The third episode of our trip through some of the most beloved Christmas movies of all time isn't actually beloved. Notorious would be a better word. Infamous would be another. It also isn't a movie; it's a television special. What's more, it isn't even a television special you can go rent at your local Blockbuster, or queue up via Netflix. In fact, unless you happen to have been watching CBS at 8PM Eastern Time, November 17, 1978, you've probably never seen it. Or, unless you have one of the approximately one hundred billion bootlegged copies that have been floating around sci-fi conventions for the last 30 years. Or unless you have Google video. Anyway, you sure as hell are never going to see an official release: George Lucas -- the man who willingly released Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith into theaters -- has said that he is so ashamed of the Holiday Special that if he could, he would hunt down every copy of it in existence and smash them to pieces with a sledgehammer.
How bad is the Star Wars Holiday Special? It's so bad that even Star Wars geeks, many of whom pretend that the second trilogy wasn't relentlessly awful and have paid real cash money for Star Wars novelizations, think that it's a bad joke. It's so bad that Harrison Ford, during an appearance on the Conan O'Brien show, attempted to deny that he even remembered doing it. It's so bad that it goes beyond so-bad-it's-good into so-bad-it's-actually-terribly-bad and back around into so-bad-it-in-fact-is-immune-to-such-meaningless-abstractions-as-bad-and-good. It's so bad you feel sorry for Jefferson Starship for having had to be in it. Unless you have spent two hours being savagely tortured by members of the Iraqi Republican Guard, it is the most excruciatingly long two hours you will ever spend.
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