The STAR WARS Holiday Special - Let's blow this thing and go home!

THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL! - A Long Time Ago...on CBS. - Originally published 11/22/99


The Year: 1978 A.D.
The Date: November 17th, a Friday
The Event: The eagerly anticipated "STAR WARS Holiday Special"
The result: Cheese


Time passes...

The Year: 1999 A.D.
The Date: November 17th, a Wednesday
The Event: The discovery of a bootleg video copy of the "STAR WARS
Holiday Special" in a second hand book and video store.
The result: This article...and of course, more CHEESE!


It may have been fate, karma, or just plain dumb luck that I happened upon a tape of this curious, odd bit of sci-fi history. A bit of history that the actors, studio and George Lucas would just as soon forget about, and who can blame them?

The STAR WARS Holiday Special is bad, really bad.

Produced to coincide with Thanksgiving, there is little to be thankful for in this turkey. I remember as a teenager being excited about this special. After all, I was then and remain still a big fan of Star Wars, so what could have been better than a TV special featuring almost all the original cast members? Well, I should have known better.

The story revolves around Chewbacca's family, his wife Malla, father Itchy and son Lumpy. The special begins with Han Solo and Chewbacca trying to get away from some stock footage of Imperial Star Destroyers so that Chewie can get home to celebrate "Life Day", a wookiee Holiday with his family. A lot of the first fifteen minutes consists of Chewie's family grunting and braying at each other, without the benefit of subtitles for the non-wookiee speaking audience members.

There are also several guest stars in addition to the Star Wars cast who wander in and out of the story. Art Carney appears as an annoying human friend of the Chewbacca family. Harvey "will work for food" Korman shows up as several characters, including an alien Julia Child. Dianne Carroll performs in a holographic music video, and Jefferson Starship performs a song (I suspect they were the only ones on the show spaced out enough to understand the wookiee language). There's also a scene set in a Tatooine cantina, which is run by TV's Maude, Bea Arthur. She performs a room-clearing drinking song to send her patrons on their way when the Empire shuts her down.

But as for the Star Wars cast, Harrison Ford and Peter Mayhew as Han and Chewbacca manage to at least have one action scene, but Han seems a bit embarrassed by it all. The rest of the stars don't fair well either. Carrie Fisher appears glassy-eyed as Princess Leia and even has to perform an ear-piecing rendition of the "Life Day" song to the tune of the Star Wars Theme. C-3P0 and R2-D2 appear briefly and manage to hold their own, and the voice of James Earl Jones also makes a cameo appearance but only as a dubbing over some stock footage. But by far the worst is poor Mark Hamill who ends up looking like a department store mannequin due to some heavy handed make-up "artist" trying to cover the scars from Mark's unfortunate 1978 encounter with a windshield.

The single high point in the special is the animated cartoon that Lumpy watches, it features the Star Wars cast in an adventure that introduces the bounty hunter Boba Fett. The rest of the special seems to be just filler for the cartoon.

For me the most interesting part of the bootleg tape is that it includes all the 1978 commercials shown during the special, so we know whom to blame for it. Just in case you're interested in a boycott, the major sponsors were Kenner Toys (big surprise) and GM, so buy a Toyota, won't you?

But we do have something to be thankful for: The STAR WARS Holiday Special will never air again. In fact, it's been reported that George Lucas had stated that he would personally like to hunt down every bootleg copy of it and destroy them. But I say, "Hands off Lucas! I still haven't forgiven you for Jar-Jar Binks yet! So back off man, I'll cut ya!"