STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL

To celebrate Star Wars Rogue One, I decided to review one of the few Star Wars things that I have yet to see, plus it is Friday, so its a review weekend!. 1978 was a great year, the best ever in my opinion (although I might be biased.) A dozen of eggs were less than 50 cents, a lb. of bacon was only $120, an 8-track player was only $169.00, the VW Beetle stops production, Sesame Street celebrated Christmas Eve on network television, Garfield goes into production in June, and about a month later I was born in July! ;) Oh and in November Star Wars got a holiday special, but we want to know more about me right? I was.....okay okay...We'll discuss the special!

I heard how bad this was ever since I found out about many years ago, but never could bring myself to actually watch it. I mean come on Wookies living like humans? I am of course talking about the now very much infamous Star Wars Holiday Special! As I type this introduction I have only gotten through about 7 or 8 minutes of this hour and a half special and can tell why it is so infamous.

 It all starts with Chewie and Han trying to out run some Star Destroyers to get Chewie back to Kashyyk in time for Life day. We next are shown a house in the trees where Chewie's family lives. We see his son Lumpy (Yes Lumpy) playing with a model airplane as his grandpa Itchy is working on another.

 Look at Itchy's face.

 Lumpy tries to sneak a cookie.

Soon, his mom sends him to take out the trash as she continues to cook. Lumpy then goes on the railing outside and does a tightrope act many stories off the ground (I bet parents had a field day trying to keep their kids from doing that). Soon Lumpy returns after Malla looks at a pic of Chewie. Grandpa Itchy then plays an acrobatic holofile for Lumpy to watch. This was a normal thing to add in these old variety shows.

It then gets better as we meet with Luke who with R2, is fixing an engine somewhere unspecified. Then we see Vader. Then back t stupidity as Malla begins t cook while watching a cooking show. So far the parts that make this show so unbearable ARE the Wookie scenes and its because we know that they do not live like this and it is just so horribly stupid in my opinion.

 Although I do enjoy variety shows/ specials, this just seems so wrong and boring. I think it is because it revolves around Chewie's family and I just do NOT like them. Unlike the other Star Wars characters, they aren't really fleshed out much and you are always trying to discover what is going on as they just growl like Chewie, and in many scenes it is just them and no subtitles so you need to follow what they are physically doing to understand it. The problem with that is the quality.

 This special never was released on VIDEO or DVD and therefore only recordings from its original airing exist. This is why the quality is so bad I mean this was 1978 and HD did not exist yet.

 I will say no matter how bad this special is, it has one big positive: Boba Fett's first media appearance (I say media as he supposedly appeared first in a parade or something). The appearance is animated and I really enjoyed the animation. Even with the poor picture quality, it was very good which makes me think it might have been even better on TV! The animation is also much better than most cartoons of it's time!

From what I could find, it seems that this special aired on November 17, 1978. This never aired again and was something that George Lucas himself despised and tried to erase it from history from what I have heard, hence why it has never been released on DVD or VIDEO. This special is pretty bad and I would not recommend it to anyone except for those who like crappy specials or die hard STAR WARS fans. I can see why Lucas tried to bury this horrible special!