The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	W. D. Richter
Produced by	W. D. Richter Neil Canton
Written by	Earl Mac Rauch
Starring	Peter Weller Ellen Barkin John Lithgow Jeff Goldblum Christopher Lloyd
Music by	Michael Boddicker
Cinematography	Fred J. Koenekamp Jordan Cronenweth (uncredited)
Edited by	George Bowers Richard Marks
Production company	Sherwood Productions
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	August 15, 1984 (1984-08-15)
Running time	102 minutes [1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$17 million[2]
Box office	$6,227,998

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!, often shortened to Buckaroo Banzai, is a 1984 American science fiction film. It was directed and produced by W. D. Richter, and concerns the efforts of the multi-talented Dr. Buckaroo Banzai, a physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot, and rock musician, to save the world by defeating a band of inter-dimensional^{[clarification needed]} aliens called Red Lectroids from Planet 10. The film is a cross between the action/adventure and sci-fi film genres and also includes elements of comedy, satire, and romance.^[3]

Plot[edit]

Banzai prepares to test his Jet Car, a modified Ford F-350 pickup truck powered by a jet engine and capable of exceeding the speed of sound. The car is also equipped with a secret device called an "oscillation overthruster", which Banzai and his associates hope will allow it to drive through solid matter. The test is a success: Banzai stuns onlookers by driving the Jet Car directly through a mountain. Emerging on the other side, Banzai finds that an alien organism has attached itself to the undercarriage.

Hearing of Banzai's success, physicist Dr. Emilio Lizardo breaks out of the Trenton Home for the Criminally Insane, after being held there for 50 years. A flashback shows Banzai's mentor, Dr. Hikita, was present at Lizardo's failed overthruster experiment in 1938. Crashing half through the target wall, Lizardo had been briefly trapped in the 8th dimension^{[clarification needed]} where his mind was taken over by Lord John Whorfin.

Whorfin is the leader of the Red Lectroids, a race of alien reptiles who wage war against Planet 10. After being defeated by the less-aggressive Black Lectroids, Whorfin and his group were banished into the 8th dimension. Lizardo's failed experiment accidentally released Whorfin and he soon brings many of the Red Lectroids to Earth in an incident that was reported in 1938 by Orson Welles in his radio broadcast The War of the Worlds, only to be forced by the aliens to retract it all as fiction.

The Red Lectroids now pose as employees of the defense contracting company named Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems. They have been working on building a large spacecraft under the guise of a United States Air Force program, the Truncheon bomber. They intend to rescue the remaining 8th dimension exiles and take over Planet 10. They were unable to produce a working overthruster like Banzai's, so Whorfin plans to steal it. Banzai's team, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, finds out about Yoyodyne and hacks into their computer. They discover that everyone there has the first name John, with various last names such as Yaya, Smallberries and Bigbooté. At first they believe it to be a joke, but then they notice all the Yoyodyne employees applied for Social Security cards on November 1, 1938 and all in the same town: Grover's Mill, New Jersey.

In the meantime, a Black Lectroid spacecraft orbiting Earth contacts Banzai, giving him an electric shock that enables him to see through Lectroids' camouflage. (Black Lectroids appear to be Rastafarian Jamaicans, while Red Lectroids appear to be Caucasians.) The ship also sends a "thermo-pod" to Earth, with a holographic message from the Black Lectroids' leader, John Emdall, explaining Lord Whorfin's motives and giving an ultimatum: stop Whorfin and his army or else the Black Lectroids will protect themselves by staging a fake nuclear attack, causing the start of World War III.

With help from the Black Lectroid messenger John Parker, Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers, a collection of civilian volunteers named "The Blue Blaze Irregulars" and a young woman named Penny Priddy (a long-lost twin sister of Buckaroo's late wife), Buckaroo succeeds in his mission, destroying the Red Lectroids and saving Earth. The end credits announce an unproduced sequel Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League.

Cast[edit]

• Peter Weller as Buckaroo Banzai, a modern-day renaissance man, top neurosurgeon, particle physicist, race car driver, rock star and comic book hero. In the film, he is seen as a mild-mannered hero whose latest experiments open the door to the 8th dimension and unwittingly start an interstellar battle for the world.
• John Lithgow as Dr. Emilio Lizardo / Lord John Whorfin
• Ellen Barkin as Penny Priddy
• Ronald Lacey as President Widmark

The Hong Kong Cavaliers[edit]

The Hong Kong Cavaliers are the main assistants of Banzai in the film and bear some similarity to Doc Savage's Fabulous Five. They reside at the Banzai Institute, a think-tank located in Holland Township, New Jersey. In addition to being multidisciplinary scientific experts in a variety of fields, they are also Buckaroo's rock and roll band. They are all referred to by code names or nicknames and, except for New Jersey, their actual names remain secret.

• Clancy Brown as Rawhide, arguably Buckaroo's lieutenant. Plays piano. He appears to be killed by a Red Lectroid's poisoned barb, but the 'Pinky Carruthers' fact overlay feature on the DVD states that he was put into suspended animation until they can find a cure.
• Pepe Serna as Reno Nevada, who plays saxophone. Reno is romantically involved with another of Buckaroo's teammates, a woman named Pecos (referenced in a line of dialogue as being in Tibet, she appears in the novel, but not in the film).
• Lewis Smith as Perfect Tommy, who plays rhythm guitar, and is generally accepted to be perfect. He designed the Jet Car's suspension system, which allows it to hug the ground even at supersonic speeds.
• Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Sidney Zweibel/New Jersey, a neurosurgeon and a colleague of Dr. Banzai's from Columbia. He sings a little, dances and plays piano.
• Billy Vera as Pinky Carruthers, one of Buckaroo's Blue Blaze Irregulars. Plays bass guitar.

In addition to the Hong Kong Cavaliers, Banzai is assisted by a multi-talented network of supporters and fans, akin to Holmes' Baker Street Irregulars. The Radar Rangers are an amateur radio enthusiast group that helps Buckaroo track major threats. The Blue Blaze Irregulars are people of all ages and from all walks of life who help in various ways. The organization includes assault teams in its structure. The Rug Suckers are a team of armed civilians who operate a rug cleaning company, but are available to help Banzai when called upon.

Lectroids[edit]

• Christopher Lloyd as John Bigbooté
• Rosalind Cash as John Emdall
• Carl Lumbly as John Parker
• Vincent Schiavelli as John O'Connor
• Dan Hedaya as John Gomez

Other characters[edit]

• Robert Ito as Professor Hikita
• Matt Clark as Secretary of Defense
• William Traylor as General Catburd
• Mariclare Costello as Senator Cunningham
• Bill Henderson as Casper Lindley
• Damon Hines as Scooter Lindley
• Laura Harrington as Mrs. Johnson
• Yakov Smirnoff as National Security Advisor
• Jonathan Banks as Lizardo Hospital Guard
• Jamie Lee Curtis and James Saito (deleted scenes) as Sandra and Masado Banzai

Production[edit]

Development[edit]

In 1974, W. D. Richter's wife read a review of Dirty Pictures from the Prom, the debut novel from Dartmouth College graduate and writer Earl Mac Rauch. Richter, also an alumnus from the college, read the book, loved it and wrote Mac Rauch a letter.^[4] The two men began corresponding and when the writer told him about his interest in becoming a screenwriter, Richter offered him an open-ended invitation to visit him in Los Angeles where he was attending the University of Southern California^[5] and working as a script analyst for Warner Brothers.^[6]

Screenplay[edit]

Years passed and Richter became a successful screenwriter. Mac Rauch took Richter up on his offer and arrived in L.A. Richter proceeded to introduce the writer to producer/director Irwin Winkler who gave Mac Rauch rent money for the next six months.^[5] Over several dinners, Mac Rauch told Richter and his wife about a character named Buckaroo Bandy that he was thinking of writing a screenplay about. Richter and his wife liked the idea and paid Mac Rauch $1,500 to develop and write it. According to Mac Rauch, his script was inspired by "all those out-and-out, press-the-accelerator-to-the-floor, non-stop kung fu movies of the early '70s".^[7] Richter remembers that Mac Rauch wrote several Banzai stories and that he "would get thirty or forty pages into a script, abandon its storyline and write a new one".^[4] Mac Rauch recalled, "It's so easy to start something and then - since you're really not as serious about it as you should be - end up writing half of it ... You shove the hundred pages in a drawer and try to forget about it. Over the years, I started a dozen Buckaroo scripts that ended that way".^[6]

Mac Rauch's original 30-page treatment was entitled Find the Jetcar, Said the President - A Buckaroo Banzai Thriller.^[6] Early on, one of the revisions Mac Rauch made was changing Buckaroo's surname from Bandy to Banzai but he wasn't crazy about it. However, Richter convinced him to keep the name.^[5] The Hong Kong Cavaliers also appeared in these early drafts, but, according to Richter, "it never really went to a completed script. Mac wrote and wrote but never wrote the end".^[5] Another early draft was entitled The Strange Case of Mr. Cigars, about a huge robot and a box of Hitler's cigars.^[6] Mac Rauch shelved his work for a few years while he wrote New York, New York for Martin Scorsese and other un-produced screenplays.^[6]

In 1980, Richter talked with producers Frank Marshall and Neil Canton about filming one of his screenplays.^[8] Out of this meeting, Canton and Richter formed their own production company and decided that Buckaroo Banzai would be the first film. Under their supervision, Mac Rauch wrote a 60-page treatment entitled, Lepers from Saturn.^[6] They shopped Mac Rauch's treatment around to production executives who were their peers but no one wanted to take on such unusual subject matter by two first-time producers and a first-time director. Canton and Richter contacted veteran producer Sidney Beckerman at MGM/United Artists who Canton had worked with before.^[8] Beckerman liked it and introduced Richter and Canton to studio chief David Begelmen. Within 24 hours they had a development deal with the studio.^[6] It took Mac Rauch a year and a half to write the final screenplay and during this time, the Lepers from the treatment became Lizards and then Lectroids from Planet 10.^[8] Much of the film's detailed character histories were taken from Mac Rauch's unfinished Banzai scripts.^[9]

However, a Writers Guild of America strike forced the project to languish in development for more than a year. Begelmen left MGM because several of his projects had performed poorly at the box office. This put all of his future projects, Buckaroo Banzai included, in jeopardy.^[6] Begelmen formed Sherwood Productions and exercised a buy-out option with MGM for the Banzai script. He took it to 20th Century Fox who agreed to make it with a $12 million budget.^[10] Mac Rauch ended up writing three more drafts before they had a shooting script.^[7]