The Empire Cracks Back: A Star Wars Parody

About

A long time ago, in a city far far away...

THE EMPIRE CRACKS BACK

It is a dark time in indie filmmaking. It is a time before film school, before 16mm, before PC's or Mac's, before the internet, before HD home cameras, before CGI and After Effects, before computer editing software.

It is a dark time, of Super 8 sound movies and cameras, of getting film developed at the local drug store and editing it with a splicer and tape on a Super 8 viewer with a 6 inch screen and a magnifying glass!...Of literally scratching the film emulsion to create blaster rays and light sabre effects.

From this dark time comes my Star Wars parody, "The Empire Cracks Back", my epic Super 8 opus shot in early 1981. Made by a bunch of 19 year olds with lofty ambitions, no money, cool home made costumes and props and a Millenium Falcon cockpit I built in my basement.

The folks at ILM liked it. After sending them a VHS copy, I got a call one night from Bill George (One of the chief model builders at ILM) and he told me that they thought it was hilarious. They were on a break from shooting the tunnel chase sequence from "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom" and popped the tape in. It was also shown at a bunch of comic book and sci conventions in the early to mid 80's. Crudely made, with some "Airplane" style humor guaranteed to offend and piss off somebody!

And now for your viewing pleasure, in glorious regular D, with scratches and all comes...

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Credit

Scott Rhodes

Language

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed