Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.PCS 1/10/84; site hocsj.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!houxm!hogpc!pegasus!hocsj!ecl
From: ecl@hocsj.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies,net.sf-lovers
Subject: BUCKEROO BANZAI
Message-ID: <163@hocsj.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Oct-84 10:32:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: hocsj.163
Posted: Mon Oct  8 10:32:46 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Oct-84 03:45:27 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 49


                              BUCKEROO BANZAI
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper

     The phenomenon of the midnight audience cult classic has given rise to
a number of films trying to outdo each other for weirdness.  It seems that
to capture this highly profitable audience the filmmaker has to create a
film unlike the kind of fare that one usually sees when common work-a-day
people can get to a theater.  In nature the majority of mutations are non-
viable, and the same principle applies to films that try to be different to
catch the after-midnight crowd.  Most are films everyone should see at most
once.  And that isn't the idea at all.  Rare is the person who sits through
ERASERHEAD repeatedly.  In any town big enough to make showing midnight
films profitable, people who would see ERASERHEAD more than once will find
other establishments to cater to their masochistic tendencies.

     More light-hearted than most attempted classics is BUCKEROO BANZAI:
ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION.  This film bears roughly the same relationship to
comic books that head cheese bears to meat.  It is a very strange dicing and
throwing together of many very odd ideas.  It is sort of DOC SAVAGE crossed
with THE MONITORS dones in the style of THE LAST DAYS OF MAN ON EARTH.  It
seems that we really were invaded the night of the famous Orson Welles
broadcast of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS on October 30, 1938.  (The scriptwriter
and most of the rest of the world think the date was the 31st, but the
correct date was really Sunday the 30th.)  There are two groups of battling
aliens, the red Lectroids and the black Lectroids, with Earth caught in the
middle.  The only person who can save us is super-scientist/rock-
singer/neurosurgeon Buckeroo Banzai.  This over-achiever leads a band of
loyal compatriots and an army of child confederates.  On the side of evil is
B.B.'s arch-enemy Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) and the nasty red Lectroids.
Allied with Buckeroo for good are the black Lectroids.  The aliens are all
around but without special glasses, the red Lectroids look like AT&T
executives and the blacks look like Rastafarians.  Does that sound odd?
There is more to come.  B.B. has a new device that lets him move through
solid matter by projecting him into the eight dimension which turns out to
be the subway tunnel the Lectroids use to get here from Planet Ten (of
course!).  If that sounds confusing, don't worry.  You now have a concrete
advantage over the rest of the audience toward understanding this film.  It
may even give you a fighting chance to assimilate what is going on.  Maybe.

     Confusion, camp, bad acting, strange action, rock music, and homilies
like, "No matter where you go, there you are" combine to make this
film,...well...odd.  Not too bad, but a long way from perfect.  Rate it +1
(on a -4 to +4 scale).

					(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!lznv!mrl