And I'd read about just how atrocious the thing is--like a giant Jar Jar Binks puppy pile. Nothing really can prepare you for the Star Wars Holiday Special, however. Like, careers-should-have-ended and a franchise-should-have-withered-away kind-of atrocious.

We start with about 10 solid minutes of Wookiee talk, untranslated of course since the makers of this assume we're all like Han Solo and can understand the language. I mean, why wouldn't they assume that? We all watched the first movie. If you can't watch A New Hope and at least pick up enough to speak conversational Wookiee, you're probably not smart enough for the Star Wars Holiday Special. You get a nice glimpse of what domesticated Wookiee life is as Chewy's wife--a WILF if I've ever seen one--putters around the kitchen, his son Lumpy wanders around and occasionally stares directly into our souls with some of the scariest eyes you'll ever see, and his father (or perhaps father-in-law--it's never really clear), the oddly-named Bitchy, does what you'd expect an elderly Wookiee to do, pretty much just sit around scratching himself.

And other than that, nothing of note really happens in the Star Wars Holiday Special. And I'm not even joking. That this flimsy plot was stretched into a little over 90 minutes is possibly one of the most remarkable human achievements this side of Tatooine.

There's a whole lot of oddness here, and if anybody actually sticks around for the duration, it's likely only to see what kind of stupid they're going to throw at you next. Skits and songs go on for far too long, and it's often hard to tell if the sequences are supposed to be funny or even entertaining. It's almost like the producers decided, "Hey, let's just put something that no human being in the galaxy would care to see on the screen for ten minutes to see if people will actually keep watching just because they were promised a Boba Fett cartoon." Honestly, I don't think I could have made it through this thing without the Bad Movie Club. I might have stuck around for that Boba Fett cartoon, but I would have been more than likely committed suicide once I saw how poorly it was animated or heard Luke--with creepy eyes that rival Lumpy's--talk about how friendly Boba Fett was. Without friends to watch this with, I would have dove head-first into the nearest vaginal Sarlacc Pit because being digested for a thousand years would have been better than watching the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Mark Hamill makes an enthusiastically wide-eyed appearance in X-Wing fighter orange with R2-D2 at his side. Carrie Fisher, clearly wacky on some sort of junk, and C-3PO check in. The Imperials and some dude with giant headgear that makes him about as comical as Rick Moranis's Dark Helmet show up for a while and watch a Jefferson Starship video that is just about the most awful thing I've ever seen or heard. Darth Vader is in there somewhere. And of course, there's Bea Arthur because what Star Wars story would be complete without Bea Arthur? Arthur's in what is arguably the most delightful part of the whole special as she plays a bartender in the Mos Eisley cantina. I don't know if she's scum or villainy, but seeing the odd cantina aliens and that groovin' band playing what is apparently the one song they know was a little bit of fun. Or more accurately, it's fun compared to the rest of this shit. Bea Arthur even performs a song with the cantina band. There's also a terrifically weird scene where Art Carney, who seems like he had just enough to drink before shooting his scenes, shows Bitchy some sort of pornographic virtual reality thing with Diahann Carroll, a singer who was apparently chosen for this because she already had a Star Wars first name. What? You don't believe me that it's a "pornographic virtual reality thing" in a family holiday special? Well, here's the dialogue, straight from imdb.com:

Holographic Wow (yeah, seriously): I'm found in your eyes only only eyes only. I am in your mind as you create me. Ohhh yes. I can feel my creation. [giggles] I'm getting your message. Are you getting mine?"
Bitchy: [ORGASMIC SOUNDING] ARRGGHHHUGHH!
Holographic Wow: Oh...oh...we are excited, aren't we?

Life Day itself is as anti-climactic as the rest of this. It should be weird watching a Wookiee family pray or a bunch of Wookiees in maroon robes walking directly into the sun, but we've already seen that terribly unfunny cooking show, a broken gadget gag that lasts for about a half an hour, Bea Arthur serving drinks to characters who were de-armed or killed in A New Hope, some weirdo dipshit acrobat hologram performance that also seemed to last for an eternity, and Han Solo gleefully hugging everybody, so nothing seemed weird at that point. Then, the Star Wars Holiday Special thankfully ends, and you are left to wonder what the thing would have looked like if Jar Jar Binks or the Ewoks had been around.

Lumpy