I had a bad feeling about this.
For a very long time, I have been aware of a thing called the Star Wars Holiday Special. In the pre-internet days, it existed in a strange haze of notoriety, referenced in relation to the juggernaut that is Star Wars but never truly accessible to the vast majority of mainstream culture. Sure, 5th generation copies were no doubt passed around among a select few, but with the total and complete refusal of George Lucas and those around him to give it an official release, it wasn’t something that you were going to be zipping down to K-mart to purchase, nor could you pick a copy off the shelves of Blockbuster.
But now, with the internet’s ability to deliver obscurity into everybody’s hands, the Holiday Special is available to all. You can watch it on Youtube right now. Or, in my case, you can pick up a bootleg dvd and finally…finally!…sit down and watch a 40 year old program that was aired once on a brisk November night.
Now, I am three things: I am a Star Wars fan, I am a fan of various Holiday Specials, and I am a fan of bad movies. It is rare that all three of these things can come together in such spectacular fashion. But they did.
I had read much about it over the years. I knew it was bad. But how bad could it be?
Oh friends and neighbors…
The Star Wars Holiday Special‘s running plotline concerns Chewbacca’s attempts to get back to his home planet in time for “Life Day” which is, apparently, the day that Wookiees dress up in their finest red robes and carry glowing balls to the Tree of Life.
Unfortunately, Chewie and Han have run afoul of some imperial trouble, and are delayed, leaving Chewbacca’s wife and son waiting impatiently for his return. It’s like the Walton’s Christmas, except with far more cocaine.
After a brief setup aboard the Millennium Falcon (featuring a palpably embarrassed Harrison Ford) we travel to Chewbacca’s living room…
I will pause and repeat the phrase “we travel to Chewbacca’s living room…”
where we find Chewie’s wife and son and Chewie’s father, who looks like what you would get if Abe Simpson f***ed one of Elton John’s wigs.. Chewie’s father—his name is Itchy, because OF COURSE IT IS—is the ugliest wookiee you will ever lay your eyes on. He’s also the crankiest, having no use for his grandson, who is flying a toy X-wing around the living room and making sounds like two elk mating.
Chewie’s wife, the long-suffering Mala, tries to get her utter shit of a son to do some chores and is met with nothing but scorn and moping in return. If there can be said to be a sense of empathy involved in this show, it’s with Mala. You kind of get the sense that she is one bad day away from chugging a bottle of pills and jumping into a vat of Nair.
The Holiday Special has a two hour running time, and the first half hour is literally spent with Wookiees growling at each other. After a certain point you are praying that an actual human being shows up, if only to take you away from Chewbacca’s son—Lumpy–and his incessant whining.
Lumpy, y’all.
If you’ve never thought to yourself “I want to light that wookiee on fire,” then you have never seen the Star Wars Holiday Special. Lumpy is shag carpeting with ADD. I’d rather watch Jar Jar Binks sing Jingle Bells on repeat for two hours than listen to Lumpy for one more minute.
Being a combination holiday special/variety show/cash grab, They had to find a way to fit in a handful of skits alongside the plot, plus they had to find a way to get the entire cast of Star Wars on screen. This means we get a snippet of Luke–who appears to be wearing more makeup than David Bowie during his glam years—and Leia, who somehow manages to be even more braless in her brief clip than she was in the entirety of Episode 4, along with Artoo and Threepio and, very briefly, Darth Vader himself. Luke and Leia seem to know Mala very well, so at some point after nuking the Death Star Chewie must have held a meet and greet at his treehouse. Nuts for everyone.
Additionally, we get Art Carney (of Honeymooners fame) as a trader/rebel sympathizer/friend of the family, who reassures Mala that Chewie is on his way.
Trying to fit skits into the Star Wars Universe in a believable way is a tall order, so they didn’t even bother. At one point–in the best part of the entire show–Mala tries out a recipe while watching a cooking program featuring Harvey Korman (of the Carol Burnett Show fame) as a four armed Julia Child-esque alien.
Up next, Itchy is hooked up to some kind of virtual reality fantasy machine where Diahann Carroll attempts to give him a Wookie boner while singing a song. I’m not exaggerating; the point of this skit is that Itchy the aged hairball just dialed a visual version of a 1-900 number and a woman is singing him to orgasm.
When some Imperial troops show up to search the house, a Death Squad Commander watches a performance by Jefferson Starship on his little 3-d television.
Really.
Lumpy watches a cartoon that features the first appearance of Boba fett. It’s a pretty decent cartoon with some funky European animation stylings by Nelvana, who would go on to do the Droids and Ewoks cartoon.
At some point we travel to a little Tatooine cantina that features a variety of familiar aliens, where Bea Arthur’s Ackmena first has to tell a depressed gentleman with (I guess) a second mouth on top of his head that she doesn’t want to f**k him, and then has to tell all of the patrons to get out of the bar because the Imperials said so.
So she sings them out.
I don’t drink, but I am not drunk enough for this.
Meanwhile, back in Chewie’s living room, the Imperials are still causing trouble, Chewie is still trying to get home, and CBS executives are pretty much speechless.
Time has now lost all meaning. It feels like this show has been on for seven hours. But it’s almost over. Some other things happen here and there, some involving Lumpy, the Worst Wookiee In the World. I think Art Carney says something about eating a “wookie-ookie?” I don’t know, man.
And then…spoiler alert:
Chewie arrives home—just in time for Life day!! Han tosses a Stormtrooper off of the Wookiee porch, and then tells Chewie’s family how much he loves them. Harrison Ford dies a little inside. He hugs Lumpy. He hugs Mala. He hugs Chewie. He fires his agent. We see the Wookiee’s celebrate Life Day. Carrie Fisher sings (as Leia…I guess. Because Leia was notorious for breaking into song…).
Then Chewie and his family sit down to dinner.
Thirteen hours later, we have reached the end of the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Holy shit.