I was four years old when the holidays rolled around in 1978. (The geeks among you have all let out a groan knowing exactly which holiday special I’m about to reference.) Even at that age, I was already a huge Star Wars fan. I ate, lived, and breathed Star Wars. The movie had come out over a year earlier, and The Empire Strikes Back wouldn’t come out for another two. In the days without Internet video, DVDs, or DVRs and before VCRs were ubiquitous, a hungry nation yearned for anything Star Wars-related. Unfortunately, the need to feed this unsated market coincided with the popularity of bad 70s variety show television programming. The result was the Star Wars Holiday Special, which has been called “the worst two hours of television ever”.It only aired in its entirety once, on November 17, 1978, and my little four-year-old self could not wait for that day to come fast enough. I still remember climbing down to our basement family room with its paneling-lined walls and red, white, and blue-checked carpeting (the result of the previous owners redecorating the house in the midst of the bicentennial) and plopping myself down on dad’s old red chair to watch it.
Less than five minutes into it, I turned it off. It was so mind-numbingly bad that even my 4-year-old Star Wars-addicted self couldn’t bear to watch the damn thing. Like most people, as I got older, I convinced myself that it had all been a dream, but it wasn’t a dream. It was George Lucas’s worst nightmare. He once said, “If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it.”
About five years ago, at an “orphan Thanksgiving,” someone had it on their laptop and someone started playing it. I watched about 20 minutes of it before I had to flee into the kitchen.
How bad is it? It features, and I kid you not, Art Carney, Harvey Korman, and Bea Arthur with performances by Diahann Carroll (that an old Wookie watches in some strange virtual reality sex chair) and Jefferson Starship (well, of course, because they have “starship” in their name!). The plot revolves around a made up holiday called “Life Day,” and the principal film characters all make brief cameos. Perhaps the most famous one is Carrie Fischer as Princess Leia singing the Life Day song to the Star Wars tune at the end. She was reportedly so wasted on various substances that she could barely stand.
To this day, I have never seen the entire thing. I couldn’t even make it through the entire clip below of the aforementioned song (watch as Carrie Fischer clings to Chewbacca for support). If you’re really brave, or perhaps just insane, you can watch the entire special here, but I don’t recommend it…to anyone. Especially not Prince. In his sick and fragile state, it just might put him into a coma.
[Alan Goy also blogs at Experiment Farm.]
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