Corvette Summer (1978) MGM

Written by Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood, Directed by Matthew Barwood Starring: Mark Hamill, Annie Potts, Eugene Roche, Phillip Burns

Our boy, everyone`s favorite space hero the year before, is with his high school shop class in a junkyard searching for a wreck to restore as a senior year project (the Force didn`t seem to pay very much then.) Luke has a 2001 moment when he sees the chasis of a vintage Corvete pass overhead on its way to the compactor and its metallic insignia drops on his head.

The class labours the entire school year on the project and fully restores the classic car to its former glory, only to have it stolen on its maiden voyage on the streets of L.A. Given his cosmic connection to the `vette, Luke follows a vague clue to Las Vegas to try to recover the love of his life.

He runs across the lovely Princess Annie, the constant voice of cynical reason, and she begins to guide our young Jedi in the ways of the street. After finding the car and barely escaping the clutches of a car theft ring/body shop business, Luke learns that his own shop teacher planned the `vette`s disappearance and has been working with the car theives for a long time to augment his meager teacher`s salary. Will our hero turn to the Dark Side when his mentor is shown to be dishonest?

He does, in fact, go to work for the car thieves as a body worker, which discourages Annie, who now begins to act like the working girl she`d only pretended to be before.

In the end, Luke builds an exact duplicate of the original `vette, rescues Princess Annie, and brings both back to school while covering up for the teacher, who has also turned over a new leaf. Boy and girl then drive off into the sunset.

Trivia: Cameos by Danny Bonaduce, T.K. Carter (Saved by the Bell, He`s My Girl). Also, it is said that Mark Hamill suffered a facial injury during a stunt scene here, resulting in his more haggard appearance in the second Star Wars movie.

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