Where were you on November 17, 1978? If you were alive (I keep forgetting how young some of our readers are), you were probably in front of the one TV in your house, with your family, waiting on pins and needles for the evening news to end. Why? Because ABC was about to air the highly-anticipated show The Star Wars Holiday Special, that's why. Most of us had seen the blockbuster Star Wars about a dozen times by then, and we were looking forward to seeing our favorite characters in an all-new adventure!Unfortunately, it stunk. It stunk so bad that, according to IMDb, George Lucas tried to buy up all master copies of the show so it would never be shown again. And it hasn't; its only broadcast was on 11/17/78. It's never been released on home video, either. Bootlegs of the show have been floating around for decades, but have been hard to find.
But now, thanks to our old friend YouTube, you can now watch the entire special, which has been broken up into 10 parts. Part one is after the jump; click here to go to the YouTube page for it, where you'll see the other parts in the "Related" section.
Some quick info on it: It was a two-hour special built around the battle to get Chewbacca back to his Wookie family in time for Life Day. Most of the original movie's principal actors -- Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford -- appeared on the show briefly, but it was mostly about Chewie. There were also guest stars, including Bea Arthur, Art Carney, Harvey Korman, and Diahann Carroll. There was comedy, music -- Princess Leia sings! Jefferson Starship rocks out! -- and even a Boba Fett cartoon.
Boy, networks -- especially ABC -- created variety shows out of everything in those days, didn't they? First it was The Brady Bunch, then Star Wars. Is there a Barney Miller Skating Spectacular floating around that I don't know about?
(UPDATE: Looks like Lucas' thugs got to YouTube; the videos have been taken down.)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-12-2006 @ 8:23PM
yunencampi said...
Don't watch it! Whatever you do! Don't watch it! I saw this a while back and it... oh god... I'm shaking... you can tell that the actors were like "what am I doing here?", if they weren't too stoned to put together a cohesive thought. PLEASE AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!
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12-12-2006 @ 9:44PM
Fred said...
Seriously. This is not "so bad it's good." This is just painful.
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12-12-2006 @ 9:51PM
Tucker said...
Welp, that's the end of that. Too bad, I would have liked to see it. Hey, maybe someone threw it up on bittorrent...
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12-12-2006 @ 10:40PM
tom said...
Thankfully, I opened all 10 of the videos when I first got to the site in order to let them load up beforehand. By the time I was on part 8 they had already been taken down, but I got to watch all the way to the finish.
I can honestly say I've never felt so awful in my entire life. Fred is right, I tried going into it with the "so bad that its good" mindset, but halfway through part one I was already over that. Then, Jefferson Starship came on. And my mind was officially blown.
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12-13-2006 @ 1:41AM
EdO said...
This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Lucas Films because its content was used without permission
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12-13-2006 @ 2:35AM
Gavin said...
I have a VHS copy that I picked up about five years back, and I watched it just a few weeks ago. Well, watch isn't really the correct word....I had it on in the background while I played World Of Warcraft.
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12-13-2006 @ 10:04AM
Sir Loin said...
bahaha...I remember watching it 1978 and being mesmerized because STAR WARS WAS ON TV! Well, sort of. Didn't matter how bad it was as a kid, but I have to agree with everyone else's assessment so far: if you don't value brain cells, then by all means watch it.
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12-13-2006 @ 11:25AM
Brian said...
Ah yes, the late 1970s. Gotta love the sci-fi decisions of the day... Galactica 1980. Buck Rogers. And all those "return" shows... Shows how privileged we are now, doesn't it?
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12-13-2006 @ 9:06PM
tommymomo said...
CLip has been removed by request of Lucas Films.
I can't watch this, but Jar Jar is fine. Go figure
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12-27-2006 @ 10:18PM
AssMonkey said...
JAR JAR BINKS MUST DIE!!!
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1581601131
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12-31-2006 @ 10:57PM
AssMonkey said...
Sorry the above link is the special i found on youtube as its been taken off everywhere else
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