THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL Review: The DVD has selectable menus presenting the Special, the Star Wars episode of the Muppets Show and vintage Kenner toy commercials.
For a 1978 broadcast taped off television, it looks pretty good. Obviously I mean 'good' by 3rd generation VHS copy standards. The picture is blurry, and colours are washed out and smeared, but the video is very smooth with only some distortion, and drop out is at a minimum. The sound is kinda harsh and hollow, but quite 'listenable' and you can jump ahead with chapter stops. Really, I still have tapes from the 80s that don't hold up as well. As for the show itself, anyone familiar with that era's sketch variety shows will be familiar with the structure. The special opens with a live action plot about Chewie's family on Kyshykk waiting for him to arrive so they can celebrate Life Day together. Eventually, Chewie and Han do show up, but not before the imperials and a roster of comedy players including (Golden Girl's) Bea Arthur, Art Karney, (Mel Brook's alum) Harvey Korman, and others get mixed up in their 'wacky' shenanigan's. Needless to say, their antics are embarrassingly bad. I actually like most of the performers, but it’s all very slow and boring, especially the first 15 minutes when nothing happens. Interspersed throughout are bizarre 70's sci-fi dance and musical sequences, with trippy lava-lamp visuals. Aside from an appearance by one of my fav bands, Jefferson Starship the best part by far is the Nelvana cartoon sequence that introduces Boba Fett. Fans of Droids will love this. I've never seen this before and was surprised as Boba is already a cool badass character. This is well worth watching, too bad it’s so short. The Leia sing-a-long is a hoot too.
Included on the disc is the Muppet Show episode with Luke and the droids. I'm a huge Muppets fan and I love this episode. There is a sharp visual and audio buzz near the middle, but otherwise it looks and sounds pretty good. Like 1st gen VHS.
The real bonus is the vintage Kenner commercials and these are awesome. I haven't seen these since I was a kid and they bring back a lot of memories. I even still have a few 'em! Sure they're real dark and poor quality, but where else can you see them?
I got all this for the cost of the disc and shipping, and Rikter even threw in a couple of cool bonuses. Thanks a lot! You are a true fan and anyone in the Star Wars community would appreciate your efforts to preserve all this great memorabilia for Star Wars history!
