Watch Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB For Free

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

George Lucas was in his early 20s when he shot "Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB". This must be taken into consideration when evaluating this 15-minute short film. He has worked on a couple other films before already, but unfortunately this seemingly was not a great help in improving this short film, maybe his most famous early work.It's the year 2187 and we see a man running through a futuristic labyrinth, in which he is under constant surveillance by a higher authority. From start to finish, the audience is confronted with scary choir voices, undefined blinding light effects and radio voices. Sometimes less can be more and I wish Lucas would have taken that approach. The torture scenes and depicting the protagonist equal to a lab rat made for quite some shock value, but there was not a single point in this short film, where I really felt the character's helplessness and claustrophobic scare, which would have been necessary to really experience his delight when he finally manages to break free.I've watched quite a few very early short films from notable directors and this is one of the weaker examples. Hard to believe that only 10 years later, Lucas brought to life the probably most renowned movie franchise of all time.

The film departments of UCLA and Southern California University had an annual film competition for students from both schools at a time when they and New York University were about the only schools in the country offering a degree in cinema. In 1967, I attended the showing at UCLA's Royce Hall, and George Lucas's THX-1138 was a standout work among many very good ones. Not only was it the audience's favorite, but the judges awarded it best picture. Lucas was called to the podium to accept his award. He seemed nervous and shy at the microphone, but then startled as he was interrupted at the microphone, apparently a surprise to all on stage, by a lawyer from Warner Brothers who announced that Warners was offering whoever won the competition the opportunity to turn it into a feature. That was of course George. It seemed an eternity while he stood speechless, mouth open. Warners already had the young Francis Ford Coppola under contract, so they assigned him as producer to George. I then saw the resulting feature "THX 1138" in 1971 at a theater in Hollywood. It was not great commercial success, but as we all know, the success of the George Lucas career is legendary.

George Lucas developed this film during his days in film school. It impressed his teachers and eventually gave him the courage to make "THX 1138," a full-length spin-off which was his theatrical debut and featured the talents of Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence.This was the basis for that spin-off, which is much shorter and doesn't feature any of the complicated themes of the semi-remake. Personally I feel the remake is far superior because of its advanced storytelling, visuals, acting, and love story, but that's just me (and I have a feeling most people probably like the remake better, too, but...).The point remains that without this, George Lucas might never have impressed anyone. He might never have made "THX 1138." He might never have made "American Graffiti," and there would be no "Star Wars" because he wouldn't have convinced anyone to lend him the money.There would be no THX sound on DVDs. There would be no ILM. There would be no Indiana Jones, no Luke Skywalker, nothing.Hard to imagine, isn't it? All because of one small 15-minute, cheaply-produced short film...

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** This is the student film, made by George Lucas (during his days at the UCLA film school), that his first feature film 'THX 1138' was based on. I believe the complete title for the student film was 'THX 1138: 4EB (The Electronic Labyrinth)'. If you have not seen this film, you may or may not want to read this review, because I will be explaining the film in detail... and the movie is only about 15 minutes long. So read at your own risk. Also, If you have not seen the feature film version of 'THX', you may want to see the student film first.(note: I am not sure where this film would be available, it seems to be rare)OK, on to the movie! This student film encapsulates the main ideas presented in the last half of the feature film version, in particular the final chase scene. When the film opens, we are introduced to THX's mate, who gives about the only piece of dialog in the whole film and sets up the action to come. We then watch THX run through various obstacles and places that seem to be mysteriously monitored and booby trapped by technicians that are never given a location as to where they are. they are just there, somewhere, watching THX. THX escapes, just as the technicians close in to capture him (which is not explained either), running away into the outside sunlight. I think it's safe to say that the student film and the feature film are both very different and very much alike at the same time. The feature film gives us an antiseptic landscape who's population sports clean shaven heads and seemingly doped up and programmed minds. This is not the case in the student film, where people not only have hair (that idea probably came later), but the people in the student film seem very coherent as to what is going on around them. Also, in the feature film, robotic police officers are the ones responsible for tracking down THX (though some mysterious technicians are shown working with the robots).The student film touches briefly on the theme that THX is unhappy with his mate, who claims to not be interested in a relationship that involves love. In the feature film, THX's mate is the one who encourages THX to love her, and ultimately to run away from his life. However, even though there are these differences, the one thing that remains constant and really ties the two films together is the use of environment. Disembodied sounds, unexplained animations that appear on screen like some targeting scope, and the use of stark corridors and rooms are all elements that appear as part of the environment of both films. Lucas uses very vague (or hardly any) suggestions as to what is all happening on screen. This can be seen in the feature film as well, but much more apparent in the student film. The student film is almost at an experimental level in it's vagueness. We see things that pop out of nowhere, but somehow make sense in a 'far off future' sort of way. It actually helps not to know certain things, as to suggest that what is happening is so far removed from our own experience in the present, that this has to be taking place in the future (maybe even in another dimension). This same vagueness can be seen in all of the Star Wars films, where not everything is explained in 'Star Trek technical Manual' style. Some things are better left to the imagination.As a student film, and especially for one made in 1967, this is a fairly good film. It wont come across to most folk as entertaining, maybe not even understandable, but that is because of the level at which the film works. The film also shows a bit of rough new comer film making. There are moments of forced acting, where it looks like Lucas told the participants to do certain things and they just went through the motions. There are locations that THX runs through that are very obviously parking lots. Lucas even uses an elevator car as a sort of sonic torture chamber. But somehow all of these things come together for an interesting sci-fi debut from the guy who would later bring us Star Wars.