FILM · 1971 · USA
THX 1138
53 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (53)
- #001
George Lucas apparently named the film after the San Francisco telephone number 849-1138; the letters THX correspond to the letters on the 8, 4 and 9 keys.
- #002
To supply the large number of extras required, George Lucas contacted the Synanon drug rehabilitation facility. He found there many recovering drug users whose heads had already been shaved for the drug program. The Synanon facility is mentioned in Philip K. Dick's science fiction novel "Valis".
- #003
Very little makeup was used, to give the actors and actresses a distinctive look.
- #004
George Lucas adapted the idea for the original short film, and the film was ultimately adapted from a one-and-a-half-page outline titled "Breakout" written by USC student Matthew Robbins about a man escaping from an underground dystopian society.
- #005
The sounds of the police motorcycles are sped-up recordings of women screaming together in a tiled bathroom.
- #006
The final part of the chase, in which the police motorcyclist hits a fallen paint stand, flies over the handlebars, is struck by the airborne motorcycle, lands on his back and hits the crashed car, was performed without dummies. Everyone on the set was stunned and rushed over to make sure stuntman Duffy Hambleton was all right. According to George Lucas, Hambleton turned out to be completely fine, except that he was angry at the people who ran into the shot to check on him. He was worried they might enter the frame and ruin the stunt he had just performed.
- #007
George Lucas used this film's title, or part of it, in several of his other films. In American Graffiti (1973), a car's license plate reads "THX 138". Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) references "prison cell 1138". The cinema sound certification his company developed is called "THX". In Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), one of the battle droid's numbers is "1138". All the battle droids are seen being shut down.
- #008
Most of the electronic sound effects heard throughout the film were derived from telephone dial tones and from sliding and electronically altered sounds.
- #009
To provide the voices of the unseen supervisors and announcers, George Lucas contacted the San Francisco-based theater group The Committee. He gave them short character outlines and allowed the performers to improvise all of the film's "overheard" dialogue.
- #010
The final scene, in which THX escapes and sees the setting sun for the first time, was not a special effect or a timelapse. Uncredited cameraman Caleb Deschanel and Matthew Robbins scouted a location for George Lucas and found a completely clear horizon for the shoot in Port Hueneme, California. Robbins and Deschanel tried to get the shot four times, but the weather made it impossible until the fifth attempt.
- #011
George Lucas claims that the scene in which technicians toy with THX's nervous system and send him into comical spasms stemmed from his antipathy toward the doctors who treated him after his nearly fatal car accident in his youth.
- #012
The music playing during the final title sequence is the first movement of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244.
- #013
This film was made as a result of George Lucas's student short project at USC, Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967). Having earned considerable praise and attention with such an unusual short, Lucas was given the chance to direct a feature-length version, produced by his mentor Francis Ford Coppola under his newly founded production company American Zoetrope, with Robert Duvall in the lead role. Zoetrope was a financial failure, like this film, but the attention was enough to earn Lucas the chance to make American Graffiti (1973), whose success paved the way for the opportunity to make "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)".
- #014
In the scene featuring fetuses in jars and a rotating machine, sound designer Walter Murch quoted, as a tribute, a piece from a Pierre Henry music concert (a creak from a barn door in Normandy). After the film opened in theaters in France, Warner Bros. received a letter from Henry's record company claiming copyright infringement. It was ultimately decided that it did not constitute an infringement, since the creak had been substantially altered and was a very short quotation.
- #015
There are several scenes in the film that violate the "180° rule". This was designed to convey the feeling of disorientation and confusion THX experiences as he comes out of drug-induced sedation.
- #016
Co-writer Walter Murch said in interviews that George Lucas never explained to him the origins of the character names THX, SEN and LUH, but that he believes they are deliberate synonyms for sex, sin and love, the three factors that set them apart from society.
- #017
The underground chase near the end was shot in an unfinished section of the Caldecott Tunnel in Oakland, CA.
- #018
In the DVD commentary, George Lucas claimed that the robot police cannot actually harm people and that the worst they can do is annoy you. The system took care to ensure that the robots would never use excessive violence if they caused an uprising or defied their masters. The hologram of a police robot savagely beating someone to death exists only to instill fear of the police in the public.
- #019
The seemingly endless Control Room, where the android police officer tries to corner THX and SRT after learning that LUH is being consumed for organ repair, was the circuit switch room of the Pacific Bell Telephone Company in San Francisco. Pacific Bell allowed George Lucas to shoot the film there because, as the telephone company was switching to touch-tone technology, the entire room and the hardware in it were about to be dismantled.
- #020
Although it is clear that THX works in a factory that produces the android police officers of his society, the strange levers he stands before at his job and the thickly sealed glass screen should be familiar to workers in nuclear engineering facilities. George Lucas shot THX's scenes while working in front of an operational radiation containment chamber, also known as a "hot cell," of the kind used by those who have to handle radioactive materials.
- #021
In the final shot of THX escaping outside, the person wearing the bald cap is not Robert Duvall but Matthew Robbins.
- #022
In the final scene where THX reaches the surface, this is a simple perspective trick. It is not a staircase but rebar embedded in concrete. The cast members crawl along a horizontal surface. By tilting the camera to the appropriate angles, the characters appear to be climbing upward.
- #023
After photography was completed, Francis Ford Coppola planned for George Lucas to have a year to finish post-production. Lucas edited the film during the day at his home in Mill Valley on a German-made K-E-M flatbed editing machine, while at night Walter Murch did the sound editing. The two compared notes when they switched. Murch compiled and synchronized the sound assembly, including all the "overhead" sounds, radio chatter, announcements, etc. heard throughout the film. Most of the editing was completed in mid-1970.
- #024
After the film's editing was completed, Francis Ford Coppola took the film to Warner Bros. Pictures. The executives there disliked the film and insisted that Coppola hand the negative over to an in-house Warner Bros. editor, who cut about four minutes of the film before its release.
- #025
The scene in which THX falls into the trash compactor and fends off a mutated rodent was cut because the creature did not look realistic. It was later reused in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).
- #026
This film envisioned separate television channels for violence, sex, comedy and news. When the film was shot in 1969, there were no channels dedicated to entertainment genres.
- #027
The studio sequences were shot on stages in Los Angeles, including a white stage 100 feet (30.5 meters) long and 150 feet (46 meters) wide for the "white limbo" sequences.
- #028
All the holograms on television are African American. This includes the character SRT, the hologram who escapes to the "real world," and the voice of OMM.
- #029
Some actresses turned down roles in this film because they refused to shave their heads.
- #030
During his arrest, THX's workplace is identified as "Operating Cell 94107," a reference to the postal code of San Francisco's SOMA (South of Market) district, where American Zoetrope's offices were then located. An interesting coincidence is that Soma is the name of a narcotic in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World."
- #031
According to the residents' numbering system, there can be at most 175,760,000 residents, as well as at most 10,000 police officers.
- #032
In Bald: The Making of 'THX 1138' (1971), Maggie McOmie cries before having her head shaved.
- #033
Promotional photos, some foreign posters and video covers include a frame from a scene not in the final film: police robots (previously killed by SEN) approach the lifeless body of the OHM priest and check his pulse.
- #034
The cars used in the chase seen in the film are Lola T-70 Mark IIIs.
- #035
This was the first film of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope.
- #036
George Lucas insisted on choosing James Wheaton rather than Orson Welles to voice "OMM" in this film.
- #037
David Ogden Stiers's first film (credited as David Ogden Steers).
- #038
THX sound was named after this film.
- #039
Numerous scenes were inspired by Japanese theater, design and graphics.
- #040
Executives at Warner Bros. disliked the finished film. They cut the film and reduced its marketing budget.
- #041
The output that initially flashes on screen is a FORTRAN computer program.
- #042
It was shot between September and November 1969.
- #043
According to a story told on the March 1, 1980 radio program American Top 40 With Casey Kasem, the title of Toto's song "99" was inspired by the use of numbers instead of names for people in this film.
- #044
In the computer room at the end, the word "TILT" can be seen flashing in the lights of one of the computers.
- #045
In the novel adapted from Ben Bova's screenplay, THX introduces himself as: "… I am 1138 THX Magnum manipulator 347 cell 94107 Zone 3 Apartment: Level 6421 Complex 12 Ramp 5. Roommate 3417 LU… H."
- #046
THX 1138 contains the first instance of A113, a code used among producers, directors and studios that appears in many Pixar films. [link-nm0000380] - It can be found on the "THX" collar.
- #047
The small person in the group's white prison cell is described as a "shell-dweller." When THX reaches the shell, he is surrounded by many creatures. In the original version these were all small people. In the updated version, there is a small person sitting and watching on a perch, but the rest of the creatures shown are monkey-like CGI figures.
- #048
The George Lucas Director's Cut DVD is the only Warner Bros. DVD to feature the THX Cavalcade trailer.
- #049
Near the beginning of the film, a hand selects a computer tape from a shelf. The tape is a TS-11 manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation, and the orange write-protect ring is in place.
- #050
Ian Wolfe (PTO) appeared in Bread and Circuses (1968) (#2.25) and All Our Yesterdays (1969) (#3.23), indirectly linking him to the Star Trek (1966) series.
- #051
Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence later appeared together in The Eagle Has Landed (1976).
- #052
The cast includes Robert Duvall, who won an Oscar in 1984 (out of 7 nominations), and Henry Jacobs, who was nominated not in acting but in the documentary category, for Breaking the Habit (1965), an animated short about quitting smoking made with John Korty in 1965.
- #053
The license plate of the car Paul Le Mat drives in American Graffiti was THX 138, very close to George Lucas's phone number.
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