AN 'EMPIRE' AT 40: VADER'S 'EXTRA HELP'!

Vader confers with his guard over the assembled bounty hunters in a deleted moment. Image: Kurtz/Joiner Archive.

The word has been put out by Darth Vader, alongside a substantial reward offered by the Empire, to the galaxy's greatest and most formidable bounty hunters to search for the Millennium Falcon and capture its passengers wherever they may be hiding. The roll call of nasties being the humanoid Dengar (played by British stand-in/wrestler Moray Bush), the droids IG-88 (a prop operated by Bill Hargreaves) and 4-Lom (Chris Parsons, once again inside a droid costume), insectoid Zuckuss (petite actress Cathy Munroe), reptilian Bossk (actor/stand-in Alan Harris), and the most well known and lethal of the assembled cadre, the esteemed and ultra-reliable Boba Fett (as played by Jeremy Bulloch).

Filmed in April, 1979, of which the bounty hunters wore costumes cheaply culled and revised from existing stock, with additional masks created by Stuart Freeborn and his team for 4-Lom and Zuckuss (the latter originally called 'Tuckuss' at one point), the sequence has since become a legendary and beloved moment for fans, who, even back with the film's original 1980 release, were intrigued to learn more about this gruesome collection of characters.

A selection of posed images from the filming...