I was just reading a post on some other blog, and I saw the umpteenth assertion that the Star Wars Holiday Special was Godawful dreck, and I got to wondering, “Hmmm…is it possible that it really wasn’t quite that bad? Could it have been kind of good, in a kitschy way?” So it was off to YouTube, and…
Hoo boy. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go lay down in bed and quiver in existential horror.
As a not-terribly-proud owner of not one but two bootleg copies of the Holiday Special — long story — I can assure you that the Life Day song is only the cherry atop a very rancid sundae. Try to find a clip of Bea Arthur as the Mos Eisley cantina owner singing a melancholy little tune as she boots out the stragglers for the night. Or Chewie’s father indulging his perverse interspecies jones for a holographic Dihann Carroll. Existential horror indeed…
Crap is crap, but think about this. 1977 was well before anyone really had VCRs. (We didn’t get our first one until 1981). Star Wars was such a juggernaut, and it was the type of movie that people went to see multiple times – it was the first movie I ever saw more than once in the theater.
So, it makes all the sense in the world that these guys would milk that for all it was worth. Paydays all around, and people probably lapped it up back in the day of the ubiquitous variety show.
Hey, when are the Hudson Brothers on?