Stop what you're doing and watch The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

This bizarre cult classic from 1984 is simply wonderful

A scene from Buckaroo Banzai.
(Image credit: AF archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

If you're going to portray a brilliant neurosurgeon who got so bored fixing brains he traveled the world to master martial arts and particle physics, fronts a rock band of gun-toting scientists, and encounters alien life while driving into the eighth dimension, you kind of have to play it straight.

And Peter Weller does. His Buckaroo Banzai is as cool as an ice cold Jolt. In fact, the entire cast of the 1984 cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension — with the understandable exception of John Lithgow, who plays an alien-possessed Italian scientist — acts as if confronting an alien invasion and mastering inter-dimensional travel are just sort of what you do with your day. The aliens — the good Black Lectroids and bad Red Lectroids, both from Planet 10 — are all named John. And most of the movie takes place in New Jersey.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.