25 May 05
Star Wars Holiday Special
Dean
With the recent
release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the violent anal
rape of the Star Wars franchise is at last complete. The classic original
trilogy was unparalleled in numerous realms, from its excitement quota,
to its visual wizardry quota, to its teddy-bears-having-forest-parties-while-dancing-to-soothing-woowind-music
quota. It defeated The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix trilogies easily,
seeing as both are both were boring and gay. In fact, The Matrix trilogy
was so overpoweringly gay that even the most staunchly heterosexual viewers,
such as myself, were turned to the dark side of the avenue that is sexuality.
Whenever Keanu Reeves straddled in his tight leather pants to the backdrop
of German techno-industrial house music, my nipples stiffened to levels
of erectness sharp enough to cut glass, while top scientists concluded
that my levels of fabulousness increased by 300%.
But I'm drifting off-topic, here. What I meant to say was that the original
Star Wars trilogy was unmatched. But how many of you were aware it was
in fact a QUADRILOGY? Yes, my children - a fourth Star Wars movie was
released, and its existence means that, in fact, all the great movie trilogies
sucked hard at one point or another. The seeds of Star Wars’ destruction
were not sown by The Phantom Menace, nor by the film Ewoks: Caravan of
Courage. No, the seeds were sown, and then urinated upon, one bleak night
in November, 1978…
This “film” is the Star Wars Holiday Special - a TV variety
extravaganza broadcast to distraught families all over the US on Thanksgiving
1978. It features all the original cast members, and was sanctioned by
George Lucas himself. So why haven't you heard of it? What’s wrong
with this holiday spesh? On the surface, it seems to contain all the ingredients
for a surefire holiday favourite! Harrison Ford, Bea Arthur, Jefferson
Starship… the list goes on and on, like some sort of heaven-sent
recipe… for joy!
On the contrary, this is perhaps the worst thing anyone has ever made
available to anyone in the medium of performance art, excluding the time
my friends and I entered the high school lip-synch, and danced around
to the “Ghostbusters” theme song while wearing white sheets
over our heads (sadly, for humanity’s sake, we came second). In
fact, this is so bad, that George Lucas actually stated he wanted to track
down every last copy of the thing, and destroy it. Possibly by forcing
each individual bootleg copy to watch itself in a mirror. Thankfully,
purveyors of hilarity have ensured that bootlegs have found their way
onto the Internet. Thus, I viewed the film. Through a haze of tears and
vomit.
It kicks off with Han (Harrison Ford) and Chewie desperately eluding Imperial
fighters, using battle footage stolen from the first movie. Han tells
us that Chewie must make it back to his home planet in time to celebrate
"Life Day". I guess they called it "Life Day" because
they wouldn't have Thanksgiving in space, largely because space people
having nothing to be thankful for, considering that Hayden Christensen
not only survives, but thrives, in space.
We are then treated to domestic scenes of Chewie's family - his wife Malla,
his father Lumpy, and his son/weird-cat-thing Itchy - awaiting his arrival.
This lasts for 20 minutes. That's not too bad, until you realise that
Wookies can't speak English, so the first 20 minutes of the movie is basically
giants wearing bear skins screaming at each other. Fingernail removals
are more fun to sit through than this. Also, the Wookie names are consistent
with Chewie’s – they all describe a quality of something (itchy,
lumpy and chewy) – all except for Malla. This confuses me. How often
do you hear people saying, “Boy, this steak sure is malla!”,
or, “Gee, this skintight latex tank top is malla!” Had I been
alive in 1978 to witness this, I surely would have wept bitter tears of
regret for the future.
A friendly trader (Art Carney) arrives to give the Chewies presents. To
Itchy, he presents some visor that shows him his innermost pornographic
fantasy! Sadly, Itchy's idea of a hot time is songstress Diane Carrol
(?), wrapped in tin foil, singing for literally seven minutes. The sound
quality is so bad that you can't even make out the song. This phenomenon
occurs again later when a stromtrooper watches his innermost pornographic
desire, which happens to be hit band "The Jefferson Starship"
(??).
There is a half-hour scene of "The Golden Girls" star Bea Arthur
(the one who looked and sounded like a man) leading an agonisingly long
dance spectacular, where she cavorts with aliens, and sings, "Just
one more round, friend/Is that a tear, friend?/I take male hormone supplements,
friend!" Well, maybe she didn't actually say that last line. It was
drowned out by the sound of me feverishly cutting my wrists, while simultaneously
drinking poison and shooting myself in the head.
The Chewies then finally celebrate Life Day in a ceremony which consists
entirely of putting on red Ku Klux Klan-style robes, and walking in formation
through space and into the sun. Once “in” the sun, they watch
Princess Leia perform a song set to the tune of the Star Wars theme. This
song is bad enough to convince me that Carrie Fisher should not be allowed
within twenty feet of music, scissors, and George Lucases. During the
“song”, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford stand around looking
solemn, not so much celebrating Life Day as mourning it. How ironic that
Life Day should mean the deaths of the careers of most involved. After
this song, Chewie has flashbacks to the first film (read: they just show
more footage from the first movie to fill up time).
The existence of this mess is enough to convince the government that the
slaughter of numerous innocents by P-addicts with swords should not be
condemned by the law, but encouraged, if only because there is the off-chance
that George Lucas’s brain may be hacked off during a senseless rampage,
thus preventing any further Holiday Specials from being vomited out of
it
all rights reserved thisispoverty.com editor@thisispoverty.com