A Day Late And Three Dollars Short

Yesterday I missed noting it was the fortieth anniversary of the release of Star Wars.  I was reminded of that last night when I attended Cinefamily's Star Wars Mixtape.  It was a 97-minute collection of rarities and oddities--outtakes, TV clips, commercials, news reports, interviews, parodies, etc.  If you're in Los Angeles, they'll be repeating it twice this weekend, so you might want to check it out.

Much of the collection I'd never seen, but I was shocked to find a rarity in the mix I thought only I knew about.  I'm pretty sure it's from the film Youth Gangs Of Wildwood High*, an ultra-low budget teen comedy I saw in the early 80s.

About the only thing I remember from the movie is a teenage couple discussing what movie to see and one suggests "Revenge Of The Jedi." That made me laugh back then. "Revenge" was the original announced title, but by the time the high school film came out it has been changed to "Return." So the moment they thought would make the film sound current was a total failure (as was everything else in the film).

That anyone else knew about this, much less had a copy, was shocking.

*But it can't be Youth Gangs From Wildwood High.  According to the IMDb, it was originally a film called Team-Mates, released in 1978.  It was rereleased in 1983 with a new title to take advantage of Fast Time At Ridgemont High.

Which would mean unless some new footage was shot, there was no way anyone could have known the false title of the third Star Wars film.