Adapted from one of the least pretentious (but still pretty embedded in its own behind) student films he made at USC, THX 1138 was George Lucas's feature film directorial debut, and it was pretty good! He managed to sucker Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasance to play the main roles, people didn't realise how much he cribbed from George Orwell's 1984, and he generally managed to construct a believable, half-original dystopian vision of a future America where the country is ruled by android policeman and all emotion is suppressed with mandatory medication. Including sexual desire which, really, wouldn't be that difficult because for some reason everyone in this future dystopia is bald. Which of course meant, for a low budget movie that couldn't afford to blow what little money it had on bald caps, that the cast all actually had to shave their heads for the film. It's a big ask, especially considering the finished flick didn't do so well and slowly built a cult following, but the cast were game. As for the extras, well, they didn't have much of a choice. Lucas decided to recruit the lion's share of them from the nearby addiction recovery program Synanon, which is actually kind of monstrous. George Lucas got a load of recovering drug addicts to be in his film, probably for a pittance, and forced them all to shave their heads too. Who would do something like that? An insane person, that's who.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
