FANS OF STAR Wars still shuddering from George Lucas's tinkerings with the holy trinity will no doubt greet the director's cut of THX 1138 with certain suspicion – though compared to his blockbusters, Señor Skywalker's 1971 debut feature is a relatively obscure oddity, subject to far less scrutiny. Clearly, the Star Wars films supplied the bucks and inspired the necessary technological innovations needed to perform digital surgery on this bleak sci-fi tale, filmed on a tight budget at mostly Bay Area locations (including under-construction BART stations). The intriguing THX 1138 holds up as a minimalist, 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque look at the future, imagining an underground world dressed in stark white and policed by faceless, black-clad robots. Technology reigns supreme over puny humans, who are given numbers instead of names and controlled by mandatory doses of mind-numbing drugs. When rebellious LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) tampers with the pill supply, both she and her roommate, THX 1138 (Robert Duvall), begin experiencing emotions for the first time. For this transgression they're shipped off to prison, where THX marks time with SEN 5241 (an eerie Donald Pleasence). Unlike the epic director's cuts we've seen in the past, this new version clocks in at a slender 88 minutes – so don't expect whole new story lines and subplots rescued from the cutting-room floor. Instead, the film has been digitally spruced up with enhanced background action and flashier explosions and chase scenes. An extras-packed DVD, including a documentary about the early days of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, which produced THX 1138, is due a few days after this limited theatrical release. (Cheryl Eddy)