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The Screengrab

Video of the Day: The Five-Minute "Star Wars" Holiday Special

Posted by Leonard Pierce
This week is the 30th anniversary of the Star Wars Holiday Special.  If you're one of the lucky ones who missed this made-for-TV abomination, it is widely believed to be not only the worst thing ever made with the name "Star Wars" attached, but the worst thing ever made of any kind.  How bad is it?  It's so bad that George Lucas -- the man who released the crawling, hideous thing that is Episode III:  Revenge of the Sith to theaters worldwide -- yanked it from circulation so that it can only be seen in low-grade bootleg form.  It's approximately two hours long, but it seems like it's about two months long -- which is why we're eternally grateful to the good forks at The Late Night Explosion for culling it down to an agonizing but survivable five minutes.

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This version gives you tiny snippets of almost all the things that make the original Star Wars Holiday Special so mind-searingly awful -- the endless untranslated bellowing of Chewbacca's family, the wookie porn, the Jefferson Starship music video, the song by a coked-out Carrie Fisher, the interminable clowning by a disco-shirted Art Carney, the sight of Mark Hammill made up like Joel Grey in Cabaret, the Bea Arthur musical number -- but in brief enough doses that your brain doesn't immediately seize up and fall out of your ear the way it does when you have to watch the whole thing.  Enjoy!

Related Posts:

Star Bores:  Five Reasons to Skip The Clone Wars

Fantastic Fest Review:  Fanboys


Comments

Hayden said:

George Lucas moves fast!  Your video is already gone, Leonard.  

I saw this on TV.  I remember later trying to describe the wookiee life song to a friend, who successfully convinced me that I dreamed the whole thing.  I never heard anyone else mention it until 20-odd years later when the Internet put some teeth into ironic nostalgia.

November 20, 2008 4:51 PM

freakengine said:

Um...the video is gone gone gone.  :(

November 22, 2008 10:52 AM

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