Like many people my age (mid 30s), the original Star Wars trilogy is the film franchise that impacted most heavily on my childhood.  In between the cinema visits and TV screenings, I would either be playing with the brilliant toys, or acting out scenes from the movies (and creating new ones) with my mates.  My nostalgia for the films hasn't really faded.  Unlike most fans, I welcomed, and enjoyed the follow up trilogy, despite hating the indisputably awful Jar Jar Binks.  After all, many of the flaws of the prequels also existed in the original films, which tend to be looked back on with rose tinted specs (remember the fucking Ewoks?).

I woke up this morning to the radio announcing the acquisition of Lucas Films by Disney, and excitingly a new trilogy of Star Wars pictures,the first instalment of which to be released in 2015.  Brilliantly, if she will indulge me, my daughter and I can now experience the joy of the expanding Star Wars universe together on the big screen. 

Now, it will not have escaped most people's attention that George Lucas rarely passes up an opportunity to exploit his back catalogue.  However some people may not know that there is an existing trio of rarely seen Star Wars films already out there.  The Star Wars Holiday Special, released broadcast just a year after the first film, is a misjudged television variety oddity.  Chewbacca's wife Malla tediously shuffling around cooking dinner, a camp performance by Jefferson Starship and Boba Fett's first appearance are a few of the delights awaiting those willing to sit through it.  Not exactly pleased with the first follow up to A New Hope, George, who had little involvement with the production, stated that "If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it."  So it will come as no surprise that The Holiday Special has not as of yet surfaced as an official release since its original TV airing.

The two Ewok films, Caravan of Courage and Battle for Endor (both with direct input from Lucas), whilst still largely forgotten, have fared rather better, having a DVD release some eight years ago.  Copies can currently be purchased on eBay/Amazon for £40-60.

Hot T-Shirts is charmless, unfunny, unsexy, has zero characterisation and a tedious storyline around a wet t-shirt contest.  In fact the only positive things I can recall were a half decent disco soundtrack, the most ridiculous bar brawl I've seen in a while and lots of cheese (not actual cheese).  Yet somehow it's strangely watchable all the same.  Go figure. 

Despite a title that meant I had to watch it, my expectations for Zombie Strippers were pretty low.  There's a long tradition of schlocky horror films relying on nothing more than an exploitative title to put bums on (usually home furnished) seats, and this one is perhaps more genius than most.

As predicted, it wasn't exactly brilliant, but better than perhaps you'd think it deserved to be, given its cheap and cheerful production values and its crass attempt to cash-in on people's love for trashy cult films of yore.  Firstly, the fact it doesn't take itself at all seriously, goes in its favour.  Secondly, that it is so stupid that you don't take it at all seriously, also helps.  Nudity and gore are both in abundance, so you don't feel cheated on that front.  In addition, spending a large chunk of the budget on Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund was a shrewd move, both of whose fans would probably watch it no matter how terrible it was.

Lazy, clumsy, and occasionally spot-on political points are dotted throughout the picture.  My personal favourite is a retort given by the latest girl to join the strippers at Club Rhino.  Driven to stripping to raise funds for her grandmother's colostomy, and hassled by her pious Christian boyfriend, she succinctly illuminates some of society's class and gender problems when explaining her decision: "Maybe there's, more truth to the human condition, than taking my clothes off for emotionally stunted men, so my grandmother can shit in a bag, than me staying virginal and pure for you".

Sadly it is now de Rigueur(mortis) to have shamefully crap CGI effects in every low budget horror film, and I wish these guys had opted for old fashioned SFX, because even if equally shoddy, some old-school charm would have suited the knock-off retro-cult feel better, and would have in all likeliness elevated the film a little higher.

Is it trying to highlight people's attraction to freakish curiosities over the genuinely erotic?  Has it got something clever to say about neo-liberalism in America?  No, probably not.  Has it got stripping zombies?  Yes it has!

Despite finding much of Aardman's output a touch too twee for my taste, I was hopeful that Pirates! would deliver nonetheless.  After all, the trailer looked good fun, plus as I was viewing it at a budget 99p screening, I didn't have a lot invested in the trip.  I shouldn't have worried, my three year old daughter and myself enjoyed ourselves and we both managed to sit through it without getting too restless.

Our hero, The Pirate Captain, is the subject of mockery by his peers, and thus desperately wants to win The Pirate of the Year Award to achieve the recognition and respect he feels is due.  With this goal in mind, he and his loyal shipmates capture a ship, expecting treasure but instead acquiring a captive, one Charles Darwin.  Darwin persuades the Captain to visit England (despite the dangers posed by Queen Victoria's hatred of pirates), with promises of fame and fortune, and much swashbuckling and silliness ensues.

With a healthy disrespect for authority, Pirates! is a notch above most of the kids' fare out there.  Out on DVD on 10th September.

Sick to death of the Olympics?  One irritating sponsorship advert away from a killing spree you'll end up regretting?  Step away from the hedge trimmer and indulge yourself in some murder sport therapy.  Whilst everyone else is watching the Closing Ceremony, why not sit back and enjoy one of the dozens of films that have turned slaughter into competitive spectator entertainment.  My personal favourite is Death Race 2000, a splendidly camp offering from the Roger Corman stable.  Running down pedestrians is the national sport, with extra points awarded for toddlers and the elderly.  Brilliantly twisted, I really can't recommend it enough.  The 2008 remake Death Race is also great fun, with the awesome Jason Statham in the lead role.  If you prefer Arnie to the Stath, then you could do worse than checking out The Running Man.  In the near future, prisoners are hunted down on television for the amusement of the viewing public.  Hopefully Ken Clarke's not seen it, otherwise it may give him ideas.

Series 7: The Contenders continues the reality TV theme.  Lottery drawn contestants are handed guns and followed by fly-on-the-wall film crews whilst they pursue and shoot each other.  If you can't get enough of folk assassinating each other, and you enjoyed The Hunger Games, you may like to give Battle Royale a whirl.  A little more arthouse than some of my other suggestions, it nonetheless carries an impressive bodycount and some gloriously nasty violence.

Let the games commence!

Having not seen In the Heat of the Night before, I approached it with high hopes.  It had won many awards, including five Oscars, and has a very respectable rating on IMDB.  The film is also something of a landmark, with its intelligent Black American protagonist, Mr Tibbs, fronting up to police chief Bill Gillespie and the wider racist community.  Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger are both masterly in their respective roles, and the slapping of plantation owner Eric Endicott by Tibbs is satisfying indeed, and must have raised merry Hell back in its day.  But despite being quite a compelling human drama, I found the murder mystery plot quite messy and unconvincing, increasingly so towards the end.  I came away underwhelmed and wondering if its notoriety has outshone its merits.  That said, I'm probably intrigued enough to check out the sequels They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! and The Organization sometime.

Delinquent Schoolgirls is hardly a remarkable film but if you like scuzzy exploitation films, there's enough going on to keep fans of the depraved happy.  Predictably, given the title, it is wrong on many levels.  Today, unless it was a) produced by three men with a video camera, or b) put into somekind of justifiable context, you just wouldn't get a film about three escaped mental patients raping their way through a girls' school.  Back in the 1970s there certainly weren't any qualms about making such a sensationalist picture.  In fact, before the profitable formula for the 1980s sex comedy had gained roots, films like this one were ten a penny.   Just like the over appreciated The Last House on the Left, innapropriately flippant comedic music is played over scenes of savagery and it shares a similarly squalid outlook.  To be fair, unlike The Last House on the Left, at least Delinquent Schoolgirls doesn't make any pretence to deliver somekind of social statement. 

Kick back and delight in the misogyny, see-through swimsuits and bra sizes to put Russ Meyer to shame, and soak up the general leering nature.  At the end you'll be rewarded with a striptease audition for the most suitable hostage, followed by a Kung-Fu showdown in the gymnasium.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is one fucked up movie.  Watching this shit can't be good for the soul...

Hell Camp is a shoddy, if fairly enjoyable, 1980s action romp.  A group of Air Force pilots join a military exercise that has got a bit out of hand, a little like the Stanford Prison Experiment.  One of the pilots is a woman, presumably for no other reason than to have her scantily clad in a bondage pose on the movie poster (The Exorcist style head turn is particularly alluring).  Casey and the other pilots, despite employing their best skills in stealth (such as wandering around in the middle of a beach), soon find themselves captured and the victims of unexpected mistreatment.

The longer I watched Hell Camp, the more I started to think that it was actually the inspiration for Guantanamo Bay.  The inmates of Hell Camp are held in a barbed wire fenced compound in a remote location, periodically isolated in cramped individual cages, humiliated and subjected to psychological and physical brutality and mock executions.  When the orange robed, black hooded and shackled prisoners were exposed to abuses such as disorientating white noise and waterboarding, I couldn't believe my eyes.  Could the Bush Administration really have based aspects of their foreign policy on a shit 1980s war film?  Does someone at The Pentagon just have a sick sense of humour?  It's the kind of moronic macho bullshit I could imagine some of them watching, so who knows. 

Will our heroine Casey suck up the various hardships like Katy Perry in her music video Part of Me, or will she emerge from her ordeal realising the military are a bunch of dicks?  Well, you'll just have to watch this mediocre, potentially world changing, film to find out.

I recently watched Equinox as a blind viewing, I think Harry K may have copied it for me, or perhaps I downloaded it from Cinemageddon.  Either way, I was quite excited to discover it was a schlocky, camp monster movie, like a more fucked up version of the Ray Harryhausen movies I loved as a kid.  I don't know if I was not in the right mood, or perhaps it is one of those movies you need to see with some buddies and a few beers, but I found it a little boring, despite it ticking a lot of the right boxes.  It had awesome monsters, ridiculously wooden acting, a creepy old guy in a cave distributing demonic tomes (along with his own personal stylophone soundtrack) and a sex offending park ranger/magician with huge eyebrows.  As I said before, it's sadly not as good as it sounds.  Most interestingly though, is that it almost certainly influenced Sam Raimi & co when they came to make The Evil Dead.  Aside from the many visual and plot similarities, it just feels like a kindred entity.  Both were fresh, experimental independent low budget films that punched above their weight with top notch special effects, and both have achieved a lasting cult appreciation.  Equinox received the Criterion treatment in 2006, with two restored versions (as if one were not enough!) of the film released on DVD.

I'm not a huge Russ Meyer fan, so I approached The Seven Minutes with a fair amount of apprehension; I was expecting something titillatingly kitsch but ultimately boring.  Early on I was pleased to find myself engaged with the conspiratorial obscenity trial storyline and was also just enjoying the seventies campness of it all.  I was particularly happy when a young Tom Selleck appeared onscreen as the head of the publishing house (fuck you Magnum, PI!).  Okay, I don't want to over sell this, it's not a great film by any strech of the imagination, but the frequent attempts by corrupt politicians and officials to quash any investigation and the absurd trial itself, means it more or less carries its two hour running time without becoming too dull.  It's far closer to a conventional drama than your typical Russ Meyer effort, which as far as I'm concerned isn't a bad thing.  That said, the occassional flashes of Meyer trademark salacious and surreal camera angles (and the obligatory cast of huge breasted women) increases the oddity factor, whilst reminding you who's at the helm.  At the end of the film there's a satisfying monologue on the merits of freedom of expression, just incase you hadn't already picked up on the theme that the film had been hammering home the whole while.   Stick it to the man!