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