Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB is the precursor to the cult film THX 1138, made by George Lucas in 1971. This student film is the basis for that film. It is relatively interesting for a film made by a university student. It has a lot of very interesting shots, it's visual design is pretty cool, and it provides a very interesting look into the origins of the 1971 film if you happen to enjoy it (like me).The film follows a man's attempt to escape from a dystopian society the sometime in the far future. For viewers of the remake, the beginnings of ideas from the more famous version can be seen in this film, such as the portrait of Jesus Christ that becomes the societies deity, OMM, can be briefly seen during this film. While this is pretty cool, it also emphasizes that this film is almost nothing without the later version. If you were to see this without seeing the original first, I doubt you would be able to follow this one very easily, as it is rather confusing and a lot of the dialogue is heavily altered and difficult to understand.Overall, an interesting little curiosity piece, but only for fans of the original.

Sure it may be no-budget, sure it may be using film equipment and film stock that's not to the 'studio' standard. But, as someone who has come out of being a film student, I look at George Lucas's award-winning student short film with a good deal of awe. And Lucas, who has described himself as being a filmmaker who is split between the avant-garde and the more 'mainstream' films (the latter personified film-wise in Star Wars and Indiana Jones), goes to the extreme of his powers with his visual prowess. It is surreal in that it tries to express an idea through an unconventional means, with a story but without being stuck to it by any means. And because it's so short there's only so much time to get the message across with such little film.Electronic Labyrinth takes just a slice- the more action packed and suspenseful slice- from what would become the feature film of THX 1138, using absolutely no dialog. That to me is a phenomenal, but very dangerous, step to take. There's always the chance, especially with young, experimental filmmakers, to go into the over-indulgent, or rather just to go in over your head with abstract concepts that just don't connect out of likely just not being well made. Here the quasi-beating over-the-head of image and sound works, because it's a film about technology, about the control of it over people, and it makes a very basic kind of statement of going against the overwhelming power of it. The hero of the film for almost all of the film does a lot of running, down corridors, down spacious, domineering spaces, leading up to a sort of bleak ending.It may not get enough thematic ground like the feature-version does, and the lack of dialog sets a kind of gap between a viewer not ready for the combination of twistingly sci-fi visuals of the screens and numbers and videos and such. But it's got guts, and that's what I like to see in student films; the cliché that this is a "sign of things to come" is not far from the truth (ironically, after the feature-film of this, it would go more towards the mainstream for Lucas, but you never know).

When this film was realised I was in my seventeenth I have seen a part of it in 1975 on TV, there were some scenes that marked me. & to tell the truth I did not know the title neither who realised it at this time, I have discovered by pure hazard on DVD this year of 2006. Personally, after "Metropolis 1927" from Fritz Lang, this film will be completely a part of all other films in this dimension; the concept of the story is intelligent. There is no pass, no future, no present. Earth born constructing androids, to control human, it is a underground world, it is a dream to be a perfect world, where everything is under control, but sometimes it happens that in this perfect world, there are sometimes failures, as we call "emotions" which is totally forbidden because the human couldn't bring yet to a machine. & if he could like in "Blade Runner" where human creating "replicants" "Hate, Anger, Love, Fear"= Memories. THX 1138 EB4 has shattered the whole system of this old Hollywood machine, & brought us this vision, how far our imaginations can go, but how far can we go in our imaginations?? Stephen King mentioned once, "Imagination is the most powerful thing you can possess"

After seeing the theatrical THX 1138 and enjoying its feel very much, I was hyped to be able to see this student project. Let me say that, first and foremost, most of the shots in this film are of absolutely nothing happening. Shots of mainframe computers and other such gadgetry probably lent this film quite an alien feel in 1967, but now it merely fills time waiting for the plot to advance. For 15 minutes, you watch as the story of THX slowly unfolds, how he runs to escape his sterile surroundings and finally reaches his goal.Probably the most remarkable thing I noticed about this movie is how things changed and how they stayed the same for Lucas in his later pictures. He still treats his actors like action figures. However, I noticed the utter lack of 'cute ideas' that spiced up even the theatrical release of this film. Very monochromatic in emotion and execution, but still gripping in a very real way.