Movies - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

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	Movies - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension (sometimes just Buckaroo Banzai) is a science fiction film that has reached cult film status. It was released in 1984, directed and produced by W. D. Richter and it stars Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Goldblum, and Clancy Brown.

The film is a cross between the action/adventure and science-fiction movie genres, and also includes elements of comedy, satire, and romance. It is also made to feel like one of a series of movies, or like the middle chapter in a book, by the use of ongoing allusions to other characters, adventures, and events.

Tagline: Beings from Another Dimension have invaded your world. You can't see them... but they can see you. Your only hope is Buckaroo Banzai.

Plot

The plot of Buckaroo Banzai is quite complex, often requiring multiple viewings before it can be fully understood. This is partly due to the fact that it spans roughly 50 years, begins in medias res, and doesn't fill in some of the earliest parts of the story until the viewpoint characters themselves unravel the mystery — roughly half-way through the movie. In its essentials, the plot concerns the efforts of the multi-talented Buckaroo Banzai (whose careers include physicist, neurosurgeon, martial artist, rock musician and comic book hero) to save the world by defeating a band of aliens called Red Lectroids.

The DVD of the film restores a deleted opening scene consisting of a "home movie" from Buckaroo Banzai's childhood, narrated by Clancy Brown, who plays the character Rawhide. The scene depicts an early test of a precursor to the Jet Car, built by Buckaroo's parents and Dr. Hikita. The test ends in disaster, as the Jet Car has been sabotaged by the evil Hanoi Xan. The "home movie" ends, and dissolves to the present-day opening scene of the film depicting Buckaroo's test run of the latter-day Jet Car. Jamie Lee Curtis plays Buckaroo Banzai's mother, Sandra Banzai.

The theatrical release version of the film opens with Banzai (Weller) performing a test-run of his Jet Car, a heavily modified pickup truck powered by a jet engine and capable of exceeding Mach 1. The car is also equipped with a device called an oscillation overthruster, which allows it to drive through solid matter. The test is a success; Banzai stuns onlookers by driving the Jet Car directly through a mountain. Emerging from the mountain, Banzai finds that an alien, pod-like organism has attached itself to the car during transit.

Hearing of Banzai's success, Italian physicist Dr. Emilio Lizardo (Lithgow) breaks out of the New Jersey insane asylum he's been imprisoned in for some years. In a flashback sequence, we learn that Banzai's assistant and mentor, Dr. Hikita (Robert Ito) was present at a failed overthruster experiment of Lizardo's in 1938. The experiment ended with Lizardo's mind being taken over by Lord John Whorfin, leader of the Red Lectroids — a race of alien reptiles — hence his current diagnosis of a delusional disorder.

Despite being trapped in Lizardo's body, Whorfin maintains his leadership of the Red Lectroids, and has brought over a thousand of them to Earth in an incident that was reported by Orson Welles in his The War of the Worlds
radio broadcast. The Red Lectroids now pose as employees of a defense contracting company named Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, and all bear the first name John, with various last names such as Yaya, Smallberries, and Bigbooté. Now that Banzai has produced a working overthruster, Whorfin hopes to steal it and use it to return his people to their home planet and subjugate its current inhabitants, the peace-loving Black Lectroids.

In the meantime, a Black Lectroid spaceship orbiting Earth contacts Banzai, giving him a cryptic nonverbal message that enables him to see through Lectroids' natural pheromonic camouflage. (To unassisted humans, Black Lectroids appear to be Black, Rastafarian Jamaicans, while Red Lectroids appear as red-haired Caucasians.) The ship also sends a "thermo-pod" to Earth, with a messenger who brings Banzai a holographic message from the Black Lectroids' leader, explaining Lord Whorfin's history and motives, and giving an ultimatum: stop Whorfin and his Red Lectroid army, or the Black Lectroids will protect themselves by staging a fake nuclear attack and letting the U.S. and USSR destroy the world in a burst of Cold War paranoia. With help from the Black Lectroid messenger John Parker, and his usual posse of helpers ("those hard-rockin' scientists, the Hong Kong Cavaliers"), Buckaroo succeeds in his mission, destroying the Red Lectroids and saving Earth.

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