12 Days of Christmas Movies: Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

Star Wars is one of the first movies I remember watching and I’ve been chasing the dragon ever since, trying to recapture the same exhilaration I felt as a young kid seeing that vast Imperial Star Destroyer chasing Princess Leia’s ship. I’ve even been close on occasion, but my Star Wars fandom has waned over the decades, finally coming to an end when I received a message from my niece a few years ago.

My American brother-in-law’s parents had taken them all to Walt Disney World in Florida for a special treat, and she sent a video of something that made me unreasonably irate: a squad of Stormtroopers walking along the main street to the Imperial March with that blummin' fairy-tale castle in the background. I mean, I’m not daft, I realise that the Star Wars universe has been an immense revenue stream as well as a beloved film series since the first movie dropped almost 50 years ago. But the Empire’s un-sharp shooters performing alongside Mickey Mouse and Goofy for a bunch of tourists was just too egregious, too nefarious, too incongruous, and too far out of context for my wizened love for the franchise to survive any longer.

It might have come to the crunch much earlier if the ill-fated Star Wars Holiday Special had been widely available after its debut on CBS on November 17th 1978. With the likes of Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill present in body if not spirit, it was a two-hour televisual spectacular designed to cash in on the roaring success of A New Hope, relegating Wonder Woman to a later time slot and bumping Lou Ferrigno’s The Incredible Hulk to the following week.

That would be its first and only occasion airing on TV, and it subsequently became a cult item so hard to find that bootleg copies became treasured arcana for hardcore Star Wars fans, usually of very poor quality – comedian Bobcat Goldthwaite recalled, “It was easier to watch the Zapruder film than the copy of the Holiday Special that I got.” Its rarity before the advent of the internet only added to the notoriety, and George Lucas later said he wished he could’ve tracked down every copy and destroyed them with a hammer.

But even Lucas’s wealth and clout couldn’t snuff out the legendary special which reputedly originated with the filmmaker himself, stemming from his “Wookiee bible” and a five-page treatment involving a Wookiee family awaiting the return of a certain famous walking carpet for the holidays. However, as Lucas’s attention turned towards pre-production for The Empire Strikes Back, he handed over creative control to a group of writers, directors, and TV variety show veterans who barely understood what sci-fi was, let alone Star Wars.

What followed became the telly equivalent of Plan 9 from Outer Space or Manos: The Hands of Fate, a misguided venture that is now legendary for its utter awfulness. Even most of the principal cast reprising their beloved roles (apart from Kenny Baker, who was subbed for a remote control R2-D2) couldn’t save it.

Unfortunately, we spend most of our time with the family of Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) as they anxiously wait to see if his pal Han Solo (Harrison Ford) can evade Imperial ships in the Millenium Falcon and get him back to Kashyyyk to celebrate Life Day. We meet Chewie’s wife Malla (Mickey Morton), young son Lumpy (Patty Maloney), and elderly father Itchy (Paul Gale) as they mooch around their spacious open-plan treehouse carpeted with astroturf – evidently, Chewbacca’s illicit earnings from smuggling runs with Han can afford you some pretty sweet digs on Wookiee planet.

It’s a bold opening gambit to spend a large chunk of the show with a family of hairy aliens whose native language sounds like (according to Lucas’s friend Bruce Vilanch) “fat people having an orgasm.” I don’t even think it’s a terrible idea, because something like Wall-E proves that you can build captivating drama around unintelligible non-human characters. This isn’t quite to the standard of Pixar’s masterpiece, however, and the grunting and growling goes on forever until we get a few more words spoken in English.

We check in with Luke Skywalker and R2-D2. The Holiday Special was made after Mark Hamill had his car accident in early 1977, and he looks very different from the callow youth we met in Star Wars, soldiering through his scenes under a heavy layer of makeup. While it’s great to see Hamill, Ford, and Fisher, their involvement is reduced to a few sheepish cameo appearances.

Mostly we have to make do with some rather less youthful and dynamic human characters. The producers were stalwarts of TV variety shows and drafted in some seasoned troupers, and first up is Oscar-winner Art Carney as Saun Dann, a wily old trader who is friends with the Wookiees. To his credit, Carney commits to the bit and raises a few smiles with his old-school comedy stylings contrasting with the Star Wars setting (“Why all the long, hairy faces?”) Dann gives them all Life Day gifts – one of the low-lights must surely be lecherous old Itchy having a very cringeworthy VR session with his sexy new AI girlfriend, played by Oscar nominee Diahann Carroll.

Later, we get corny entertainer Harvey Korman in a comic treble role and Bea Arthur (The Golden Girls), but their energy is all wrong. Reportedly, the people behind the special turned down the chance to hire Robin Williams because he wasn’t a proven talent at that stage in his career. Considering the energy he brought to his breakthrough role in Mork & Mindy in the same year, that definitely would’ve livened things up a little.

Instead, the show drags on interminably as we alternate between the Wookiees moping around and a tired variety format with acrobatic dancers, a song from Jefferson Starship, some creaky comedy skits (I must admit, I chuckled at Korman’s four-armed celebrity chef), and an animated sequence introducing everyone’s favourite intergalactic bounty hunter, Boba Fett.

Later, a somewhat dramatic element is introduced as an Imperial officer and his Stormtrooper goons arrive in search of Han and Chewie, sticking laser blasters in the Wookiee’s faces and tossing Lumpy’s room not once but twice. 

Despite wanting to wash his hands of the Special, George Lucas has gamely maintained that it’s canon, set somewhere between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. That at least explains why the Imperials are such hard-ons about threatening the family and trashing Lumpy’s stuff, including beheading his Bantha cuddly toy. They’re understandably miffed after the good guys destroyed their Death Star, so I guess we can be thankful they didn’t go full Third Reich and have Chewie’s family shot for their connection to the Rebel hero.

I will say this for the Special: It always occurred to me in the original trilogy that life under the evil Empire didn’t seem all that bad – apart from the destruction of Alderaan, of course. The show at least pre-figured Rogue One and Andor by showing what a drag it must be for regular folks in the Star Wars universe.

We get another indication of this as we cut away for a downbeat sequence at the Mos Eisley cantina featuring some very familiar clientele from the original movie. Bea Arthur plays Ackmena, the proprietor, and she’s slinging wacky-coloured drinks while getting wooed by Krelman (Korman again), a lovestruck alien with a very queasy-looking orifice in the top of his head. The Imperials impose a curfew and she kicks out all her guests to a hoary old torch song set to a melancholy version of the Cantina Band music. I kind of liked this scene, even if it is a bit of a bummer.

Eventually, Han and Chewbacca show up to kill a Stormtrooper and save Life Day. As the family is reunited, we get another awkward moment as Malla stares lovingly into Han’s eyes for an uncomfortably long time – apparently, a discarded piece of lore had the space pirate married to a Wookiee. From this seriously suggestive eye contact, it looks like he may have been having a bit of nookiee with Malla behind Chewie’s back. Or perhaps they’re just swinging friends – it was the ‘70s, after all. Either way, I’m glad Lucas didn’t stick with that back story.

They all head over to the Tree of Life, where an (allegedly) coked-up Carrie Fisher warbles an ode to tolerance and inter-species brotherly love set to John Williams’ iconic Star Wars theme. Once the show’s over, the Wookiee family settle down to enjoy their Life Day meal.

In full disclosure, this run-down of the show is only based on the abridged 80-minute version rather than the full two-hour special. That was hard enough to sit through and, on the evidence available there, I don’t think the extra 40 minutes would have changed my opinion much. Which brings us to the question: does the Star Wars Holiday Special deserve its heinous reputation?

One point to consider is that, although it is supposedly canon and set between the events of episodes IV and V, the special is very much a variety show rather than a conventional TV movie. Lucas was less fussy about how his characters were used back then, and some of them had already made appearances doing dance numbers and skits on other shows with hosts like the Osmonds, Bob Hope, and Richard Pryor (whose bit is actually pretty great). By comparison, the Holiday Special must have looked like blockbuster fare.

It was also a means to an end for Lucas; although Star Wars was a box office phenomenon, it was only a standalone movie at the time, and he was keen to keep it in the public eye until the release of The Empire Strikes Back. Not only that, he had a new bunch of toys to sell, and the Holiday Special was a way to get the merch in front of eager young audiences in time for Christmas.

All that background info doesn’t make the Star Wars Holiday Special any easier to watch from a modern perspective, and I say that as a connoisseur of cult movies that would try the patience of many viewers. If you’re interested in finding out more, I recommend checking out A Disturbance in the Force, a lively and affectionate documentary that provides enough of a taste without actually having to sit through the real thing.

Otherwise, I guess we can conclude by saying that the Holiday Special is a quirky cultural artefact that has enough bizarre moments to just about edge it into “so bad it’s good” territory. And it’s still better than Attack of the Clones. 🙂