The Anti-Blockbusters: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
By John J. Joex
Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 Stars
Coming out in 1984 at a time when big budget, sfx-laden films were becoming more common at the Box Office, this film left a lot of people walking out of the theaters with their heads spinning and saying wtf! The movie starts out with Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) performing a surgical procedure after which he is rushed away to test out a new jet-propelled car which he has equipped with an oscillation overthruster and which he drives through a mountain and into another dimension. When he emerges on the other side, he finds a strange alien organism attached to the pod; proof that he travelled to the 8th Dimension. The mentally unstable Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) sees a report of Buckaroo’s successful experiment on the news which prompts him to escape from the institution where he is imprisoned so that he can steal the overthruster. Lizardo had previously done similar experiments through which he was possessed by Lord John Whorfin, an evil Red Lectroid from the 8th Dimension. The escaped Lizardo/Whorfin heads to Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems in Grovers Mill, New Jersey (yes, the link to Orson Wells’ radio broadcast is intentional) where fellow Red Lectroids John Yaya, John Smallberries, and John Bigbooté (yes, the recurring Johns are intentional) head up a group of renegades planning to return to the 8th Dimension and conquer Planet 10 once they acquire the overthruster. Meanwhile, a Black Lectroid spaceship commanded by the female John Emdall (yes, another John and this time a woman) orbits the Earth monitoring the situation. Emdall sends a message to Buckaroo and demands that he stop John Whorfin otherwise she will trick the United States and Russia into launching nuclear strikes on one another. With no other choice, Buckaroo calls into action his rock band/super adventurers the Hong Kong Cavaliers along with his civilian backup the Blue Blaze Irregulars and jumps into the crisis with guns blaring.
If that synopsis left your head spinning, then know that I really only scraped the surface of the experience that is Buckaroo Banzai. This movie delivered a cross-genre satire that poked fun at its comic book/science fiction origins while also relishing in the excesses of both and finishing off with plenty of wit and hip posturing. Eschewing the more broad Airplane-style spoofs and maneuvering past the low-brow humor of Spaceballs, the movie walked that fine line between comedy and drama with plenty of winks to the well-versed sci fi fans sitting in the audience. It starts out by setting a breathless pace as it throws the viewer into the middle of the action and it never takes a break to let the audience catch up. And that’s part of its charm, even if it likely put off many viewers on its first go around. This gets the viewers immediately involved in the action, even if they do not necessarily understand everything passing by on the screen as it proceeds at light speed. The movie takes several passes to fully get your arms around it and each new viewing turns up yet another nugget that the screenwriters stashed away somewhere for the tenacious, curious fan to unveil later.
Buckaroo Banzai also managed to deliver a spirit of fun, adventure, and whim that the Hollywood machine had already started to squash in favor of cookie-cutter Blockbusters. Like a breath of fresh air, it departed from the more structured, formulaic cinematic output and verged on the anarchic. But it never got too brainy or geeky, either. It was not the type of movie that only the nerdiest of sci fi fans could get into, just anyone who appreciates a good amount of wit and angular story-telling. It also had a sense of hipness about it with its attractive, ultra-cool cast (was Buckaroo perhaps the first cool geek?) and its stylized look (that distinguished itself just enough from the fashion of the 80’s to create a timeless chic). In many ways, Buckaroo Banzai was a superhero movie with its action-star, renaissance man hero, and it also included some throwback references to earlier adventure serials as well as 50’s sci fi. And Peter Weller along with his supporting cast made this look cool and effortless. And that cast includes a who’s who of names that have since established themselves in movies and television such as John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum, and Clancy Brown.
Buckaroo Banzai was not a low-budget film with production costs coming in at $12 million. But it did veer to the lower side compared to other genre films that came out the same year like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ($28 million budget) and Ghostbusters ($30 million budget) and it had a slightly lower price tag than 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock ($16 million budget). But I count Buckaroo Banzai as an Anti-Blockbuster because of the way it thumbed its nose at Hollywood and delivered a completely unique film that defies easy categorization and that marketers found nearly impossible to promote (and thus they just chose not to). This resulted in a disastrous Box Office run (making back less than one fourth of its budget) when it was first released. The movie quickly caught on in the home video market, though, and has since become a cult hit. Unfortunately, the promised sequel (teased just prior to the ending credits as Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League) never surfaced because of the poor Box Office reception of this film. But the original creators did eventually carry on the story of Buckaroo in comics through several excellent mini-series put out by Blue Water Productions.
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Date: August 27, 2010
Categories: John J. Joex, Movie Reviews, Reviews, The Anti-Blockbusters

Synopsis: Based on the six-part BBC television serial from the 50’s by the same name, this movie follows Professor Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group who investigates a strange missile-like object found deep beneath London by a construction crew. At first the professor and his colleagues theorize that this might be an experimental, undetonated German weapon from World War 2, but fossilized remains of primates are found very close to it and Quatermass ultimately surmises that it may have alien origins. Continued investigation of the object unleashes dormant forces that take control of those nearby, sending them on violent rampages. When Quartermass discovers the carcasses of horned, insect-like creatures inside the missile, he theorizes that these may have been beings that came to Earth from a dying Mars millions of years ago and that they must have implanted memories of their civilization (including a final racial purge) in the minds of the early primates that provide the origins for much of the superstition surrounding devils and demons in human culture. And as the latent force in the spaceship becomes more powerful, it begins to affect all of the inhabitants of London as they begin to reenact the slaughter of the racial purge from the dying days of Mars.






