San Francisco filmmaker Ernie Fosselius made the most successful short film of all time in the 1978 Hardware Wars, an inspired, mock-trailer for a nonexistent, cheapo rip-off of Star Wars. It worked like this: instead of Chewbacca, Fosselius offers the Cookie Monster. Instead of Darth Vader"s breathy, slightly echoed voice emerging somehow behind that black-mask helmet, we get a villain whose every ranting utterance is so muffled even this film"s Princess Leia equivalent beseeches him, "What? I don"t understand you." And so on. Part of the joke is that George Lucas"s revolutionary special effects are supplanted by common kitchen gizmos--mixers, toasters--that serve as spaceships and weapons sources. The updated special edition contains 20 computer-generated "special defects" that don"t--the distributor boasts--at all match Fosselius"s earlier version. Um... right on? --Tom Keogh