#jeff weller

[warmglowofsurvival]

[80smovies]

[thanos-the-dad-titan]

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

[cantsayidont]

August 1984. This won't change anyone's feelings about cult movie perennial THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI: ACROSS THE EIGHTH DIMENSION one way or the other, but if you're wondering what the hell the deal is supposed to be with Buckaroo Banzai and his team, the answer is, "It's an obvious pastiche of the pulp hero Doc Savage."

Launched in 1933, Doc Savage was one of the leading adventure heroes of the pulp magazines. Doc (whose full name was Clark Savage Jr.) was scientifically trained from childhood to the peak of human perfection, singularly adept in everything from mechanical engineering to medicine to martial arts. He had a secret headquarters called the Fortress of Solitude and a whole array of specially designed vehicles and equipment, but he was also a public figure, with offices in the Empire State Building. Doc had a team of eccentric, highly specialized aides — Monk Mayfair, Ham Brooks, Renny Renwick, Long Tom Roberts, and Johnny Littlejohn — who each had a particular skill and a couple of distinctive personality traits (for instance, Monk was a skilled industrial chemist, but also an "ape-like" brute with a ferocious temper). They were sometimes aided by Doc's cousin, Pat Savage, who was almost as capable as Doc, although he tried to keep her out of the fray because she was (gasp) a girl.

This was a fairly common pattern for pulp heroes. For instance, the pulp version of the Shadow (who was distinctly different from the radio incarnation) relied on a whole network of agents, some appearing only once or twice, some recurring across many of his published adventures. From a narrative standpoint, the agents and assistants had two principal purposes: The first was to offset the rather overpowered heroes — pulp heroes didn't necessarily have superhuman powers, but even those who didn't tended to be preternaturally skilled at nearly everything, so it was convenient to limit their direct involvement in an adventure to crucial moments, and let the assistants (who could be much more fallible) do much of the legwork. The second object was to beef up the characterization. Doc Savage was morally irreproachable as well as absurdly multi-talented, so there wasn't a lot to be done with him character-wise, while maintaining the mystique of a character like the Shadow required him to remain a fairly closed book.

Although the pulp heroes were a huge influence on early comic book superheroes like Superman and Batman, some of these conventions didn't translate well to other media: In a 13-page comic book story or half-hour radio episode, having too many characters was cumbersome (and expensive, where it meant hiring extra actors), and comic book readers normally expected to follow their four-color heroes quite closely, even before the breathless internal monologue became a genre staple. So, Superman inherited Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude, but not his "Fabulous Five" assistants, while heroes like Batman and Captain America generally stuck with a single sidekick rather than a team of aides. Even the late Doc Savage pulp adventures (which ended in 1949) de-emphasized the assistants to keep the focus more on Doc himself. Ultimately, the pulp heroes didn't really have the right narrative center of gravity for visual media, which is why they've become relatively obscure, despite repeated revival attempts. The 1975 Doc Savage movie with Ron Ely, for instance, was a notorious commercial flop, and elements like Doc's childishly bickering assistants seemed odd and dated, even taking into account the film's nostalgia-bait '30s period setting.

What BUCKAROO BANZAI tried to do was to bring that old pulp hero formula into the modern era with a big infusion of '80s style and humor. Like Doc Savage, Buckaroo is a wildly gifted polymath (in the opening scenes, he rushes from performing brain surgery to test-driving his Jet Car through a mountain), so famous and important a personage that he puts the president of the United States on hold, and he surrounds himself with an array of brilliant, eccentric aides with silly nicknames who play in his rock band when they're not fighting crime or doing advanced scientific experiments.

Alas, judging by the poor box office returns, general audiences were no more amenable to the '80s version of this formula than they had been to DOC SAVAGE: MAN OF BRONZE nine years earlier, even with the 1984 film's extraordinary cast and memorably witty dialogue. Granted, even many of the movie's most diehard fans are baffled by the convoluted plot — a crucial expository scene where the leader of the Black Lectroids (Rosalind Cash) explains much of what's going on is nigh-incomprehensible without subtitles or closed captioning — but beyond that, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI is essentially an extended riff on a particular slice of pop culture that had long since dropped out of the public consciousness, which is both part of its charm and also its commercial undoing, at least as mainstream entertainment.

(Also, if you're wondering, yes, the TOM STRONG series by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse is also an obvious Doc Savage pastiche, although at least some of its plot and character concepts were probably retoolings of unused ideas from Moore's earlier Maximum Press/Awesome Comics SUPREME series, which was an extended pastiche of the pre-Crisis Superman.)

[mycroftholmesian]

Happy Birthday Dr. Peter Weller 🎂🥳🎉

[victusinveritas]

The world has been robbed of a sequel to this masterpiece for too long.

[eighties-o-rama]

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension - W. D. Richter (1984) Released 40 years ago this month.

[terribletriplefeatures]

Tonite's Weirdo Triple Feature!

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension 1984

[vertigoartgore]

Michael Kaluta's illustration from the 1984 movie (turning 40 today) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Featuring Hanoi Xan (the arch nemesis of Buckaroo Banzai).

[lonelya1ien]

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) is one of the coolest movies I’ve ever seen my life and I can’t believe I didn’t know about this when I was a kid.

[esonetwork]

The Adventures Of Buckaroo Bonzai | Episode 424

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/buckaroo-bonzai/

The Adventures Of Buckaroo Bonzai | Episode 424

Jim discusses one of his favorite cult films from 1984 – “The Adventures Of Buckaroos Bonzai Across The 8th Dimension,” starring Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, Lewis Smith, Rosalind Cash, Robert Ito, Matt Clark, Clancy Brown, Vincent Schiavelli, and Dan Hedaya. Buckaroo, a neurosurgeon-musician-adventurer, has little time to save the Earth from the clutches of Dr. Lizardo and the evil Red Lectroids. Find out more on this episode of MONTER ATTACK!, The Podcast Dedicated To Old Monster Movies.

[thanos-the-dad-titan]

40 years. Still a loyal Blue Blazer, waiting for the sequel..

[movieconsumer]

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) Revisit

If ever there was a movie that I could make people watch, and hopefully love, it is “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”. You are completely safe to watch the trailer, there are no spoilers there. In fact, there is no real information in the trailer at all. It tells you what kind of movie this is with just it’s tone. There are only two lines of dialogue and they are a…

[supermarcey]

The Bonus Tubi Tuesdays Podcast - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

The Bonus Tubi Tuesdays Podcast - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

The Bonus Tubi Tuesdays Podcast The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) With Guest Steven T. Boltz Download HERE https://supermarcey.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/the-bonus-tubi-tuesdays-podcast-with-the-adventures-of-buckaroo-banzai-across-the-8th-dimension-1984.mp3 Movie Starts Playing At: 00:06:12 Welcome to our bonus podcast series from The Super Network and The Tubi…

[victusinveritas]