AS A CHILD, Steven Spielberg used to charge admission to his home movies, which involved crashes staged with his toy train set. At 14 he made Escape to Nowhere, a 40-minute Second World War film featuring his mother, sisters, friends and lots of ketchup. At 16, his home-produced sci-fi feature Firelight was screened to a paying audience in a specially rented cinema.

Yet he never had the audacity to re-create his favourite films, frame for frame. Unlike three Mississippi 12-year-olds who made a shot-by-shot recreation of Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It was begun in 1982 as a lark by Chris Strompolos (who plays Indiana Jones), Eric Zala (the director and Indy’s rival, Belloq) and Jayson Lamb (the evil Nazi Toht), and completed over eight summers as the boys were entering manhood. As one cult film festival screening billed it: “See Indiana Jones grow six inches, drop into a baritone and grow facial hair! See the meanest pack of prepubescent Nazis ever recorded on film!”

Zala storyboarded 649 shots that included the film’s most dangerous stunts. It took him four tries to create the boulder that bears down on Indy at the beginning of the film after he’s removed a golden idol from its sacred perch (Zala even tried smearing a weather balloon with papier-mâché).

Zala set himself on fire in the Himalayan bar sequence re-created in his basement because, well, a Nepalese barfly goes up in flames in the real movie. He also spent two years trying to get permission to film aboard a naval submarine, and Strompolos was dragged along on his belly behind a pick-up truck at 35mph to approximate the famous Nazi truck sequence.

Their exploits were chronicled last March in a Vanity Fair article. Now their story is being developed as a future Hollywood movie by Scott Rudin, the producer of such films as The Hours and The School of Rock.

The boys’ movie, now known as Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, comes out of a growing movie subculture of “fan films” — home-made, not-for-profit works that steal characters and situations from movie franchises (OK, mostly Star Wars and Star Trek). They circulated as bootlegs at conventions before the internet; now they are distributed for free online, many at sites such as FanFilms.com and iFilm.

Thanks to the rise of the internet, cheap digital movie-making tools, and in the wake of the attention garnered by Kevin Rubio’s Star Wars spoof Troops (1998), which follows a squad of Stormtroopers, documentary-style, as they (indirectly) kill Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle on Tatooine, the fan-film world has exploded.

FanFilms.com is now home to more than 70 films, culled from the 15 to 20 new submissions which come to the site every week. As these film are essentially amateur shorts, the quality is wildly uneven.

Star Wars fans often seem interested only in action: in How the Sith Stole Christmas, by the time Darth Vader has stolen the Ewoks’ presents, a Star Destroyer is chasing Santa Claus through an asteroid field, and elves in toy planes are wrapping tree lights around the legs of imperial walkers.

Star Trek fans seem more interested in character and story. The most ambitious effort is Star Trek: New Voyages, which features new actors playing Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy. It even replicates the 1960s costumes, lighting and sets, with aliens as kitschy balls of energy, Kirk and Spock philosophising about Amazing Grace, and a mysterious woman changing into a green slave girl in Kirk’s quarters.

Not that fan film-makers are unaware of their nerdish obsessions. Chris Hanel’s The Formula features geeks trying to make a fan film called Star Wars: Bond of the Force. As Hanel observes: “Right now, there are 200 15-year-olds bugging each other about how to make light-sabres glow. It’s hard to believe, but one of those kids is the next Spielberg.”

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• Oscars

• Cannes

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette