The Wake

As December approaches, it’s getting to Christmas special season. Last night I went to Bryant Lake Bowl to attend one of the most infamous Christmas specials of all time, the Star Wars Holiday Special. Technically, this is not a Christmas special, as it takes place a long time ago in a galaxy without a Jesus or a Santa Claus. This is a “Life Day” special, centering on the sacred Wookie Christmas equivalent which, from what I could tell, involves nothing other than being in a house and turning on devices. Oh, and dressing in robes and walking into the sun while singing. Uh, yeah. But this holiday is revered in Wookie culture, and the plot revolves around the intrepid quest to get Chewie back to his home planet in time for Life Day.

If you have never seen or heard of this film before, it is because no one wanted it to surface. This is, and I say this with little hesitation, the worst thing I have ever seen in my life. The special originally aired 30 years ago and has never seen release or been re-aired since. Rumor has it George Lucas did everything in his power to prevent the special from ever being seen again, and it’s understandable why. Having a certain propensity and even enjoyment of bad movies, I went to the screening last night expecting a low-budget travesty which would be so bad it’s funny. I’ve seen a good number of classic bad movies, from Manos: Hands of Fate to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and felt prepared for some unintentionally hilarious footage from this much-hyped cult classic. I was wrong. I did not respect just how terrible this movie was.

The opening sequence depicts Chewbacca’s family back on his home planet, awaiting his arrival for Life Day. The family are all creepy grunting squats who do not deserve as many close-ups as they receive. Chewbacca’s son Lumpy (yes, yes, I know) is an especially frightening hirsute imp who flits about making nightmarish grunts. After being in shock for a good ten minutes about what I was seeing, I began to realize that for these past ten minutes there had been no dialogue other than grunts and flailing pantomime. What in the hell is this?

And it only proceeded to get worse. All the original characters were there, with Harrison Ford putting in little to no effort, Carrie Fisher singing the theme song, and Mark Hammil looking like a coked-out Ken doll. The special was basically a bunch of different scenes which revolved, all painfully tangentially, around the central plot of Chewie’s return home. A rasher of guest stars made appearances, everyone from Jefferson Starship to Bea Arthur. Harvey Korman’s odd turn as a TV chef in blackface-Aunt-Jemimia-alien drag was… interesting… Diahann Carroll as the Wookie fantasy pleasure-machine clued me into something odd about the whole piece: How insanely sexual it all was. I was expecting this to be bad and have plenty of moment’s of unintentional hilarity, but with a scene of Diahann Carroll as the “holographic Wow” (”I am found in your eyes only eyes only - I am in your mind as you create me. Ohhh yes… I can feel my creation… Oh… oh… we are excited, aren’t we?”) singing in space as Chewie’s grandpa jerks wildly and grunts orgasmically, I stopped believing this could be unintentional. Um… Wookie masturbation? That didn’t get caught in the rewrite process? Jefferson Starship’s lead singer uses a light saber instead of a microphone when they perform, and let me tell you, that was not my first guess as to what it was. Yikes.

There was a strange little animated sequence in the middle which, for those of you trivia buffs out there, featured the first ever appearance of Bobo Fett. In it, Luke’s pupils dominate his whole face, Han looks like John Travolta if he had died in the 70’s, the planet they land is made of jello and R2-D2 wobbles like a dildo fresh off the conveyor belt. I don’t remember the plot. One of the biggest laughs came from the bumper in between commercials citing GM as a sponsor. Connecting themselves to this monstrosity appears to have been a bad omen.

I could go on, as the movie seemed to endlessly do, but in a nutshell, this was such a terrible movie that it exists on a separate plane from all other terrible movies. This is all-out ridiculous awful that probably counts as a torture device. Every two minutes I grabbed my hair and asked myself “Did that actually just happen? Am I really watching this right now? Somewhere along the line, someone somewhere felt that this needed to be captured on film?” I was simply in awe how god-awful this thing was. Eat your heart out, Jar-Jar: this is the fucking Citizen Kane of shit movies.

The event was hosted by The Minnesota Film and TV Board. This is their second year subjecting the masses to that which should not be seen, and this time they helped support Toys For Tots. It was free, and seeing the film in a bar with a crowd full of ironic appreciators turned what could have been an excruciating internet video into an enjoyable time despite itself. If you’re feeling brave, stupid, or suicidal, here is the Star Wars Holiday Special on Google Video, the whole two hours of non-stop decrepit garbage. Otherwise, you can join the Board next year as they show it again. Or, better yet, you can forget any of this ever existed and still pretend like the Star Wars franchise has some shred of dignity.