Modern Cult Classic: Star Wars Holiday Special

It’s easy to forget these days, what with the now-completed Skywalker Saga and the wide assortment of spin-off features, Disney+ series, animated series, toys, games and LEGO sets, but there was a time when Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope, that is) was a really, really, really, really big deal. It was one of the first modern blockbusters, launched the very idea of toy merchandizing, kicked off a popular line of Marvel Comics and was promptly re-released in theaters… all before the Star Wars Holiday Special aired on CBS in November of 1978.

Was that TV special a big enough deal to pre-empt the regularly scheduled episode of The Incredible Hulk? Hell yeah, it was.

I remember watching the Star Wars Holiday Special on TV as a kid. I was a Star Wars kid, naturally: I had the action figures, the blaster, the bed sheets, so I absolutely hunkered down in our rec room to watch my favorite heroes from the comfort of my own home on television.

I don’t remember the details of that initial viewing. I do remember how excited I was to see it, and how that excitement drained away over the course of those two long hours (I can't imagine the commercial breaks helped). It is, to my recollection, the first time I ever experienced soul-crushing disappointment.

 

Directed by Steve Binder, 1978, 97 minutes, TV-PG
A happy Life Day to all, and to all a good “ARRRGGHHHH!”

 

We open with urgent music as the Millennium Falcon urgently flees from a pair of Star Destroyers. Han Solo urgently flips switches and toggles as Chewbacca urgently roars at him, because he eager to get home for Life Day. Sure, they’re being chased by intergalactic space Nazis, but Chewie doesn’t want his roast rancor to get cold! So Han light speeds us into a cheap recreation of the Star Wars logo, and the CBS Special Presentation announcer promises that the special will “star” the original cast of the hit film. Unfortunately, the CBS Special Presentation announcer is a filthy liar.

I mean, yes, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, et al, do appear in the special – and not as stock footage (looking at you, Darth Vader) – but the actual stars of the show are Chewbacca’s relatives. We’re introduced to Chewie’s wife, Malla; his father, Itchy; and his son, Lumpy. No, I’m not making up those names. The lion’s share of the 97-minute runtime takes place in Casa de Chewbacca as the family waits for Chewie to come home for Life Day, which means some 60% of the special consists of performers in repurposed bigfoot costumes gesturing at each other while yelling “ARRRGGHHHH!”

The Star Wars Holiday Special is ultimately a Star Wars-themed variety show so we get a variety of acts, most of which range from “not so good” to “how much cocaine?” These included:

• A hologram performance by the best version of Cirque du Soleil that 1978 had to offer
• A cooking show starring Harvey Korman as a four-armed Space Julia Child making “bantha surprise”
• “Live, un-edited” footage from Tatooine, where bartender Bea Arthur has to deal with the advances of Harvey Korman and a whole cantina of patrons who don’t want to go home
• Another hologram performance, this time by Jefferson Starship (I will bet you real money that they were asked to join the show because the band had “starship” in its name), featuring new singer Marty Balin singing into a glowing popsicle
• Another video starring Harvey Korman, only this time as a malfunctioning android in an instructional video on how to create a mini-transmitter, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds

I did leave two particularly notable segments from that list. The first is an animated feature that would later be carved out and titled “The Story of the Faithful Wookiee,” which features the first appearance of Boba Fett. It’s an interesting introduction to the character, as he shows up riding a space brontosaurus and wielding a giant tuning fork. He also speaks more in this nine-minute feature than he does in the entirety of the original trilogy. I don’t know what the animators did to Harrison Ford’s face here, but this is the most entertaining segment of the special by a country mile.

And then there’s the segment where Itchy watches a 1978-style VR performance by Diahann Carroll that leaves Itchy… uh, highly stimulated. Whenever people would bring up this segment in the past, I thought they were exaggerating or reading into things. They are not. The less said about this, the better.

These segments are broken up by scenes with Art Carney as a Rebel-friendly neighborhood trader, Han and Chewie being chased by stock footage of TIE fighters, and FaceTime calls to Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. It all wraps up with the family reunited (sorry for the 40something year-old spoiler) and a truly trippy Life Day ceremony that involves Wookiees in red robes, teleporting, and a holiday song by a very game Carrie Fisher.

Wikipedia states that the Star Wars Holiday Special was ranked #3 in “The Five Goofiest Moments of the Star Wars Mythos” by the UK’s Star Wars magazine. I couldn’t verify that, but I wish I could because I’m dying to know what two moments were considered goofier.

Maybe this special was only ranked #3 because it's more painfully bad than delightfully bad. The fact that this special was so hard to find definitely gave it some notoriety over the years, so that's something. I do love that this thing exists as a cultural touchstone, something for even casual fans to point to and say, “How weird is that?!” Just don’t ask me to watch it again any time soon.

 

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Autobiopic: The Running Man

‘Tis the season to be jolly – jolly broke! All month long here at The ‘Bin, we’re gonna do a bit of counter-programming in the form of

BUY & SELL: CONSUMERISM GONE WILD! MONTH

 

We have a hot one this week. Let’s go straight to the review!

 

 
Directed by Paul Michell Glaser, 1987, 100 minutes, Rated R
“Don’t touch that dial!”

 

I am very much a child of the ‘80s. As such, I had a lot of the same cultural role models as many of the other boys my age: the too-cool-for-school Han Solo, the all-business powerhouse of the Boston Red Sox, Jim Rice, and the dashing good ol’ boy Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard. Yes, I know The Dukes of Hazzard hasn’t aged well, but it had car chases and whatnot, and that was more than enough to impress me as a wee lad.

But there was one man I found particularly fascinating. He was a beloved television personality, and because of him I learned the meaning of such words as “suave” and “droll” because he fully embodied those concepts. And the women loved him – loved him. That man, of course, was Richard Dawson, host of The Family Feud.

 

Yes, I know this take hasn’t aged well, but Dawson was effortlessly charming and funny and stylish, and that was more than enough to impress me as a wee lad. Other kids wanted to be astronauts or firemen or baseball players, but I wanted to be Richard Dawson. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that I was very, very, very excited for Mr. Dawson’s star turn as the villainous game show host in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Running Man. 

I can’t help but feel that The Running Man is the neglected film in Schwarzenegger’s filmography. I get that it falls in a truly epic run of Ahnold movies (Predator, The Running Man, Red Heat, Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Terminator 2 – how’s that for a five-year run?), but that’s not to love about The Running Man? It has Ahnold in his career prime and most quippiest, it’s (very loosely) based on a Stephen King story, it has Richard freakin’ Dawson!

Know what else it has? An opening scroll in a font that screams “The Future Circa 1982.” I’ll spare you the full transcription, but we’re in the distant future of 2017 and we’re either in the world of The Hunger Games or North Korea. Also, the general public has become enamored with a “sadistic game show” featuring “high-tech gladiators.” Maybe someday someone can explain how gladiator fights appease unhappy masses.

Hey, it’s Ahnold (or “Ben Richads,” as the film insists on calling him), and he’s flying a choppah! He and his fellow soldiers have been ordered to fire on a “food riot” consisting of unarmed, starving people. Ahnold refuses, and he brothers-in-arms are strangely happy to beat the snot out of him. This not only gets him thrown in a workcamp with Yaphet Kotto and a Nerdy Tech Guy that takes at least seven minutes to break out of, but it also gets Ahnold framed as “The Butcher of Bakersfield” for firing on unarmed citizens.

Enough of that, let’s talk about The Dawson! Check out how we meet his character, famed game show host Damon Killian: Dawson is pedeconferencing with his assistant about ratings when he physically bumps into an old janitor. The janitor is immediately apologetic, but Dawson blows it off. Dawson draws him in, asks the old guy for his name, complements him. And then, alone in the elevator with his assistant, Dawson makes it clear that the janitor is to be fired post-haste.

It’s the kind of “evil corporate guy” scene we’ve scene a million times, but Richard Dawson sells the hell out of it. It’s the most convincing instance of someone being warm and folksy and then a cutthroat bastard on the flip of a switch. It makes me wish Richard Dawson did more movies.

Meanwhile, Yaphet Kotto and Nerdy Tech Guy want Ahnold to join their Resistance to Fight the Power and Rise Against the Machine and whatnot, but Ahnold wants nothing to do with it. Instead, he goes to his brother’s apartment to find a Lovely Latina Lady doing aerobics in lingerie to a workout show hosted by Jesse “The Body” Ventura. I know that sentence reads like a fever dream, but that’s what happens. Ahnold comes up with a terrible plan to force the Lovely Latina Lady to go to Hawaii with him, and it’s a bit depressing to see that even in this fascist dystopian future, airport security isn’t as strict or invasive as it is in our real life. Yada yada yada, Ahnold has “volunteered” to be the next contestant on The Running Man.

There’s some great satire here. In addition to the stuff we’d expect about studios doing anything for ratings, we get fun little moments like a “court-appointed theatrical agent” and members of the studio audience winning “The Running Man home game.” The televised experience of The Running Man itself is frightening like today’s Big Brother: a large studio audience applauds the host, and together they all watch beefy idiots do stuff via a giant TV screen.

(Side Note: Big Brother might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever watched – and that’s coming from someone who chooses to watch and review bad movies. Yet, as of this writing, Big Brother has been on the air for 22 years and is still hosted by the robot known as “Julie Chen.” The has just been renewed for a 25^th season. The world is indeed full of mystery.)

Right before Ahnold is sent into the game on some kind of hydraulic bobsled, we get the Greatest Use of Ahnold’s Catchphrase Ever. “I’ll be back,” Ahnold gravely informs Richard Dawson. The Dawson takes a beat, intimidated, then recovers and glibly retorts, “Only in a rerun.” Ha!

Have I really gone 900 words without talking about the actual game within The Running Man? That’s because it’s kind of half-baked. Contestants have to make their way through unused sets from The Warriors while “Stalkers” – assassins outfitted like rejected Mortal Kombat characters who are selected by members of the studio audience – hunt them down and kill them. Of course, they’ve never met a contestant like Ahnold, and soon enough, the studio audience starts pulling for the underdog.

I could happily write another 900 words talking about the Stalkers. Hell, I could write 900 words about the ridiculous Dynamo – what with his opera singing and Lite Brite uniform and goofy little go-cart – but I’d just assume not spoil the experience for you. Yes, as Kurt Fuller grumbles in a particularly self-aware moment, The Running Man does have some third act problems, but it’s the helluva lot of fun and deserving of more attention than it gets.

 

This is the great and terrible Dynamo. Now go watch this movie.

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