11 meters away,
the 12th men cheer,
the 11th stand tense–
3-3 tied,
3 minutes to go.

Right, left, middle –
3 choices, which one?
The man to beat dances,
to scare me.

Stutter step–
I shoot– ball flies center,
Fooled Me– he Touches!
Ball flies– I panic –
Contact– Scooore!

4-3 it is,
2 minutes to go.

“Rent are mind and soul

of We who lie in this hole.

Never more to wake in bed,

But only here amidst the dead.”

De tout ce qui coule,
De tout ce qui change,
De tout ce qui n’est plus comme avant,
C’est seulement la vie qui reste.

Les lumières brillantes,
Elle valse avec majesté;
Elle vole au-dessus de nuages,
Dans le ciel, près du soleil, de la lune, et des étoiles brûlantes.
En dansant, en souriant, en fleurissant,
Elle fait deux pas, puis une pirouette;
Deux pas, une pirouette; deux pas, une pirouette.
Elle éclate dans sa jeunesse, une fleur en fleur.

La musique coule, la fleur change, la danse continue.
Mais un jour, la fin arrivera.
La musique ne jouera plus,
La fleur pâlira,
La danse s’arrêtera.

Deux pas, une pirouette, deux pas, une pirouette,
Le vent murmurait entre les branches;
Il était longtemps depuis que la musique n’avait plus joué,
Depuis que la danse s’était arrêtée.

Maintenant, elle souriait.

The doors of the grimy Underground carriage rattled open. The bustle of Piccadilly and Trafalgar was long gone, and the carriage was slinking into the depths of rural Essex. It was late, but not late enough for the Underground to get really busy with those returning drunk and rowdy from downtown. It was around 9 o’ clock. The platform, reeking of a mixture of oil and soot, was nearly empty, and only two passengers stepped into the carriage. One was a tall, well-dressed man of average weight. He was clean-shaven, with eyes that immediately made any observer feel chilled. They were eyes that one could not see into, like a cold, hard wall to the world. These eyes, on top of an extremely expensive suit completed the businessman’s appearance to the observer. He looked like he was in his mid-thirties. The other man was quite different. He wore a greasy, stained West Ham football shirt, claret and blue. This hung over a ripped and mucky pair of jeans, which were tucked into shabby work-boots. Many of his teeth were blackened, set between two unshaven cheeks. His beetroot-coloured sunburnt face was shadowed by a tattered cap, perched there like a nesting bird. His eyes shone through this grubby mass, giving a sense of something of a deeper character than one would expect. Slightly rotund, he was the polar opposite of the businessman. Although of similar age, he had not aged as well as the businessman, with years of lager and cigarettes taking their toll. The only passengers on the carriage, these two instinctively shuffled past each other, with eyes averted to avoid the gaze of the other. Leading their separate, apparently different lives, They shuffled on to opposite sides of the carriage. As the advert-covered carriage, illuminated by fluorescent lights, shot off into the dark of the tunnels, these two vastly different men were thrust together into three minutes and fifty-five seconds that had the potential to change each of their lives.

About ten seconds later, both men’s eyes were drawn to the same thing. At the far end of the carriage, there was a shape, slumped against the bulkhead. It wasn’t obvious what it was at first, but each man’s curiosity was piqued. The worker gingerly heaved himself to his feet, and made his way down the carriage. He glanced at the mass. He saw that it was a man. Slumped against the wall. Not moving. Oddly pale. He glanced at the businessman, aware that those cold eyes had been following his progress across the carriage. The businessman looked up from his copy of the The Financial Times.
“You’d betta come over ‘ere mate,” said the worker. “I fink e’s dead.” And then under his breath, “a posh man likes yerself’ll know what ‘a do.” The cockney tones were heavily apparent.
The businessman, alarmed, got up and strode to where the worker was standing. Looking at the corpse, he was heard to utter a barely audible “Oh my Gawd”.

Five seconds later. Both men were huddled over the corpse.
“Wake up,” muttered the businessman, gently shaking the corpse by the shoulders. Repeating the action, he got steadily more violent and exasperated.
“Well tha’s not gonna work init?” the worker snapped, a little flustered.
“Well what exactly would you recommend then?” snapped the businessman, those cold eyes turned on the rounder man.
“Why d’yer fink I’d know?” asked the worker. “You’re tha edicated one what knows all. I just went to bloody Essex South End Comprehensive ‘til 15. Yer in yer fancy suit with edication should bloody well know wha’a do.”
“You don’t say,” muttered the businessman under his breath. He had gone there too before escaping to further education, but was glad to leave his origins far behind. It was not a connection he wanted to emphasise. For a moment there was almost a visible connection between the two polar opposites, but then the verbal badminton continued.
“I’m a bus’ness man not a doctor,” said the businessman.
“Wha’, an’you don’t know more’n a builder like me?”
“Fine. You got a mobile to call the fuzz?”
“No, course I don’t.”
“Well, I don’t want to call. Don’t want to get caught up with the police. I haven’t got time.”
“Look ‘ere. Le’s jus’ worry ‘bout ‘im for a second.”
“What’s the use? He’s dead,” retorted the businessman in a condescending manner.
“Aye, well, we migh’ know tha’ if you an’ yer edication weren’t so bloody useless. Le’s get ‘im laid down an’ check for a beat or somefink.”
“Fine, I s’pose” agreed the businessman.
And so the worker took the man’s feet, and the businessman took the man’s shoulders. They had to really heave to get him onto the floor, as he was not a light man. The fluorescent lights of the underground flickered. The two leaned over him. Well, the businessman didn’t lower himself to the floor. That suit was too expensive. Just as the worker was bending over the man’s neck to get a pulse, a woman’s voice crackled to life on the carriage speaker. This familiar sound reminded the two men that this should be just like any other evening Underground ride.
“Now arriving at Epping Forest. This is the end of the line,” the voice said in a cheerful manner.
The businessman rose to his full height. He looked anxiously around, as if checking with those cold eyes that there was no one around watching him.
“Wha’yer doin’?” demanded the worker.
He turned those piercing eyes on the cold wall of the businessman’s.
The businessman flinched, as if he were just coming back to the reality lying on the floor in front of him.
“Hmm?” the businessman uttered an unintelligible noise.
“Wha’yer doin?” repeated the worker, those eyes now flashing.
“Oh, you don’t think I’m staying here d’you?”
The worker’s face changed, as if someone had pulled a curtain of disbelief in front of it.
“Yer what?”
“This isn’t my problem,” said the businessman. “This man has nothing to do with me.”
“So yer gonna leave ‘im here?”
“Well yes. He’s not my problem. Surely you don’t feel an obligation to a dead man you found in an Underground carriage?”
“Wha’ ‘bout ‘is fam’ly? They’ll be wondrin’ wha’s ‘appened t’im”
“Someone will find him in the morning. It’s not our responsibility to deal with him. His family’s not our problem. I have a life to get back to.”
“So yer jus’ gonna walk off an’ forget ‘bout this?”
“I hope so. And fully intend to.”
The worker’s face looked like a child’s after that loss of innocence so often related in literature. Then he looked up.
“Didn’t yer fancy edication ever learn yer to not do fings like this?” Now he was trying anything to make the businessman stay.
The businessman turned away in disgust.
“My bloody education isn’t the answer to everything,” he snapped.
He headed to the door.
The worker felt conflicted. He knew he should stay there, and do whatever he could for the dead man and his family. But then, he thought, there was merit to what the businessman was saying. If he left the carriage, his life wouldn’t get more complicated, concerned with a corpse he found on the Underground. Maybe he would be able to forget about it, like the businessman said. He looked up and saw the businessman standing by the doors of the carriage, peering out into the pitch black of the tunnel. The fluorescent lights flickered.

Fifteen seconds later. The carriage clattered to a halt with a screech of brakes, like hundreds of shrill whistles. It was the end of the line. From the dark tunnel, the carriage emerged into blinding lights from the platform. The businessman turned those cold, hard eyes away. Muttering something about being late home, he emerged onto the cement platform. The worker turned and watched him go. He started to rise to his full modest height, but then something caught him. He turned back to the man on the dusty floor. His piercing eyes perceived something. Perceived a flash of life in the corpse. Perceived a flash of his life in the
corpse. If he walked away, he would be
leaving a part of his humanity, the tie he was
now feeling with that poor man slumped there. He would be abandoning what it meant to be human, to feel human. And as
he thought of this, the man’s cheeks no longer seemed so pale. Life truly was returning to his eyes. The worker straightened up in disbelief. He stuck his head out of the door, staring down the white-tiled platform. Seeing a Constable standing by the stairway, he called to the familiar blue uniform. Emotion seemed to be erupting from the worker, those eyes beginning to water.

The businessman kept on walking, leaving the happenings of that short trip behind him. They had no place in his world. He had no time to be caught up in police inquiries. He wanted to get home and sink into his cocoon; relax on the leather furniture of his penthouse apartment, watch the news, relating the terrible events of the day, with G&T in hand.
 

Believe it or not, there was a time when science fiction was not about showing off flashy special effects or making some sort of social, political or environmental commentary. It was just about getting a cool story with some aliens, some fighting, and some really epic heroes. It was about the thrill of exploring unknown worlds. It was about meeting new alien races and seeing what they had to offer. But most importantly, it was about saving the world single handedly before evil alien monsters from another dimension destroyed it.

I speak, of course, of the late seventies and eighties, the time of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and more or less anything else with “Star” in the title. Back then, the space opera was alive, and in every cinema around the world. But, buried among the big names, beneath William Shatner’s toupee and Mark Hamill’s lightsaber, deep below the Cylon Raiders and the Borg Cubes, there was a quirky little science fiction tale entitled The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. I can still clearly remember the day when I was lurking on those dark plains we call the Internet, and stumbling across an article reviewing this movie. After having watched movies like DOOM and A Sound of Thunder (Phew… I’ll get to those some other day), I was just about ready to swear off science fiction for good. Although disheartened by these recent cinematic failures, I was nonetheless enticed by this amusing little tidbit. “Wow”, I thought to myself, “Christopher Lloyd, Peter Weller, John Lithgow and Jeff Goldblum all in one place? Surely this is an elaborate internet prank!” But further research yielded that this film is indeed real- as real as you or me, and although it never achieved critical acclaim, it has earned a special place in the hearts and minds of people everywhere who know what science fiction was really about.

Granted, the plot is slightly convoluted, but here it is in brief. The movie focuses on Buckaroo Banzai, a neurosurgeon/particle physicist/rock star and his band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, consisting of the eclectic blend of Perfect Tommy, Reno Nevada, New Jersey, Rawhide, and unofficially, Dr. Hikita, Pinky Carruthers, and Penny Priddy. Also, Buckaroo regularly receives aid from a worldwide network of fans known as the Blue Blaze Irregulars. From his tour bus, also called World Watch One, Buckaroo is ready to rock anywhere, anytime. As the movie starts, Buckaroo has just been testing out the U.S government’s newest toy, a jet car capable of traveling incredible speeds. He takes this opportunity to try out his own new gadget, the “Oscillation Overthruster”, a device that allows him to pass straight through solid matter by exploiting the space between particles. The reasoning is that since so much of matter is empty space, one should be able to find a way to go right through it (I said the plot was complex, I never said it was scientifically feasible). The test is a success, and Buckaroo becomes the first human being to pass unharmed- and sane- through the Eighth Dimension. On his way, he picks up a strange alien pod, as well as drawing the attention of one Lord John Whorfin. Whorfin is a Red Lectroid, an alien whose warlike race was trapped in the Eighth Dimension by the peace loving Black Lectroids. Unfortunately for him, he has spent the last few decades in a mental asylum, being sent Twinkies and other assorted goodies from his friends at Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems (who are also Red Lectroids). Yoyodyne has been working on a ship that will carry them to Planet Ten after a brief stopover in the Eighth Dimension to stage an interdimensional prison break. Moreover, the project has been funded by the U.S government, believing that Yoyodyne was building their “Truncheon Bomber”, a new bomber that would presumably be used in the event of Russian attack. Whorfin hopes to steal Buckaroo’s Overthruster and use it to free the rest of his comrades from the Eighth Dimension so that they can return home to Planet Ten and eradicate the Black Lectroids. Of course, the Black Lectroids don’t want this, so they send a messenger, John Parker, to warn Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers so that they can launch into action and stop the Lectroids. Other than the obvious moral implications, why would Buckaroo want to stop the Red Lectroids? Because launching their ship will cause the Black Lectroids in orbit around Earth to launch a blast of energy at the planet that, as Perfect Tommy puts it, “the Kremlin will almost certainly interpret as an American pre-emptive strike”, and we all know what that means. What follows is an epic quest to stop Whorfin, get the Overthruster and, of course, single handedly save the world before evil alien monsters from another dimension destroy it. Torture, some hijinks, firefights, and more oscillation follows.

Now, whether or not you got all that doesn’t really matter because if you read the rest of the review, your interest will probably be piqued enough that you’ll go ahead and spend the five bucks to rent it.

The movie sports a pretty famous cast- the eponymous hero is played by Peter Weller, who also played the eponymous hero from Robocop. Whorfin is played by John Lithgow, who you may recognize as Dr. Solomon, from 3^rd Rock From The Sun. John Bigbooté, Whorfin’s personal assistant, is played by Christopher Lloyd, also known as Emmett Brown, from the Back To The Future series (Or, if you want to go a little deeper into the realm of cult films, he was also Professor Plum in the film adaptation of Clue). New Jersey is played by Jeff Goldblum, who you may know as David Levinson from Independence Day, or Seth Brundle, from The Fly, (although Jeff Goldblum has been around enough that you really ought to know who he is). Penny is played by Ellen Barkin, or Abigail Sponder, Oceans 13. Put simply, there are enough famous people in there that you should recognize most of them, and they all act their roles convincingly, or at least, as convincingly as can be done in a movie about Lectroids from Planet Ten trying to get into the Eighth Dimension.

The movie is a touch on the short side- it ranks in at about an hour and forty-five minutes, plus credits, so it’s not what you’d call a “movie night” film unless you’re going for a double feature, which makes a lot of sense with this movie. Nothing like a science fiction double feature, eh? If you’re the kind of person who would rather sit down with a huge vat of popcorn and an equally large cistern of pop for a long night of meaningful cinema (although if you’re that kind of fellow, you’d probably prefer something a little more sophisticated than pop. Coffee, perhaps, or if you’re really up on your sci-fi, some Earl Grey Tea), you might want to forego Buckaroo Banzai’s tale and perhaps shoot for something in the long area. In that instance, I would recommend The Godfather- good movie, and ranking in at about 3 hours, it’ll be enough to keep you occupied for a night.

But enough about Marlon Brando. This review is not about him.

The special effects are far into the realm of camp. Most of the Lectroid set pieces look like they’re made of painted styrofoam. The Oscillation Overthruster itself is naught but an oblong metal ball. The Lectroid costumes, while decently done, aren’t particularly sophisticated. All in all, most of these effects and props look like they could have been made with simple household equipment. Now, while there are some people who would see this as a bad thing, it’s not. Good lord, no. They couldn’t be more wrong. Watching a movie like Buckaroo Banzai (which, in its defence, was made in the eighties on a miniscule budget) is somewhat akin to playing an Atari 2600. You don’t expect the graphics to be incredible, the story is left to the imagination in some parts, but you keep playing anyways because it’s so much fun. Sure, you can go and play games like Twilight Princess or Halo 3, (both stellar games) that have deeper and more interesting stories and are prettier to look at, but that good old Atari has a certain charm to it. Buckaroo Banzai is like that. You know it’s campy, you know it’s low budget, but it’s so much fun that you just can’t help yourself- you have to keep watching. 

What I love most about this movie, though, is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. In the days when so many of our sci-fi films are political or social statements (Gattaca, The Island), environmental quips (The Core), or just plain bad (Anyone for some Pitch Black? Now there’s a bad movie), it’s fun to find a film that was made with the express purpose of just being a movie and providing a little entertainment. Yeah, you can pick and prod about how it might be about race wars, or something like that, but that’s really a stretch. I mean, really a stretch. 

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension is a tough movie to describe, and an even tougher movie to review. Bottom line? I really love this movie. I recommend it to everyone. As I said, it’s short, so even if you don’t like it, you’re not wasting much of your time by watching it. It’s definitely worth a watch, not just for the novelty of having watched a movie like this (and there is some novelty in being able to say “I watched The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension”), but because it really is worth watching. It’ll take you back to the days when science fiction was just that- fiction. And not fiction based in reality, but fiction that was just so wildly out there you couldn’t help but love it. Sure, it doesn’t have as much prestige as Star Wars, it doesn’t have as much notoriety as Star Trek, it doesn’t have as much Edward James Olmos as Battlestar Galactica, but it takes what it has, and makes good use of it. There’s a lot of talent in this movie, and a lot of really good viewing. If you’ve got a spare Friday evening, or a Sunday afternoon when you don’t really feel like doing much, run down to your local video rental store and see if you can’t get your hands on a copy of this movie. It’s really worth the time spent watching it.

Lectroids, Planet Ten, Nuclear Extortion… a girl named “John”- all this and more in the incredibly fun movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. It blazes on with a weird, offbeat sense of humor and a lot of soul. Although it’s a little short, I think it is certainly one of the better things to come out of the eighties.

Final rating: 9/10. It’s got it’s hitches here and there, but this is quite possibly the most fun I’ve ever had watching a science fiction movie. Give it a watch sometime, you won’t regret it.