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The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
By Bobby Bokista - 12.31.01
"I've had some smelly ones alright, but your son is by far the smelliest!"
A good way to describe this movie is with that quote from Big Daddy. Except, replace "smelly" with "shitty", "smelliest" with "shittiest", "son" with "movie", I've with... ah fuck it, you get the point. But somehow director W.D. Richter
let this movie become the "smelly kid" in class. To sum it up IMDB style:
"Adventurer/surgeon/rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his band of men, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, take on evil alien invaders from the 8th dimension."
I was suckered into this movie by Kevin, that bastard, because it had Paul Reiser in it. Ah ha! But alas, it DOESN'T have Paul Reiser in it. I was duped by a Paul Reiser look-alike who doesn't look like Paul Reiser who goes by the name of Peter Wellers. Peter Wellers has been in
about 40 films or so, yet STILL doesn't have a picture on the Internet Movie DataBase. The only movies you would know him from are RoboCop 1 and 2 as Robocop. But it didn't matter, because you pretty much only see his lips as far as flesh goes. We should contribute a lip-shot of Peter for the IMDB.
Oh yeah, he was also in Screamers as the Hendricksson... but it seems that only me and my dad dug that movie. It was written by Philip K. Dick, which is really weird because Kevin and I were talking about Philip K. Dick while watching Buckaroo Banzai. And thus, the circle is complete.
Ubik: "dude, this is the intraweb, not a Philip K. Dick novel."
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But this isn't about Screamers, it's about Buckaroo Banzai. Buckaroo Banzai was born in the winter of 1950 in London, the son of two scientists: Masado Banzai, a brilliant Japanese research physicist whose work in theoretical quantum mechanics is reported to have "rattled" Einstein, and Sandra Willoughby, the daughter of the eccentric
Scottish-born Texas mathematician Edward McKay Willoughby. Sandra Willoughby fell in love with Masado Banzai when she was sixteen and married him twelve years later, after becoming an expert in her own right in the field of negative mass propulsion. The couple fled Japan at the outbreak of World War II and eventually settled in Texas. Their
son grew up in Colorado and Arizona and was named "Buckaroo" because of his father's love for the American West, plus that was the name of his father's gay lover... but we won't go into that. Of course, not that there is anything wrong with being gay. |
But what good is a hero without a band of merry men to follow behind him? Ladies and Gentlemen... I present to you... THE HONG KONG CAVALIERS!!!
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| Rawhide | Reno Nevada | Perfect Tommy | New Jersey |
Better be glad that these guys are around, the world wouldn't be safe without them. As you can unclearly see... the man behind the New Jersey mask is none-other than Chaos Theory extrodinarie Jeff Goldblum! My personal favorite is Perfect Tommy. Perfect Tommy is well... perfect. If you take a look, it is easy to see why Perfect Tommy is so perfect. He has all the makings
of a true 1980's superhero.
Together this team of do-it-alls saved the world from the Evil Clutches of the Red Lectroids.
 
Our story begins with hero Buckaroo Banzai driving his famous "jet-car" in a time-trial in the desert... assumingly to see if he can break the sound barrier. As the car pulls into the final 100 yards, Buckaroo jumps the course and goes flying across the desert. As his jet-car picks up speed we see our fabled hero headed straight for a "big pile of rocks" as a scientist in the movie calls it.
These "big piles of rocks" are a also known as mountains in some countries... but we won't hold that against them. Upon coming out of the other side of the mountain, Buckaroo Bonzai is accompanied by some creature from the eight dimension that
looks like brain, the usual 80's Americanized view of what aliens must look like.
Obviously this wasn't really a good thing because the Red Lectroids are now pissed and plan to take over the world. Only, not our world... another world. But for some reason it is up to Buckaroo Banzai and The Hong Kong Cavaliers to stop the Red Lectroids from taking over the
Black Lectroids world. I don't understand why it's up to us though... since the Black Lectroids have technology that far surpasses that of our own. But, you know how those aliens are. Fickle broads. Oh, and Jon Lithgow is a crazy dude. Let's show a picutre of him too.
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If you want to find out what happens next, I suggest you watch the film. And what better way to do so then to pick up the new special edition DVD!
I watched this movie back in September, and began writing the article there. Notice how I misspelled the word silk in the magazine cutout... See, that was before school! This is after. Anywho, if you're willing to spring 15 bucks for a bad movie, I say get this one.
There are a bunch of extra features... thanks to Internet magoos like you. |  |
You see, I found a website a while back which was a petition for the Buckaroo Banzai fans of the world to sign in order to convince whoever to make a DVD for them. They got there wish, and now it
will be cluttering the shelves of your favorite local overpriced DVD retailer *cough*samgoody*cough*suncoast*cough*
Here are some of the extras you will find:
- Widescreen! Make sure you don't miss a single thing... who knows what could be happening on those cropped edges of the screens in the formatted VHS?!
- Commentary by director W.D. Richter! "Errmm... yeah. This period of my life is what I lovingly refer to as the crack-meth-dust era of my life."
- Rare Prologue Sequence! A few extra minutes of shitty story line explained in a boring format!
- Deleted Scenes! (See prologue description)
- Making Of! "So a bunch of friends got together one night and decided they wanted to make a wacky movie..."
- Character Profiles! Wait, I can do the character profiles for you.
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| Rawhide - Gay | Reno Nevada - Gay | Perfect Tommy - Fag | New Jersey - Dancing Nancy |
Available January 4th. (Street Date will be broken at Best Buy, get it there on January 1st) Get it here at Amazon.com legally and on time!
Get the MIDI for the triumphant end-of-movie-marching here.
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