THX 1138 is a 1971 science fiction film directed by George Lucas in his directorial debut. The film is written by Lucas and Walter Murch. It stars Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence and depicts a dystopian future in which the populace is controlled through android police officers and mandatory use of drugs that suppress emotion, including sexual desire.

THX 1138 was the first feature-length film directed by Lucas, developed from his 1967 student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which he made in 1967 while attending the University of Southern California. This short film was itself based on a one-and-a-quarter page treatment of an idea by Matthew Robbins.^[2] Although George Lucas was not as interested in writing as he was in directing, Lucas spent 12 hours each day writing the screenplay. Lucas later commented: "...I just said, 'I'm going to finish this, as painful as it is, and I'm going to ignore these phone calls of lure of riches and get through this.' And somehow I did it."^[3] The feature film was produced in a joint venture between Warner Brothers and Francis Ford Coppola's new production company, American Zoetrope. A novelization by Ben Bova was published in 1971.

Plot[link]

In a city of the future, sexual intercourse is outlawed and use of mind-altering drugs is mandatory. Narcotics are critical both in maintaining compliance among the city's residents and also for ensuring their ability to conduct dangerous and demanding tasks for long periods of time. The inhabitants worship a godlike being known as "OMM 0910", with whom they commune in telephone booth-like areas known as Unichapels. At their jobs, SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasance) and LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) keep surveillance on the city and field questions (mostly about proper drug intake).

LUH has a male roommate, THX 1138 (Robert Duvall). He works in a factory producing androids that function as police officers. The work is hazardous as it requires handling explosive and radioactive material. LUH becomes disillusioned and makes a conscious decision to break the law and stop taking her drugs. She subsequently secretly substitutes inactive pills for THX's medications. As the drug's effects wear off, THX finds himself experiencing authentic emotions and sexual desire for the first time.

At first conflicted and nauseated, he eventually connects with LUH. Knowing that their relationship is illegal, THX must decide whether to return to using the prescribed drugs, or escape with LUH. He knows that he will not be able to function without his drugs while at his demanding job, but he does not want to lose what he has created with LUH. They consider an escape to the "superstructure," where they hope to be able to live in freedom.

THX is confronted by SEN, who uses his position as LUH's superior to change her shift, admitting he wants THX as his new roommate. THX files a complaint against SEN for the illegal shift change. Without drugs in his system, THX falters during critical and hazardous phases of his job. The city's authorities discover THX's and LUH's crimes of sexual intercourse and drug evasion (because of a bureaucratic error, THX is briefly "mind-locked" while at a critical juncture of android construction, which almost leads to disaster). THX and LUH are arrested.

THX is imprisoned in a white limbo world. He enjoys a brief reunion with LUH—one disrupted by the enforcer robots. THX is consigned to another region of limbo, this one populated by a collection of other prisoners, including SEN. Knowing that THX filed the complaint against him, SEN nevertheless rallies him to join his undescribed cause (some of SEN's dialogue is taken from speeches by Richard Nixon).^[4]

Most of the prisoners seem uninterested in escape, but eventually THX and SEN decide to find an exit. They encounter SRT (Don Pedro Colley), who starred in the holograms broadcast across the city. SRT has become disenchanted with his role in the society and is making an attempt to escape.

Exiting their prison, THX and SRT are separated from SEN. Controllers in the city learn of the escape and allot a strict budget (14,000 credits) for their recapture. Chased by the robots, THX and SRT find a computer center, from which THX learns that LUH has been "consumed", possibly for organ reclamation (since bodies discovered earlier had, as SRT put it, their "insides...gone") and her name reassigned to fetus 66691 in a growth chamber. This suggests that she has been declared "incurable" and killed.

Alone and hunted, SEN makes a tentative exploration of the limits of the city's underground network. Cowed by what he sees, he finds his way to an area reserved for the monks of OMM. Alone, SEN prays directly to OMM before being confronted by a lone monk who notices that SEN has no identification badge. SEN attacks before the monk can report him. Returning to the city, SEN strikes up a conversation with children before police androids apprehend him.

THX and SRT steal two cars, but SRT crashes into a concrete pillar, disabling it. (The film's script indicates he does not survive the impact.) Pursued by two police androids on motorcycles, THX flees to the limits of the city's underground road network.

Eventually THX locates a route to the surface. The police pursue THX up an escape ladder, but are ordered by central command to cease pursuit, mere steps away from capturing him, as the expense of his capture exceeds their pre-determined budget. It is then revealed that the entirety of the city whence THX came is all underground, as he stands before a large setting sun in a red sky, while birds intermittently fly overhead (indicating that life is possible on the surface).

Cast[link]

Hans Memling's Christ Giving His Blessing (1478) is used as the visual representation of the state-sanctioned deity OMM 0910.^[5]

• Robert Duvall as THX 1138
• Donald Pleasence as SEN 5241
• Don Pedro Colley as the hologram SRT
• Maggie McOmie as LUH 3417
• Ian Wolfe as the old prisoner PTO
• Marshall Efron as prisoner TWA
• Sid Haig as prisoner NCH
• John Pearce as prisoner DWY
• James Wheaton as the voice of OMM 0910

Production[link]

In order to emphasize the dehumanizing nature of the world of THX 1138, Lucas insisted that most of the actors and actresses in the film shave their heads, with some characters going completely bald, while others were allowed to maintain a buzz cut. As a publicity stunt, Lucas arranged for several actors to get their first haircuts/shaves at unusual venues, and have this filmed for later use in a tongue-in-cheek promotional featurette entitled Bald. Robert Duvall had his head shaved while watching a baseball game, while his co-star, Maggie McOmie, had hers done at the scenic Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Another actor, Marshall Efron, who would later play an insane man in the film, was allowed to cut off his own hair and was filmed doing so in a bathtub. The Bald featurette was included in the 2004 DVD release. Many of the extras seen in the film were recruited from the controversial addiction recovery program Synanon, most of whose members had shaved heads.^[6]

Filming began on September 22, 1969 with the car chase sequence in the then unfinished tunnels of the BART Subway System in San Francisco. Other locations in the San Francisco area included the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley; the San Francisco International Airport; and at a remote manipulator for a hot cell, among other various locations which Lucas and Coppola considered futuristic. Scenes are cleverly edited to produce a sterile and claustrophobic environment without clearly revealing that the entire 'city' is underground. Production wrapped in mid-November 1969 and the film was edited by Lucas. Walter Murch compiled and synched the sound montage, which includes all the "overhead" voices heard throughout the film (radio chatter, announcements, etc.). The bulk of the editing was finished by mid-1970.

The chase scene featured Lola T70 Mk.IIIs with dummy turbine engines racing against Yamaha TA125/250cc 2-stroke race replica motorcycles through two San Francisco Bay Area automotive tunnels: the Caldecott Tunnel between Oakland and Orinda, and the underwater Posey Tube between Oakland and Alameda. The final climb out to the daylight was actually filmed (with the camera rotated 90 degrees) in the incomplete (and decidedly horizontal) BART Transbay Tube before installation of the track supports, with the actors using exposed reinforcing bars as a ladder. In the end scene, writer Matthew Robbins plays THX as he climbs from the shaft and stands before the sunset.^[7]

This film is very notable for one of the most spectacular motorcycle stunts ever filmed. Stuntman Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton, billed as Duffy Hamilton in the credits, somehow gathered up the fortitude to ride his police bike full speed into a fallen paint stand, flew over the handlebars, was hit by the airborne bike, landed in the street on his back, and slammed into the crashed car that Duvall's character had escaped in. It is a full-on shot---evidently the subject of a comment by Lucas detailing a "motorcycle disaster" during the filming.

Origin of the name[link]

The significance of the name THX 1138 has been the subject of much speculation among fans. In an interview for the DVD compilation Reel Talent, which included Lucas's original 4EB short, Lucas stated that he chose the letters and numbers for their aesthetic qualities, especially their symmetry.^[8]

Walter Murch claims in the audio commentary that he always believed Lucas intended THX to be “sex”, for LUH to be “love”, and for SEN to be “sin”.

Release[link]

THX 1138 was released to theaters on March 11, 1971 and was commercially unsuccessful. The film was re-released with the five minutes edited back in by Lucas after the success of Star Wars in 1977, but still did not gain popularity.

Home media[link]

The original cut of THX 1138 had been available for several years on both laserdisc (in letterbox format) and VHS, but was not immediately available on DVD. Although this was in part the result of Lucas's early skepticism of the DVD format, it was also because of his desire to rework parts of the film before it was released on DVD.

In 2004, Lucas finally set about getting a DVD version of the film together. Like he did with Star Wars, Lucas put the film through audio/video restoration, making use of computer-generated imagery to modify certain scenes to his liking, mostly by expanding crowds and sets. In addition, Lucas shot new footage for the film, and even went as far as to reshoot several scenes using computer systems to insert the actors and replace existing footage. This director's cut was released to a limited number of digital-projection theaters on September 10, 2004 and on DVD in Region 1 on September 14. Region 2 and 4 releases came later. More recently, a Blu-ray edition was released on September 7, 2010.^[9]

Neither of the theatrical versions of the film have been released on DVD or Blu-ray.

Reception[link]

The film has an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[10]

Versions[link]

There are three different versions of THX-1138:

• Original cut: 86 minutes, released in 1977
• Theatrical cut: 81 minutes
• Director's cut: 88 minutes, released on DVD in 2004 and on Blu-ray in 2010

In popular culture[link]

• "Man Amplified" and "Memories of Sound" by Clock DVA contain samples.^[11]
• The Misfits song "We Are 138" is thought to be based on the movie.^{[citation needed]}
• In 1979, the rock band Toto released the single "99", a song inspired by THX-1138's society where people were given numbers instead of names. The music video for the song features the band in an all-white room dressed in white, a set piece designed around Lucas's film.^[12]
• The Atari home computer video game Star Raiders responds to unknown keyboard commands with the status message "WHAT'S WRONG?", which is a reference to THX 1138.^[13]
• The opening sounds of "Mr. Self Destruct" on the Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral is a sample from THX 1138 in which a man is being beaten by a prison guard.^[14]
• The yellow hot rod driven by Paul Le Mat in the 1973 George Lucas film American Graffiti shows the license plate THX 138.^[15]
• Sound engineer Tomlinson Holman named his THX certification system to intentionally reference both his own name (Tomlinson Holman's eXperiment) and Lucas's film.^{[citation needed]}
• A cover for the musical band Unkle's release Edit Music for a Film used artwork from the film,^[16] and their track "I Need Something Stronger" is almost entirely composed of THX 1138 samples.
• The rap group Gangstarr's 1997 music video "You Know my Steez", directed by Terry Heller, is a faithful homage to THX 1138, from the costuming and iconic cinematography to an upside-down miniature BART tunnel and the duplication of the famous extreme telephoto sunset ending.^[17]
• The song "Regime of Coincidence, State of Gravity" on Laibach's 1992 album Kapital is made up nearly entirely of samples from THX 1138.
• In the TV show Animaniacs in the introduction of Pinky and the Brain, it shows The Brain writing equations on a blackboard, which he writes "THX-1138" as part of his equation.
• In the 2009 film Fanboys, the security guards at Skywalker Ranch wear uniforms similar to the police in THX 1138.
• In the video game Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, selecting a Stormtrooper soldier (Galactic Empire faction) occasionally results in his reply "THX 1138 ready, sir!".
• In the Star Wars tie-in novelisation, a Stormtrooper is referred to as THX 1138.

See also[link]

• Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB
• Utopian and dystopian fiction

References[link]

Notes

Sources

• Lucas, George (Director) (2004). THX 1138 (The George Lucas Director's Cut Two-Disc Special Edition) (DVD). USA: Warner Brothers. ISBN 0-7907-6526-8. http://worldcat.org/oclc/56520465?tab=details. 
• Pollock, Dale (1999). Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas. Da Capo. ISBN 0-306-80904-4. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: THX 1138

• Official website (requires Flash Player to run site)
• THX 1138 at the Internet Movie Database
• THX 1138 at AllRovi
• DVD THX forum
• Interview with Don Pedro Colley about his experiences working on THX 1138 at a Lucas fan site
• Director's Cut changes, with screenshots
• White on White Village Voice review April 8, 1971
• THX 1138 at Rotten Tomatoes