Review Detail

Another splendid act of version preservation/assembly from TM2YC, this is the ideal way to watch Lucas' strange, spartan commentary on the future but also Vietnam but also McCarthyism but also an artifact of early 70s retro-futurism (witness the Buck Rogers clip that starts the whole thing off). As a step toward Star Wars, it's an important footnote, but as a bizarre and idiosyncratic bit of Baby Boomer filmmaking, it's equally-if-not-more remarkable, certainly of a piece with Lucas' follow-up American Graffiti. Also, with its meticulous attention to detail and large-scale crowd scenes, suggesting an epic that's not quite there, THX-1138 is perhaps equally worth watching in the context of producer Coppola's ouevre, suggesting some of the paranoiac claustrophobia and widescreen bravado of The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, respectively.

Having watched all the versions, this is certainly the one to go with, occasionally unavoidable spotty video quality aside, this is a terrific cut of a fascinating movie.