Watch “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”

On a slow Friday night in 1995, when I was in the 8th grade, I was spending the night at a friend’s house.  She gave me free reign to root through the video cabinet under the TV to see if anything piqued my interest.  Her mother was a massive sci-fi buff and I presumed I would discover the same “classic” fare I possessed in my own collection. I certainly wasn’t disappointed. However, as I continued to dig through VHS copies of Blade Runner, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and the off musical, a movie I’d never even heard of caught my eye.
“Oh! I forgot we had that!” my friend cried. “Put it in. You’ll like it, I promise.” Truer words have never been spoken.
Buckaroo Banzai, played by RoboCop himself Peter Weller, is a neurosurgeon, a particle physicist, a racecar driver, a comic book hero, and a bona fide rock star. With the help of his fellow scientists/band mates/adventurers, The Hong Kong Cavaliers, Buckaroo manages to invent an “oscillation overthruster,” which allows him to travel through solid matter by way of the 8th dimension. Unfortunately, after a successful test drive, Buckaroo discovers that he’s brought something back with him — an alien life form. Enter the Lectroids.
The Lectroids from Planet 10 are split into 2 factions — the red and the black. The Black Lectroids are peace-loving creatures who fought and won a war against the Red Lectroids for control of their planet. The Red Lectroids were consequently banished as punishment to the void of the 8th dimension. There they stayed until a fateful day in 1938 when they invaded Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. This invasion was reported live to the world by Orson Welles. Unfortunately, Welles’ report was later debunked as fiction. Since that day, the Lectroids have been living among us, camouflaged. The Black Lectroids look, to an average human being, to be nothing more than dready-heady Rastafarian Jamaicans named John. All of them named John. The Red Lectoids are also named John. However, they are all Caucasian and have absurd surnames, such as Bigboutté  or Smallberries, proving their complete in ability to blend in with human society. Their goal is to steal the overthruster and free the remaining Red Lectoids from the 8th dimension to ultimately occupy Earth as their own.  With the help of John Parker, a Black Lectroid, Buckaroo Banzai and The Hong Kong Cavaliers must stop them.
This flick isn’t quite a spoof. It’s also not quite serious. It is, however, fully action packed and hilarious. It was also a box office atomic bomb when it was released in 1984. The studio that produced it, Sherwood Studios, subsequently went bankrupt, foiling any and all plans for the proposed sequel promised in the closing credits, even by other production companies. MGM had to fight an arduous battle just to get this movie released on DVD. However, that fight was well worth it.  This gem is finally available to the cult-classic-adoring-masses and I’ve been pushing it on unsuspecting viewers like a dealer pushes crack since 1995.-KS

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