However you won’t have to wait that long if you want a pair of the rather cool Nike MAG trainers that Marty McFly wore in the aforementioned film, assuming you have a spare $2,000 (minimum) lying around that is.

Nike have made a limited edition run of 1200 pairs of the shoes, and although they may not be self lacing like the ones in the film, they do look identical, and even have light up soles and illuminated Nike logo across the front.

But the best thing about all this is that it’s Nike’s way of raising some money for charity, hence the steep asking price. Nike are giving the proceeds to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which couldn’t be a more apt cause given that Fox is himself a sufferer of the disease.

They are being offered for sale on eBay, with 150 pairs being made available every day. You’ll need to be quick though, as this all started a few days ago, and there are now just 600 left! Head over to the Back 4 The Future website for more details or to nikemag.ebay.com if you want to bid on a pair.

For your viewing pleasure then, check out this rather nice quote laden advert featuring Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown…

…and here’s a bit from Marty McFly himself. If I had the spare cash, I’d certainly buy a pair…

Before re-watching the film, my over riding memories of it were that it was a bit like Star Wars (like so many films were back then), and that it starred John Boy Walton (Richard Thomas) and had some space cowboy character in it.

So I popped the disc into my player to begin my journey of rediscovery. Up pop the menus accompanied by a piece of music that at once felt stunningly familiar to me, and there’s a picture of John Boy and a cowboy character. So far, so well remembered then.

The film begins with the peaceful inhabitants of the planet Akir being invaded by the evil Sador (John Saxon) and his Malmori warriors. Sador tells them that unless they bow down to his demands he will destroy the planet with his Stellar Converter (Death Star anyone?), and to prove his intent goes about killing a few innocents just for good measure.

Most of the Akira believe they are doomed, but young Luke, sorry, John B… I mean Shad, says that he will take the planets only space craft, powered by a computer named Nell, on a mission to go and recruit some mercenaries to help the Akira defend themselves.

Shad’s first stop is at a space station where he is hoping to get his first recruits. He meets a young woman named Nanelia who repairs androids. He is taken to see her father, who is now more machine than man, who hopes to keep Shad there as a mate for his daughter. Nanelia takes pity on Shad and allows him to escape, before also deciding that she will join his cause.

Good to his word, Shad manages to enrol further help including the afore mentioned space cowboy character (who is actually just called Space Cowboy and is played by The A Team’s George Peppard). Other members of his team are Gelt, an assassin played by The Man From U.N.C.L.E Robert Vaughn, and Nestor, who are a strange race of clones who share a single consciousness – an intriguing Science Fiction idea.

Shad and his mercenaries help defend the planet when Sador attacks. Both sides take heavy casualties during the initial battles which take place both in the space around Sador’s ship and on the ground, with Space Cowboy leading the charge against the ground troops.

Both sides then take time to regroup and lick their wounds, but it isn’t long before Sador decides to roll out his Stellar Converter, so everyone springs into action to defend Akir or die trying. Sadly most end up taking the latter path, with the only new recruit to definitely survive being Nanelia.

I have to say that watching this film again felt like a new experience for me as I really didn’t remember anything from it at all. The plot was based on the western The Magnificent Seven (which coincidentally also starred Robert Vaughn), which in turn was based on the classic Japanese story The Seven Samurai. It also borrows heavily from Star Wars, what with the hero being a young farmhand, the presence of a planet destroying weapon and the Space Cowboy character being very much like Han Solo.

The film came out in 1980 and was quite a low budget affair. Whilst this does show to a certain extent the cast do an excellent job, there are some very funny moments (like when the Nestor sample one of Space Cowboy’s hot dogs) and the effects aren’t all that bad either, perhaps due in part to James Cameron (yes, that James Cameron) being the art director on the film. Indeed they were good enough, as was the sound track, that a lot of the space shots were even reused wholesale in another film called Space Raiders (nothing to do with the similarly named crisps).

The Last Starfighter is best known for being one of the first films to extensively use computer graphics to provide the special effects, and it was always this film and Tron that were the standard bearers for many years. Whilst a modern games console could easily recreate graphics of the same quality today in realtime, back then this was a new technique and the end results were the state of the art.

A quick plot recap then. Alex Rogan is a teenager who lives and works on a trailer park in back-of-nowhere America. He’s bored with his life and desperately wants to leave to go to University and take his girlfriend Maggie with him. The only thing he has to occupy his time is an arcade game called Starfighter.

Alex becomes quite adept at the game, which it turns out is actually a training simulator for a real space fleet called the Rylan Star League, who are at war with the evil (of course) Ko-Dan Armada. Alex is whisked away in a space craft (which looks stunningly like a DeLorean with a big chunky extension on the back) by a chap name Centauri and is told he has been chosen to become a real Starfighter.

Alex is shocked by all this, and asks to be returned home. Whilst Centauri takes him back, the Ko-Dan Armada launch an attack which kills all the other Starfighters.

Back on Earth Alex is surprised to find the Centauri had replaced him with a robotic double so that he wouldn’t be missed, and is even more surprised when an alien hitman tries to kill him. He therefore returns to become the Last Starfighter and help defeat the Ko-Dan Armada.

Whilst the computerised special effects are what the film is most famous for, the more traditional make up effects are generally very good too. Whilst some of the aliens look a bit naff (I’m thinking particularly of the bug eyed alien hitman, who’s mouth is above it’s eyes) most look quite realistic looking. In particular Grig, who becomes Alex’s navigator, has a great reptilian look but still manages to convey a lot of emotion, whilst the prune like aliens of the Ko-Dan Armada are also quite interesting to look at.

All in all I’m glad I watched it. It took me back to a time when I used to look forward to the video rental shop finally getting some big Hollywood blockbuster in that I was desperate to see but which had been on at the cinema a year or two previously.

So, I watched it the other night, and I have to admit I almost, almost, switched off after the first 15 minutes or so, because what I was watching was failing to live up to my expectations. Sure there were a few bits that made me smile, like the tannoy announcers arguing about which coloured zone was which, but everything seemed far too serious at this point.

Maybe that was the idea though, as when Airplane! was first released in 1980 it was pretty much the first film of its kind (I’m struggling to think of anything similar that came before it, though I’m sure there must be something) so perhaps it was intentional, to ease audiences in for what was to come later.

Signs that things were heading back where I expected them to be soon came though, when Ted Striker goes to buy a plane ticket and is asked if he wants smoking or non-smoking. He replies that he wants smoking, and is then handed a paper ticket which, yes, you’ve guessed it, is literally emitting smoke in his hand.

Things started to improve also when Leslie Nielsen finally appeared. If there was ever an actor to be linked to this type of film it is the now, sadly, late Mr. Nielsen. I admit I gave a little cheer when he appeared, and from then on Airplane! suddenly became what I expected it to be from the beginning. The running gags I had been waiting for started to appear, including Nielsen’s “Don’t call me Shirley” line, and the “…but that’s not important right now” jokes.

By the end of the film I was glad I hadn’t switched off earlier, and my expectations had been met, and even exceeded, as I had forgotten all about the bonkers Johnny, the air traffic controller who constantly comes up with inane comments about things the other characters say or do.

I also liked the joke about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who played the co-pilot Roger Murdock. I didn’t know who he was, but assumed he must have been a basketball player when he’s quizzed by the young boy who comes to visit the cockpit. Sure enough, he was a famous basketball player, and when he passes out later in the film is dragged from his chair wearing basketball kit.

At the time the film was released it worked so well because most of the actors, including Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges and Robert Stack, were serious actors and not known for comedy roles, and indeed in the case of Nielsen the movie became rather a turning point in his career.

Now, the film is regarded as a classic and I can see why. If I’m completely honest I didn’t enjoy it as much as, say The Naked Gun (which also came from the same creators – David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker) but since it was the first of its kind it should be recognised, as without it we wouldn’t have had a whole slew of films made in the same absurd manner.

Personally, my favourite version (and apologies to the Muppets because I did like their version too) is the 1988 film Scrooged, starring Bill Murray as the Scrooge like Frank Cross. Whilst it changes some details of the story to bring things up-to-date (for example, Frank Cross is the boss of a TV Station, rather than a money lender, or whatever Ebenezer was supposed to be) the basic premise of the story survives intact.

Frank’s TV company is attempting a world’s first for their Christmas extravaganza. A live transmitted version of A Christmas Carol. Frank’s motives in this are more driven by money and greed than by presenting a good Christmas message. He had a bit of a miserable childhood, so doesn’t really take much interest in Christmas celebrations.

Frank is first visited by the ghost of his long dead boss, who warns him that he is to be visited that evening by three more ghosts who will show him his past, present and future, in an effort to make him change his ways. Frank, unsurprisingly perhaps, believes he has just been hallucinating, but he begins to change his mind as the ghosts start to pay him visits.

The Ghost of Christmas Past is a rough talking, slob like taxi driver, who drives Frank around with little apparent care for safety whilst revisiting Frank’s past. Next comes the Ghost of Christmas Present, my personal favourite, who might look all sweetness and light, but packs a pretty mean punch. Finally, there is the Death like Ghost of Christmas Future. Needless to say Frank changes his ways and becomes a better person after all of this.

The film is most definitely a comedy, but it swings from being quite light hearted and slapstick through to being quite dark and forbidding at times, and it moves along at quite a pace. It may have a bit of a cheesey ending with a big song and dance number, but this is balanced out with some of the dry comments made by Frank, which show that he may not have quite lost the entirety of his old self, rather he has found the happier side of his self that he had lost up until now.

One of the best examples of this was 1986 film The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum as scientist Seth Brundle, and Geena Davis as journalist Veronica Quaife. The Fly was a remake of a 1958 film of the same name, and the two films share very similar storylines.

In the 1986 version, Seth Brundle has just invented a matter transporter device (very Star Trek!) consisting of two chambers call Telepods. Pop an inanimate object in one pod, and a flick of a switch disintegrates it in the first pod, and reassembles it in the second. Pop in a living thing though, and things go a bit awry, as a poor baboon finds out when it reappears inside out in the second pod during a test.

At a press party held by Bartok Science Industries, who fund the teleporter research, Seth meets Veronica. He convinces her to come and visit his lab for a demonstration, which is when we see the poor reversa-baboon event occur, but Seth convinces Veronica to help him out by documenting his work. This leads to the pair getting romantically involved.

Seth has a brainwave, and comes up with an idea to fix the problem of teleporting living beings successfully. He tests it on another spare baboon he happens to have lying around, and lo and behold it works! Seth wants to celebrate his achievement with Veronica, but instead she leaves to go and confront her boss (and former lover) who is threatening to publicly reveal the telepods before Seth is ready to announce them.

Unfortunately, Seth thinks Veronica has left him for her boss, and in an alcohol fuelled anger decides to teach her a lesson by becoming the first human test subject for the teleport machine. In his haste, Seth doesn’t notice that a fly has entered the pod with him, but all appears well when he emerges in the other telepod intact.

Veronica returns to find Seth has gained superhuman abilities in her absence, as he is now much stronger and fitter than before. Veronica is understandably worried but Seth believes it is just down to the telepod improving him on reassembly. However, it isn’t long before Seth realises that perhaps something did go wrong, when his finger nails start falling off!

This is where the excellent make-up starts to come into play. As the story unfolds Seth gradually starts becoming more and more fly like, a result of the telepod having fused the wandering flies DNA with Seth’s own. We see Seth go from being human through a variety of different stages, each slightly more disgusting than the last, with his skin going brown and starting to drop off, new hairs sprouting and so on. More special effects come into play to allow Seth to start climbing over the walls and ceiling of his lab.

Probably one of the most disgusting parts is that Seth even starts eating like a fly, spewing digestive juices out over his food before slurping it up. Yuck!

Sadly, the story doesn’t end well for Seth, who ends up dubbing himself Brundlefly as he becomes less and less human, and more and more deranged when he discovers the Veronica is pregnant with his child.

The Fly was written and directed by David Cronenberg, and whilst there was a sequel neither Cronenberg, Goldblum or Davis had any involvement, in that typical Hollywood “hey, the first one was a success, let’s make another” manner. Cronenberg obviously had a soft spot for this film though, as in 2008 he was involved in creating an operatic version of The Fly, and is also rumoured to be making a new film sometime soon!

Splash was directed by Ron Howard and was the first picture released by the then new Touchstone Pictures. It starred Daryl Hannah as a mermaid named Madison (that’s where the special effects come in), and Tom Hanks as the human Allen Bauer, who falls in love with her. As a child Allen fell into the sea, and was rescued by the young Madison. Later in life fate calls him to need to be rescued again, and Madison comes to his aid again.

Allen is besotted with Madison, and it appears she must be keen on him too, for after finding that Allen has dropped his wallet, she tries to return it to him in New York City. How does she do this, considering she is water bound? Well, once her fish-like tail dries out enough it magically transforms into a pair of human legs.

Of course, she catches up with Allen, but the course of true love doesn’t run smooth (it would be a dull movie otherwise) and Madison ends up being taken away for study by the government, until Allen manages to free her and decides to return with her to her undersea home.

Splash was actually one of the highest grossing films from 1984, and whilst the story might be perhaps considered a little twee and cheesey now it was actually one of the best received films by the critics too. It was popular enough for a sequel – Splash, Too – to be made, although sadly neither Hannah nor Hanks reprise their roles, so it actually feels less of a continuation to the story and more a cash-in.

Get to 1986 though, and the first signs of him going perhaps a bit la-la came along, with the release of Howard the Duck (also known as Howard A New Breed Of Hero). Film critics were boggling as to how George Lucas would even dare to put his name to this film, which bombed at the box office and is often cited as being one of the worst films made.

But what do film critics know? They thought Hudson Hawk was bad (I liked it, Bruce!) and anyway, George has done far worse in the meantime by introducing us to the oh-so-annoying Jar Jar Binks.

Personally I quite liked Howard the Duck, although admittedly I was a young teenager at the time I saw it, and I think this is the age group that will appreciate the film most, as despite featuring a duck as the main character it is perhaps not all that child friendly, and because it features a duck as the main character most adults would think it childish.

So what is the film about? Well, the titular Howard is an inhabitant of Duckworld, who for some reason finds himself (and his armchair) propelled through space to Earth, where he meets up with wannabe rock star Beverly (Lea Thompson). Howard saves Beverly from some muggers, so being a good sort she decides to try and help Howard to return to his home planet.

The pair go to visit scientist Phil Blumbertt (Tim Robbins) although it turns out Phil isn’t exactly a scientist, he’s actually more of a janitor. However, in contacting Phil the news of Howard’s arrival reaches Dr Walter Jenning (Jeffrey Jones) who is actually the reason why Howard has ended up on Earth. He has been working on an experiment in the field of dimension jumping, and offers to try and send Howard home.

This sounds perfect to Howard, but things go awry when they try to use the dimension jumping machine again, and Dr. Jenning ends up being taken over by an evil alien presence going by the name of the Dark Overlord of the Universe. Nice! Cue the alien making off with Beverly and Howard then has to go to her rescue.

Howard the Duck actually started life as a comic book, created in 1973 by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik. George Lucas was a fan, as he first had the idea of bringing Howard to the silver screen shortly after finishing American Graffiti, so this is how he came to be involved in the film in the first place.

The original comic book was apparently fairly absurd in nature (unsurprisingly I suppose) but the film took on a more science fiction slant in order to make the most of Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic effects house. As with most stuff ILM are involved in the effects were actually fairly good, with possibly the worst effect being Howard himself, who never quite looks like a real duck but more like a bloke in a duck suit.

To finish then, remember I said that the film was perhaps not all that child friendly. Here’s a good example of why not…