There are some things in the world that you wish you could unsee. Watching Louie Anderson perform a striptease is one of those things. So is seeing an anaconda swallow a dozen kittens in a row. But none of these things can measure up to the horror of being unable to unwatch the Star Wars Holiday Special. For those who are fortunate enough to have not heard of this atrocity, allow me to fill you in. In 1978, in an attempt to cash in on the Star Wars craze, CBS produced a 95 minute TV special set in the Star Wars universe. It was in no way affiliated with George Lucas (other than the characters) and was written, among others, by Bruce Vilanch of Hollywood Squares fame (fame being used in the loosest sense). In fact, Lucas has been quoted as saying that he would like to track down every copy and smash them with a sledgehammer.
Nearly half of the show is just their daily life, which is surprisingly similar to the average 1978 American family. They live in a treehouse and have modern appliances. They speak to each other in Wookiee, but with no subtitles we're left in the dark. It's kind of like watching a sitcom with the volume replaced by a variety barnyard animals grunting and shouting at each other. Art Carney stars as a shifty salesman that befriends the Wookiees and brings them Life Day gifts. In an extremely disturbing scene, we find out that the elderly Itchy has a thing for human women as Art gives him a virtual reality playmate/singer. Here's how he describes it:
"Itchy, I know what you want. I thought you might like this. It's kind of hard to explain....it's...wow. You know what I mean?"
"I am as you create me. OH YES.....giggle....I can feel your message, are you getting mine? OH...OH.....we ARE excited, aren't we? Well, just relax. We can have a good time." And this was made to be a children's special? Yikes.
Anyway, in what I can only assume was a contractual obligation or the result of a week-long drinking binge, most of the movie's cast reprised their roles. Mark Hammill, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker all have small, 2 minutes scenes in which their character makes an obligatory appearance. They even recycled a deleted scene from A New Hope with Darth Vader talking to an officer about finding the Rebels.
Half-way through the show, we suddenly switch to a psychadelic performance by Jefferson Starship. I think they just used footage from one of their concerts. What they're doing in a galaxy far, far away is anyone's guess, but when you're a starship I guess that's not a problem.
The show closes on Princess Leia singing a lyricised version of the Star Wars theme. There's a reason why lyrics were never written for that song, and it's because they would suck. Obviously this wasn't a problem for the writers, because worrying over one sucky thing about this show is, in the words of Ed the Sock, "like sifting through a sewer in search of a particular log of feces".
In conclusion, if you ever happen to attend a Sci-Fi Con (which is about the only place to acquire a copy that hasn't been accquainted with George's sledgehammer), don't purchase this movie. Avoid it for the sake of your children, who would otherwise be born horribly mutated as a result of the lethal amount of suck that you will absorb by watching it. And if you ever happen to run into Bruce Vilanch on the street, feel free to punch him for me.
The plot is as follows (and I kid you not): Chewbacca and Han Solo are attempting to get to the Wookiee home-world of Kashyyyk, which is for some reason pronounced as Kazooks. The reason why they must get there? To celebrate Life Day, of course! The Wookiees' annual holiday of Life Day seems suspiciously like a non-religion-specific Christmas, complete with gift exchange. Along the way they run into Imperial troubles, and have some zany adventures. But they're really minor characters. The show mostly centres on Chewbacca's family: his wife Mala, his son Lumpy and his father Itchy (may I reiterate that I kid you not).
Donning the headgear, Itchy sees a scantily clad human woman, who talks dirty to him for a while before moving into a song and dance routine. Here's some excerpts of what she says:
Unfortunately, they were clearly on the Death Star which had of course been blown up the year before. But then, continuity wasn't the writers' main concern as we also see Greedo, back in the Cantina, dancing to a song sung by Bea Arthur of The Golden Girls fame (see photo). When the Falcon gets attacked by TIE fighters, they just reuse the footage of Han and Luke shooting TIEs after escaping from the Death Star. But wait...Han and Chewie are in the cockpit, so who's firing the guns?
And after that, we abruptly go from live action to animation as everyone becomes a cartoon. Suddenly there's some sub-plot about a pendant, or something, and Chewie goes crazy. Luke is seen flying a Y-Wing that for some reason has a cockpit capable of seating 4 people, and features an Eject function that allows the cockpit to seperate from the engines and yet still move around. We are also introduced to Bobba Fett, perhaps the only redeeming part of this eye-raping.
