“You'll be celebrating Life Day before you know it!”
November 17, 2018 8:55 AM   Subscribe

Watch the Star Wars Holiday Special on its 40th Anniversary [YouTube] “You can expect Disney to release a new Star Wars movie every year from now until ... let's be honest, probably long after you and I are both dead and buried. But there's another Star Wars holiday tradition you should be keeping: Making time to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special, a famously atrocious piece of Star Wars history that aired once, and only once, on Nov. 17, 1978. The special was never re-aired; it was never released on video. It's been something Lucas — and ostensibly now, Disney — has been all too happy to forget about.” [via: Polygon]
posted by Fizz (76 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Sadly, the Incredible Hulk will not be presented this evening.
posted by Fizz at 8:56 AM on November 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


I watched it that night. I don't recall my reaction, but I suspect it was confusion. Like great swaths of my childhood.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:05 AM on November 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


Once I've made it to my parents' for the holiday, I start baking the Christmas cookies the next day, and I always listen to Rifftrax's Star Wars Holiday Special, with bonus roasting of 1970s commercials.

("Remember, he's masturbating to this."
"Oh no! Not on Life Day! C'mon, we were just about to go to church!")
posted by Countess Elena at 9:05 AM on November 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


Luke Skywalker was SO young!
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 9:14 AM on November 17, 2018


The Vox explainer vid that's linked is a good watch. Also, a relevant XKCD.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:19 AM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


The only lines I remember from this are: TOBOR is ROBOT spelled backwards
posted by wotsac at 9:29 AM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


The Special as a whole is a fascinating train wreck of inexplicable guest appearances and Wookiee grunts. It's not good, but it is something to behold. I unabashedly like the animated sequence however, with it's (admittedly somewhat off-putting) highly stylized character design. The backgrounds are great though and overall it manages to capture a pulpy comic book feel befitting a Star Wars story. It's early work from Canadian animation studio Nelvana which would go on to produce a decent swath of 80s and 90s animated children's programming.
posted by wordless reply at 9:29 AM on November 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


I've heard it said that watching the Star Wars Holiday Special can be compared to shooting heroin: it's hard to describe it without making it sound kind of cool, but once you actually try it, you realize just how deeply uncool it really is.

My "favorite" part of the Holiday Special is poor Carrie Fisher. She's so coked up she can't even focus her eyes in the same direction.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:29 AM on November 17, 2018 [17 favorites]


As a child I was pretty uncritically enthusiastic about the things I liked. There were three things that happened before 1980 that awakened the stirrings of skepticism in my mind, and helped mold me into the crabby malcontent that I am today--that made me think, "Wow, if *I* think this sucks, it must REALLY suck."

1. Star Wars holiday special
2. Kiss: Phantom of the Amusement Park
3. Those really big Shogun Warriors
posted by Sing Or Swim at 9:31 AM on November 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


My experience with this was somebody showing up at my place with a VHS copy in the late '90s, everybody getting super-high and losing our shit at first...and then slowly realizing that this thing went on and on and on and on, with vast swathes of it being so bad it wasn't even good-bad. I think we wound up fast-forwarding to the commercial breaks past a certain point. I really wish I could unsee the "Grandpa Itchy in the Mind Evaporator" sequence, but sadly that's not how life works.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:40 AM on November 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


"People building transportation to serve people" - because, at that point in history, GM had outsourced their PR to the little known firm of Costanza & Vandelay.
posted by howfar at 9:44 AM on November 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


I expect the stories of how this, and so many "special presentations" were conceived are better than the presentations.
posted by mikelieman at 9:45 AM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


No No No!

No.

You should not watch this under any circumstances. You should not watch it for a goof, you should not watch it because you're curious, you should not hate-watch it or watch it ironically. You should just not watch it.

It's not so bad it's good. It's not so bad it's funny. It's just... bad. It's so bad it should never be watched by anyone.

It is a giant steaming mess of cocaine-fueled bad ideas and it should be removed from the face of the Earth and shot into the sun.

Fine.

Go ahead and watch it. But don't say I didn't warn you.
posted by bondcliff at 9:54 AM on November 17, 2018 [13 favorites]


Can I just say I'm glad the "A new Star Wars movie every year until the end of time" train has already derailed? I like Star Wars, and I like the direction the movies are going, but a new movie every year is too much damn Star Wars.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:02 AM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


I watched it when it originally aired. It's not that bad. It's better than that Solo movie. There, I said it.

I'd like to think that Disney would accept this special as canon, because of course there's a holiday called Life Day and of course wookies celebrate it. Plus that bitchin Boba Fett cartoon.
posted by Catblack at 10:17 AM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


My late cousin and best friend (housebound for life due to illness) was a Star Wars freak, and we would watch all available Star Wars media constantly, back in the 80's. I'm amazed that he didn't have a copy of this. Instead, we watched the Ewok specials a thousand times. He passed away at age 19 before the prequels debuted, and I often wonder what he would have to say about the garbage side of Star Wars.
posted by Brocktoon at 10:25 AM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


So hold on a minute: If the Star Wars Holiday Special originally aired six days before Thankgiving in 1978, why don't we think of it as a Thanksgiving special?
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:30 AM on November 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


Perhaps, even then, they knew there was nothing to give thanks for?
posted by epo at 10:41 AM on November 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


Is it just me or between the hair and the way they have him made-up, does Mark Hamill look an awful lot like Ellen DeGeneres?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:50 AM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


The make up is because this was right after his car accident.
posted by cmfletcher at 10:59 AM on November 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


You should not watch this under any circumstances. You should not watch it for a goof, you should not watch it because you're curious, you should not hate-watch it or watch it ironically. You should just not watch it.

I did not see this back in the day, but I saw enough bad 70s crap in my youth (Donny & Marie! Sonny & Cher! Circus of the Stars!) that I'm pretty sure I can handle it.
posted by JanetLand at 11:10 AM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


The make up is because this was right after his car accident.

You mean Corvette Summer?

BTW, Josh and Chuck at Stuff You Should Know did a great job with this.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 11:14 AM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]




Also unless I am just remembering a bad dream it somehow manages to drag in and humiliate Bea Arthur!!
posted by Smearcase at 11:21 AM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Oh man I want to push back on some of the "never watch it ever" people. I think it's probably true that you shouldn't watch it more than once, but this movie is wild. Jefferson Starship, the mind evaporator, the weird cooking show, Bea Arthur running a/the Mos Eisley cantina, that super long cartoon, everybody in robes and Carrie Fisher singing that song, the fact that the first ten minutes are in Wookiee (excuse me, Shyriiwook) without any subtitles...yeah, it's long and often sort of boring, but it is an experience you should have once.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 11:23 AM on November 17, 2018 [10 favorites]


I haven't seen this, but I have seen Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park and would be willing to watch it again (once every quarter-century seems about right), so maybe I'll finally check out the SWHS.
posted by Ickster at 11:25 AM on November 17, 2018


I watched it that night. I don't recall my reaction, but I suspect it was confusion

I recall my reaction. It was a weird mix of disappointment, confusion (how could this be bad? It was Star Wars!), and ennui. I wish I could say it is a feeling I have not had since...
posted by nubs at 11:27 AM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


omgggg and how did I forgot Luke and Leia being SUPER condescending to Chewie's wife for some reason?? idk you guys I think this movie is a delight
posted by goodbyewaffles at 11:27 AM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


Also unless I am just remembering a bad dream it somehow manages to drag in and humiliate Bea Arthur!!

Bea Arthur AND Art Carney.
posted by mikelieman at 11:34 AM on November 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


The SWHS is the worst piece television I ever watched by far. Truly wretched. As a 15 year old fan, I could not have been more disgusted
posted by haiku warrior at 11:49 AM on November 17, 2018


I think it's probably true that you shouldn't watch it more than once

We watch it every year as part of the MetaFilter MST3k Club Christmas Marathon, and I can honestly say, it improves with repeated viewing. Or maybe it’s just nostalgia. Or Christmas Spirits. Or having a bunch of mefi’s riffing. Anyway, I’m looking forward to this year.

We also watch Hardware Wars.
posted by valkane at 12:17 PM on November 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


hmmm, I was 9 when Star Wars came out, saw it in the theater...I do not remember having watched this the following year...maybe I was spared!
posted by supermedusa at 12:21 PM on November 17, 2018


Oh man I remember watching this and getting blitzed with my brother. I'm also firmly in the camp of "everyone needs to see this" and I cant believe nobody's mentioned the names of Chewie's family - his wife's name is Malala or something, his dad's name is Itchy, and his child's name is Lumpy. He named his horrifying uncanny-valley child Lumpy.

The Pride parade on a coffee table, the cooking show host who just went all in on their part (remember kids, cooking CAN be fun), Grandpa Itchy's masturbation machine...it's such a disaster. Worth watching, but only once.
posted by scruffy-looking nerfherder at 12:28 PM on November 17, 2018


This is what it feels like to show up at a party and find out that everyone did loads of coke before you got there.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:31 PM on November 17, 2018




Oh dear god, they doubled down on those names in the EU, because of course they did.

"The 1978 television program Star Wars Holiday Special introduces Chewbacca's family: Mallatobuck (his wife), Lumpawarrump (his son) and Attichitcuk, Chief of the Kaapauku Tribe (his father)" (wikipedia)
posted by Guy Smiley at 12:59 PM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm pretty sure I can handle it.

That's exactly what Homer said about the Merciless Pepper of Quetzalacatenango.
posted by bondcliff at 1:06 PM on November 17, 2018 [13 favorites]


Metafilter: it's hard to describe it without making it sound kind of cool, but once you actually try it, you realize just how deeply uncool it really is
posted by dephlogisticated at 1:06 PM on November 17, 2018 [17 favorites]


Also unless I am just remembering a bad dream it somehow manages to drag in and humiliate Bea Arthur!!

Yes. Bea Arthur, who starred in the (extremely star-studded, in retrospect) 1950s Broadway run of The Three Penny Opera, which everyone should see.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:11 PM on November 17, 2018 [11 favorites]




So hold on a minute: If the Star Wars Holiday Special originally aired six days before Thankgiving in 1978, why don't we think of it as a Thanksgiving special?

Because it is Life Day. Besides, the unmemorable name gives dolts ammo to insist it was the Star Wars Christmas Special, the way they remember standing in block-long lineups on May 4th, 1977 to see the film subtitled "A New Hope."

yeah, it's long and often sort of boring, but it is an experience you should have once.

I am in the "don't see it" camp. I saw it in 1978 and even as a SW-crazed undiscriminating pre-teen, I realized it was dismal. I have watched it once since and the 1978 nostalgia from the commercials is honestly the best part.

Indeed I would add it to the famous dictum variously attributed to Bax, Beecham, Churchill, Kaufman, and Wilde: “Try everything once except folk dancing and incest”.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:30 PM on November 17, 2018


I liked it when it was originally aired.

I was also only about eight.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:48 PM on November 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


The animated bit hidden in the middle really isn't unwatchable. It's like some weird intersection of Ralph Bakshi/Heavy Metal, Yellow Submarine, and Superfriends. And it has the virtue of only being about four minutes long. They should have just broadcast that and called it a day.

Carrie Fisher is just barely high enough to keep smiling all the way through that song she has to sing at the end. Then she starts rubbing her face on Chewbacca like she's experiencing an enhanced enjoyment of fur. What a weird artifact...
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:50 PM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


BECAUSE IT WAS THE SEVENTIES THATS WHY OK THATS JUST THE WAY THINGS WERE ITS ALL WE HAD AND WE LIKED IT WELL LIKED IS PERHAPS TOO STRONG A WORD BUT YOU KNEW BETTER THAN TO COMPLAIN ABOUT STUFF
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:03 PM on November 17, 2018 [12 favorites]


“Try everything once except folk dancing and incest”.

Yeah, 'cause you won't find any of that in a Star Wars movie.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:06 PM on November 17, 2018 [20 favorites]


>We also watch Hardware Wars.

...but Basketball is a peaceful planet!
posted by Catblack at 2:06 PM on November 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm old enough to have seen it when it first aired. I'd just turned ten.

What's more fascinating to me than a forty-year-old piece of marketing for Kenner toys and lunch boxes, are the reactions folks are having to it. Amazing how polarizing it is. I know plenty of people who just will not engage with it. It reminds me of those who won't watch a black and white movie under any circumstance.
posted by KHAAAN! at 2:08 PM on November 17, 2018


One of the sadder moments as a father that I have dealt with is my son watching about 2 minutes of this and recognizing that he doesn't have the stomach for it. As a kid when I saw it live, I was unabashedly a fan but I had (and have) a strong stomach as far as 70's TV cheese goes. Watching it now, its pretty terrible but I have a fondness for spectacular failures in "art" (or whatever you'd call the Holiday special... fart perhaps?)
posted by Ashwagandha at 2:09 PM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


I was stunned to realize in rewatch that, apparently, Life Day is a celebration of inter-species porn....
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:45 PM on November 17, 2018


MetaFilter: a celebration of inter-species porn....
posted by Splunge at 3:37 PM on November 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


I was wondering "where is Paul Lynde?" Then I looked it up and that's a different Star Wars, in the Donny & Marie sector of the Galaxy. Looks like fun.
posted by ovvl at 3:46 PM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm old enough to have also seen it when it first aired, but was young enough to forget most of it, even the Boba Fett cartoon.
posted by ZeusHumms at 3:50 PM on November 17, 2018


Also, previously from 2006, and the dedicated fansite https://www.starwarsholidayspecial.com/, created around the 25th anniversary, which contains all the scandalous backstories.
posted by ZeusHumms at 3:53 PM on November 17, 2018 [4 favorites]


Oh wow. I never actually went looking for it on YouTube but I guess I must've known it would be there. I have a friend who loves it and reminds us every year and just the bits I've heard 2nd hand made my head hurt. Going to book mark this and think about choices in life.
posted by kitten magic at 4:41 PM on November 17, 2018


I saw this when it first aired and have mostly blanked on it (fortunately?), aside from the cartoon. IIRC, the cartoon is not great, but also not objectionable, at least not to me at age 7.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:56 PM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]




MetaFilter: a celebration of inter-species porn....

You're only realizing this now?
posted by gtrwolf at 5:26 PM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


a celebration of inter-species porn...

I mean, Paul Kantner is right there.
posted by valkane at 5:31 PM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


I was wondering "where is Paul Lynde?" Then I looked it up and that's a different Star Wars, in the Donny & Marie sector of the Galaxy. Looks like fun.

It was truly a different era: YouTube Link

On the other hand, this was before George Lucas definitively stated Luke & Leia were siblings.
posted by ZeusHumms at 5:35 PM on November 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


We've watched the Star Wars Holiday Special as part of the MST Club Christmas Marathon for four years running. Believe me, there is nothing like watching a family of ape-people grunt and roar at each other for 15 minutes in their weirdly suburban living room, with friends.
posted by JHarris at 5:53 PM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


so sick of you liberals and your war on Life Day
posted by um at 6:39 PM on November 17, 2018 [19 favorites]


Starbucks doesn’t even do the red cups for it anymore.
posted by Artw at 6:50 PM on November 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


Metafilter: family of ape-people grunt and roar at each other for 15 minutes in their weirdly suburban living room, with friends.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 7:15 PM on November 17, 2018 [10 favorites]


I'm with bondcliff. It's not only bad, it's boring bad. You can have more fun watching certain Netflix holiday specials and making fun of them far more than you can this. It's not even worth watching for any reason because it's so dull and not even funny in it's badness. Disappoint, y'all.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:44 PM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Sing Or Swim: "2. Kiss: Phantom of the Amusement Park"

[pushes up glasses] It's "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park."
posted by Chrysostom at 8:15 PM on November 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


I first saw this in 2000, when my brother, who worked for a TV station, received a borrowed video tape of it through connections. The tape was a 3/4-inch U-Matic containing the Star Wars Holiday Special and the Pamela Anderson sex video; it was covered with a large blue-and-white label bearing the words "Property of Seattle Seahawks: Not to Be Removed From the Locker Room". My brother is a big fan of so-bad-it's-good video, but my taste for such things is significantly less refined, as was proven when we watched the show.
posted by Seaweed Shark at 8:49 PM on November 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


As mentioned in one of the previous links, "based on an original story by George Lucas". See, he tried to tell us he was out of ideas but we wouldn't realize it until the prequels came out.
posted by tommasz at 5:21 AM on November 18, 2018


'a family of ape-people grunt and roar at each other for 15 minutes in their weirdly suburban living room, with friends. "
Or as we like to call it, "Thanksgiving."
posted by Floydd at 6:22 AM on November 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


The Holiday Special is like this weird moment of constructive interference between a lot of cultural things. You had the beyond imagination success of the original film and everybody else in media trying anything to latch on. (See, for example, Star Wars characters/actors showing up on... The Muppet Show?!) Then you had this weird entertainment phenomenon of the TV Variety Show featuring deliberately bad acting as comedy, and the way in which networks tried to make shows popular with every demographic since there were so few channels to watch, and every show had to recognize Christmas in some way, and on and on.

It is genuinely horrific but it's also hugely telling of the society and industry that produced it.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 7:52 AM on November 18, 2018 [8 favorites]


Also I read somewhere Carrie Fisher used to play this at her dinner parties when she wanted her guests to leave
posted by scruffy-looking nerfherder at 8:16 AM on November 18, 2018 [8 favorites]


If by some chance that story about Carrie Fisher is apocryphal I'm going to go ahead and believe it's true anyway.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:28 AM on November 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I don’t care what you all say, I unironically love this. I’d watch it over any of the prequels in a heartbeat. It’s so gloriously misbegotten and weird, a perfect time capsule of late 70’s television.
posted by EarBucket at 10:07 AM on November 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


MetaFilter: a fascinating train wreck of inexplicable guest appearances and Wookiee grunts

MetaFilter: a giant steaming mess of cocaine-fueled bad ideas and it should be removed from the face of the Earth and shot into the sun
posted by kirkaracha at 4:56 PM on November 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Hey, no dogging on the Muppets and Star Wars! That was a damn fine episode.
posted by jadepearl at 8:08 PM on November 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


To be fair, the main reason why the Star Wars cast showed up on The Muppet Show was because they were filming The Empire Strikes Back pretty much right next door. And that's not even getting into the whole Frank Oz connection.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:40 PM on November 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


See, for example, Star Wars characters/actors showing up on... The Muppet Show?!)

I suggest that Mark Hamill joining with Angus "the Argyle Gargoyle" McGonagle to gargle Gershwin is a performance for the ages
posted by nubs at 7:38 AM on November 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


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