Have You Seen/Would You Buy The Star Wars Holiday Special?

JiminyCrick91 · Post by **JiminyCrick91** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:13 pm

Well we have all no doubt heard of this 1978 show from the CBS network but have any of you all seen this? Also hypothetically if George Lucas ever did release this would you buy it?

Timon/Pumbaa fan · Post by **Timon/Pumbaa fan** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:17 pm

I vote "No I have not seen it but would maybe blind buy it" since I'm a Star Wars fan!

Loomis · Post by **Loomis** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:41 pm

I have seen it, and it is truly the worst thing ever made.

It makes the prequels look good, if that's possible.

The only good thing about it - apart from how unintentionally funny it is - is the Boba Fett cartoon.

Would I buy it, though?

In a heartbeat

DarthPrime · Post by **DarthPrime** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:09 pm

Its not just bad, its horrible. Would I buy it? You bet.

MadonnasManOne · Post by **MadonnasManOne** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:18 pm

I have never seen it, but, I would LOVE to. I hear it's horrible, but, I would still buy it in a heartbeat.

Who could resist seeing Bea Arthur in the Star Wars universe, seeing Princess Leah sing, and seeing Jefferson Starship make an appearance as a hologram? Not me! I would LOVE to get ahold of this!

lord-of-sith · Post by **lord-of-sith** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:34 pm

I have never seen this, but I would love to for 2 reasons:
1. Because it's Star Wars
2. Just so I can see how supposedly bad it is

Post by **Luke** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:42 pm

Loomis wrote:I have seen it, and it is truly the worst thing ever made.

It makes the prequels look good, if that's possible.

The only good thing about it - apart from how unintentionally funny it is - is the Boba Fett cartoon.

Would I buy it, though?

In a heartbeat

My thoughts exactly. And Bea Arthur singing to weird bar patrons is another plus!

dvdjunkie · Post by **dvdjunkie** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 7:14 pm

I am one of the lucky ones who have not only seen this atrocity, but I have it recorded on VHS and recently transferred it to DVD+R to save it for posterity. I don't think that it will ever see the light of day, it is pretty bad, and about the only saving grace is that it was interrupted so often for commercials. It was a 2-hour special and with the commercials edited out it runs approximately 1 hour and 32 minutes.

Contact me via PM if you would like more info about this program. I do share.

MickeyMousePal · Post by **MickeyMousePal** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:57 pm

Timon/Pumba fan Wrote:

I vote "No I have not seen it but would maybe blind buy it" since I'm a Star Wars fan!

Same here.

memnv · Post by **memnv** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:11 am

I have seen it but it has been many years in a Galaxy far far away. I would get it

Escapay · Post by **Escapay** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:54 pm

I heard that Lucas destroyed all the master copies of this, and if he had it his way, he'd destroy any homemade VHS's of it as well.

I remember them talking about it on one of those "I Love the 70s" shows, and they actually had some really bad footage (video quality...though it could be considered content quality as well), but since they were talking over it, I had no idea what was going on.

I'd buy it, simply out of curiosity, and also to have something in my collection that's worse than The Boatniks (which isn't all too bad, but it ain't Disney's greatest film either).

Escapay

PatrickvD · Post by **PatrickvD** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:26 pm

yeah and in this pirate copy there's this horrible obscure commercial every 10 minutes. South Park did a spoof on that. It's totally bizarre. I'd buy this in a heartbeat just to get a good laugh

TM2-Megatron · Post by **TM2-Megatron** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:33 pm

I've seen it, and already have a bootleg VHS copy.

It's literally the worst thing ever produced. As someone already said, Lucas categorically denies that fact it even exists. Although if you ask me, he should be more ashamed of the prequels; taking into account the money and expectations that went into them, compared to the poor production values (even for the 70s) of the Holiday Special. Very much like the non-mutilated original trilogy, it won't see the light of day until after Lucas is six feet under.

Post by **Luke** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:38 pm

Escapay wrote:I heard that Lucas destroyed all the master copies of this, and if he had it his way, he'd destroy any homemade VHS's of it as well.

I don't know about those rumors. Harrison Ford was on Conan not too long ago and they showed a clip from it and it was in quite good quality.

Anyway, I think it's pretty lame to pretend this didn't happen (sort of like Song of the South, but the only ones who might actually be offended by a release like this are the creators, which again is sort of like Song of the South). And doesn't Lucas especially love the almighty buck (like, more than the rest of us)? Can't he see that people would buy it out of morbid curiosity, quests for unintentional humor, collection completion, etc? All he and company need to do is have a sense of humor about it and release it with a low price tag in time for Christmas (extras would probably sweeten the package). I guarantee it would crack the Amazon Top 100 Sellers for a considerable amount of time.

Escapay wrote:I'd buy it, simply out of curiosity, and also to have something in my collection that's worse than The Boatniks (which isn't all too bad, but it ain't Disney's greatest film either).

Deep voice theme song guy: BOATNIKS!

TM2-Megatron · Post by **TM2-Megatron** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 2:05 pm

Luke wrote:I don't know about those rumors. Harrison Ford was on Conan not too long ago and they showed a clip from it and it was in quite good quality.

That's interesting... I'd like to have a better quality copy, personally. Mine, while acceptable, looks like it was recorded on Betamax, played a couple hundred times then transferred to VHS.

Luke wrote:Anyway, I think it's pretty lame to pretend this didn't happen (sort of like Song of the South, but the only ones who might actually be offended by a release like this are the creators, which again is sort of like Song of the South). And doesn't Lucas especially love the almighty buck (like, more than the rest of us)? Can't he see that people would buy it out of morbid curiosity, quests for unintentional humor, collection completion, etc? All he and company need to do is have a sense of humor about it and release it with a low price tag in time for Christmas (extras would probably sweeten the package). I guarantee it would crack the Amazon Top 100 Sellers for a considerable amount of time.

Apparently, Lucas has some kind of sense of dignity/professionalism... which, as far as I'm concerned, is laughable. While he does practically worship money (and probably has a money bin like Scrooge McDuck somewhere on Skywalker Ranch), his belief that he actually has some professional standards to maintain is what keeps him from releasing to DVD what would become a best-seller.

BrandonH · Post by **BrandonH** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 2:42 pm

I would buy this just to laugh and cringe in horror at the utter cheese of it. I am a major Star Wars fan, and I have always wanted to see and own Boba Fett's screen introduction.

Wonderlicious · Post by **Wonderlicious** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:09 pm

I saw a short clip on a "most embarrassing TV moments" countdown on the UK TV channel Five a few months ago, but aside from that, no. I probably would buy it to see how bad it is on the whole, though, and hopefully laugh my way through it.

thatartguy · Post by **thatartguy** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 6:40 pm

I have the Holiday Special. It's a transfer made from a vacuum-sealed VHS tape from a TV station in Iowa. It hadn't felt new air on it since 1978. It's the best copy you're going to see until it's released officially (which, of course, will be never). It's probably the one they used on Conan.

The show is quite bad. Unless you're hard-core you won't subject anyone else to it. Again, the only good part is the cartoon segment.

stlewis75 · Post by **stlewis75** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:23 am

I haven't seen it in several years, but I seem to remember a cooking show for wookies starring Harvey Korman as a woman? Is that right, or is that just a horrid nightmare? The cooking show segment seemed to go on for about twenty minutes... all or mostly in the wookie language. So terrible... but worth a viewing, just because it's so lame.

Carrie Fisher's musical number is almost as bad as Bea Arthur's. And none of it is quite as bad as the premise. Poor that show... I'm happy to have seen it, though. I doubt I'd ever buy it because seeing it once was plenty for me.

Maerj · Post by **Maerj** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 10:01 pm

I saw it when it originally aired. I remember that I was very excited to see it since we didn't have home video back then and the only way to see Star Wars again was in a theater, on one of those little hand crank children's movie viewers (which lasted a whole minute, longer if you cranked slowly) or on an 8mm home version that was like 10 minutes long.

Anyway, I remember enjoying it because it was Star Wars. 20 minutes of Wookies howling at each other can get old, but there are a few redeeming qualities about the special.

1. They reunited the whole cast! Yes, all the leads were back in it, amazingly enough.

2. It contains some deleted footage from Star Wars. To help pad the special out and save costs they used a couple of deleted scenes from the movie.

3. The animated sequence. Everyone loved seeing the mysterious Boba Fett for the first time!

4. First appearance of virtual reality technology? The young Wookies use a number of different devices to watch programs. There is a hologram viewer that shows gymnasts but more impressive than that was a headset that allowed them to watch tv shows in their minds. Okay, I don't think that's called virtual reality, but I'm tired and can't remember the term...

It has been said that Lucas would like to destroy every copy of the special but I am sure that he didn't. He was responsible for the basic storyline involving getting Chewbacca home for Life Day, the Wookie holiday. The special was only supposed to be an hour long but CBS felt that since SW was such a hot property, why not make it 2 hours long? So, they added a bunch of stuff to pad it out and made a musical variety special. Variety shows were VERY big at that time.

If you do a lil searching you can find sites that stream the show and they are readily available at any convention from bootleggers. I never actually bought one, although I have thought about it. $20 seems a bit much for something I may only ever watch one time.

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