From the WNIN Tri-State Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James.

And this is Two Main Street.

Okay, it's popcorn in pop culture as we go to the movies.

So what are your favorite cult classics?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Goonies.

The Big Lebowski, Blazing Saddles, Maybe.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension.

We'll hear a lot about that film in a moment or any Bruce Campbell flick.

Army of Darkness, Bubba Ho Tepp or the Evil Dead series.

Okay.

I'm a Bruce Campbell fan.

Okay.

Here to share their favorite cult films with us are two movie mavens WFIE, TV film critic Ted Haight Graff and Dewayne Todd, who is the author of the newly published book The Buckaroo Banzai Collectors Compendium.

A Marketing and Promotional Odyssey has a nice title.

Okay, Ted and Dewayne, they both attended the Monster-Rama Spy Con in Atlanta, where the Buckaroo Banzai Compendium debuted.

And that was not too long ago.

So, guys, welcome.

And let's first of all, define a cult film.

And Dewayne, let's start with you.

All right.

When I think about a cult film, I go back to the root of the word.

So a cult is an obsession or a devotion to something.

If you look in the actual dictionary, which I explored this in my book, it says it's a devotion to a personal person, a film or other object.

So for me, a cult film, really, the term has been watered down a lot.

It gets thrown at all kinds of movies, but if you really want to think about it, there should be a some type of really strong devotion to by fans, to the film that goes beyond, Hey, I just kind of like this film.

Nobody else does, but I like this.

Couple of other things I think about a lot.

The root of cult comes from the term for culture.

So really, there's a culture associated with a cult film that integrates itself or, you know, becomes part of what the fans are.

So like when you think about a movie like Rocky Horror Picture Show, right, it's clearly jumps right out.

There is a culture associated with that film.

And so consequently, that's how that becomes part of a really strong cult film.

The third item I would throw out is it has its own language, so fans of the film speak to one another in a language.

And I would talk about a little bit how in a bit how Buckaroo Banzai incorporates every one of those pieces.

And a lot of these cult films don't do well at the box office, do they, Ted?

No, no, that's.

That's usually the sign of what ends up being cult film.

And you can't purposely make a cult film here, even though people have tried like it.

For example, Rocky Horror Picture Show, they did a film called Shock Treatment as a follow up.

And they, you know, they were going for that same, you know, the following and acceptance.

And but it didn't it didn't fly.

And it's not really I mean, the Rocky Horror Picture Show fans, I guess, sort of embrace it.

But but not that much.

It's not it's kind of forgotten.

But yeah, I mean, I have these books I love before that, before the digital age, that cult movies by Danny Perry.

But what Dewayne said, how it's been over abused and watered down.

And I mean, is there a Wizard of Oz?

Is that a cult film?

Star Wars, Ghostbusters.

Because they're so big, they do have some of their own language.

They do have cosplay.

But, you know, I guess maybe maybe there's sort of like different levels of cult films and then then you have another term for them, sometimes midnight movies.

Oh, yeah.

And that's a whole interesting history there.

That started with Eraserhead and Rocky Horror and The Night of Living Dead.

They start shooting in New York City at midnight, and they they get a kind of a special category, too, in a way.

Well, I think some of the fans, the fans that love these kind of movies, they don't want mass appeal, do they?

They like to be in a certain group, maybe take that different road from the rest of society.

Part of the appeal is that it often is a counter culture.

Sure, it's different from what's accepted as mainstream.

So when I think about Star Wars, I mean it's a prime example because when it came out, you know, legions of fans devoted going to see it.

I personally saw it 23 times at the theater.

It showed for a year right here in Evansville for an entire year.

One movie on.

But back then, that was the only way you could see it.

But nobody would call Star Wars a cult film, right?

Because it transitioned to popular culture.

In addition to that, you know, those fans, you know, people dress up, you know, they have a culture of their own.

There is a 501 Legion of stormtroopers.

There's people who do lightsaber battles all in and language.

You know, so you don't.

Even have to have seen Star Wars to understand the reference.

I am your father.

More.

May the force be with you.

Right?

People know that without ever seeing the movie.

So it has transitioned from what could have been cult to full on popular culture.

A classic, I guess.

Then I went, Yeah, I would.

In 77.

It was a classic.

Now it's considered.

Yeah.

So.

Okay, let's go to Buckaroo Banzai.

You guys are big fans.

Of course.

You know, the first time I came on your show, I know you asked me for a top ten, and it was in my list.

And I know you're baffled by it.

I had never heard of Buckaroo Banzai, The Adventures in the Eighth, The Dimension.

I finally have seen the film.

I've seen it twice now.

And I think in your Monster-Rama panel, Dewayne, you described this as an unexplainable film to others.

You just have to experience it.

Yep, that's exactly right.

One of the biggest challenges they had with Buckaroo Banzai is that it's very difficult to explain.

And so you see this in how they tried to market the film, how they tried to carry it out and, you know, catching audiences.

In fact, I have a kind of a behind the scenes memo that was circulated where they hired a company whose specialty is to bridge audiences and, you know, movies and books.

And they said this was their advice directly.

They said, you cannot explain this movie to the audiences.

It will only alienate them.

What you need to do is talk about the cast.

Sure.

And talk about what they can expect to see, which is some science fiction elements, some comedy and adventure types of things.

It has this incredible cast.

Unbelievable when you look back at it.

Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, all of them rising stars Ellen Barkin at the time.

But they were established at that point.

John Lithgow had been nominated for Academy Award.

Peter Weller was very well established as an actor.

They would go on to do even bigger things, but the movie pulled them into it.

In repeated interviews, they would say they had a hard time getting through the script.

Peter Weller said he was trying to read it and he couldn't get through it.

But when he met the director and the director explained the movie, he's like, I was right on board.

I wanted to be a part of this no matter what.

And a lot of enthusiasm to the yes, the director and the writer, their enthusiasm, because Peter Weller to this day will say, I have no clue what this is about.

But he loved, you know, but he's a he's a great spokesman before it.

Now, before we go on, Dewayne, you have a partner here and a radio audience.

So explain your your friend here.

So in the movie, there are aliens that dwell among us.

And you have a prop here, a.

Prop that is a silicone casting of one of the alien heads.

So it's a it's a red lectroid is what they're called in the movie.

So it has a reddish tint to it has some bulbous eyes.

The design for the aliens actually came up.

They were looking for something very unique while they were sitting at dinner with the special effects is what the way the story goes.

They pulled a lobster off the table and said, Hey, we should create something that looks like it's got the ridgeback of the lobster starting at the nose where the tail would be and goes back across the forehead.

So radio folks may want to Google this and, you know, try to find an image, but you can kind of see it as it works its way back here.

It's a unique design for the aliens.

It's even more interesting in the movie because they appear as normal people, normal.

And they're dressed in suits.

And dressed in bad, bad business suits because.

All their food and other first names are John.

All their different names are John.

These aliens came to the world, came to the United States in 1938 and Grover's Mill, New Jersey, when there was an interdimensional breakthrough that at first was the War of the Worlds with Orson Welles.

But then they hypnotized Orson Welles so that he said, Hey, aliens are invading.

And they said, No, no, no, no.

It's just a radio show hoax.

Orson denies it, though.

There's that.

There is a note from his estate that he denies whether that ever happened.

Yeah.

And these Lectroids?

Yeah.

They like junk food.

Is that right?

That's right.

They they have become spoiled.

They are originally some of the most evil creatures in the galaxy dwelling on Planet ten.

I know this is getting way.

But unexplainable.

They come in they come to the the into the planet onto the planet earth.

And they they set up a company and start doing military contracts, which flows into eighties politics around, you know, the Cold War and Cold War efforts.

They get spoiled by eating junk food, really sugary treats like Twinkies.

Fidel Fadl and you see them in the movie eating these things.

And so it's it's so often their warrior physique, so they're not quite as strong of fighters as they once were.

And in fact, as the movie progresses, John, the leader of the group, John Lithgow, wants to go back to their home world and take it back over.

And a lot of them are like, nah, maybe we should just stay right here because it's pretty comfy life right here on Earth.

And so they had military contracts.

Speaking of Orson Welles again, did you notice the actor Ronald Lacy playing the president of the United States?

Looks like Orson Welles.

It kind of sounds like Orson think about it.

And I mean, that's on purpose.

And it's they get this whole Orson Welles connection going on.

It's hilarious.

And and Ronald Lacy is interesting because he's in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Oh.

Going recognized because of his makeup for that.

And there's one scene in the movie where the John Lithgow character tries to go into this other dimension, but he gets stuck in the wall.

And when he's pulled out, that's when he's really crazed.

Right.

And then he's he kind of does like a Three Stooges thing with these guys, like bumped their heads together.

It's just there's all kinds of homages in this film.

Yes.

You see a lot of influences from everything from 2001, A Space Odyssey.

So when you see the ships, you see the stewardess walking one direction and with a. Tray of food.

It just is odd scene.

There's a whole sequence that's very lifted from the outer limits.

"Architects of Fear" "The Right Stuff."

If you watch the opening, opening scene there, it has that feel of the beginning of "The Right Stuff" where Chuck Yeager is preparing to break the sound barrier.

At the beginning of this movie, Buckaroo Banzai is preparing to break the dimensional.

Back through a mountain with the jet.

With his jet car.

Because jet car.

So and there's even comic book references.

And they even got a very famous comic artist, Michael Kalutu, to do a cover for When the Book I Go.

That's a Buckaroo Banzai comic, you know, in the.

Latest issue.

Yes.

Well, we're talking about Buckaroo Banzai, this comic, I guess you guys would call a cult classic because you're big fans, aren't you?

Well, yeah.

Oh, well, yeah.

Obviously.

Obviously.

I mean, I didn't get my T-shirt on, you know?

I know it.

I know you're really into it now.

It looks more and more about my guests.

Of course, Ted's been on the show before.

We know about Ted.

He does movie reviews for WFIE-TV's a director who works at Channel 14 has been there for forever.

Yeah.

1980s.

That's.

Yeah.

When he was film.

A veteran.

Yeah, a veteran.

Yeah.

Now, Dewayne Todd, you're native of Evansville.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

And I know you have a kind of interesting past.

You have an engineering background, and you worked for a laboratory and now you're into the into the book business.

Is that right?

That's an interesting path.

Yes.

All along the way, you know, I started out in engineering, studying, researching, work for a lab then.

Then I actually worked for Alcoa for quite a few years here locally.

And in there, I was able to work on a lot of groundbreaking research on consumer options in the energy markets.

I published a number of paper papers about that as I retired from Alcoa.

I was one of my goals for many years was to really to put together a history about Buckaroo Banzai, among other things.

So I really tried to approach it like I did any other research project where you study the subject, study a lot of the source materials.

I read over 200 articles for it, original scripts, pre-development scripts, a lot of behind the scenes stuff, and then worked on compiling that down into, you know, conclusions about things they were doing and why there's all this variety of marketing materials that exist that I've always found fascinating.

And in Ted as well, Ted's collected these over the years.

I thought I was a good collector.

Dwayne makes me look like an amateur, but that's what I did.

And that's what was so wonderful about this, is to see this whole thing evolve.

Because I'd Owensboro a few years back, this little film convention, they brought in Peter Weller for charitable reasons and you and we they showed Buckaroo Banzai there and Peter was signing autographs and stuff and I said, you know we need to get Dewayne.

You got all this wonderful stuff.

Peter Will Buckaroo himself is going to be there.

Why don't you see if we can get you set up here on the table and show all your stuff off?

So that was.

And he shared.

I don't know.

Did Peter ever get to see it that he walked by.

Like he saw some of us at some of the blueprints that he actually signed from the set?

Oh, and even better, when the screening came and Peter introduced it, the Lectroid showed up, he dressed up and the suit and tie and the whole thing and sat there.

And I think.

Peter walked in and said, There they are evil, pure and simple by way of the 8th dimension.

So yeah, so that, you know.

And so then I don't know if that was how you started the book before that or no.

Yeah.

And so from there you just kind of like also never seen this thing, you know, grow and grow and grow.

And it's amazing his collection and he gets to see the bulk of it in this book.

And I think what I really try to do is I love sharing this stuff.

Yeah, here's all these different pieces, but then it's like, Well, what's facet?

Why?

What's the fascination?

Why is it interesting?

And so then in the research, you know, the story begins to evolve from the concept where they came up with the original concept , how they pulled all the actors in, how they sold the story, you know, who would have bought this thing?

And they even say, I can't believe anybody bought the story while they're making the movie.

Tell me what the producer wanted voluntarily had.

You know, certainly the producer, David Begelman, who gave the ultimate green light for the movie, he believed he had the next Indiana Jones.

Yeah.

This is going to be they signed the actors for five movies.

This is going to be, you know, a phenomenon across the entire country.

Merchandizing out, you know.

Yeah, he was going to he had sold it to investors that way.

And it led to a lot of conflicts on set when he started to see what they were filming.

And he's like, This doesn't look like buckaroo.

It doesn't look like Indiana Jones or Star Wars.

This is like nothing I've ever seen before.

And so and you get kind of pretty mad about it.

It's a long history about that.

Well, of what does it take $9 million to make or something?

12 million.

It was 12 million was the original budget.

But back then, we're very smart.

1983 was when they filmed.

Okay.

It was released in 1984, but similar movies.

That same summer you had Ghostbusters came out.

Star Trek three.

Temple of Doom had just recently been out, and those were in the 25 to $30 million range.

So you got to always kind of take it a little bit, a grain of salt that, you know, they really do an amazing job given what, you know, the cast that they pulled in, they don't have one or two great actors.

They have us an ensemble of people and then they do some really great special effects that really work within the film.

And yet we get critics or people that will slag it just because like, well, look at the budget here.

I look at the the warehouse, some of the things they they tend to point out.

Which and the film didn't make the budget, you know.

It was a bomb.

It made about $6 million domestically.

I don't think it was going to play here.

I had Jim and I, Jim Alexander, my best friend, and I went up to Terre Haute to see it.

Okay.

We barely even showed up here.

I only played one week now.

Peter Weller, the star who played Buckaroo.

Yeah.

Now RoboCop.

Did that follow this?

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

It came out about two years later.

Yeah.

They saw him, I think.

I think they saw Moon "Shoot the Moon", which is one of my favorite films.

It's very depressing.

It's about divorce.

And I dragged my family to that and they why did you drag us to this film?

But it's really Diane Keaton and Albert Finney.

It's a wonderful film.

Alan Parker directed it just passed away.

But they saw Peter were in a small part in there, and that's what got him the part at least.

And he.

And he was a stage actor.

Yeah.

He was a well-established stage actor at that point as well.

There's also a Buckaroo Buckaroo Bonzo book and comic book.

Too.

Yes, there have been some comic books.

Yeah.

Well, at the time the movie came out, there was a novel about Oh yeah.

They adaptation.

And a comic book adaptation, both of which are are essential viewing and reading for for the movie because they're the the screenplay writer Earl Mac Rauch, who created the character.

He'd been working on this character for about eight years when it was finally made into a movie.

Their character was originally called Buckaroo Bandy, and as he described this wandering Texas minstrel to W.B.

Richter, Richter's like, Hey, I will pay you to develop this into a screenplay.

And so he worked on various screenplays.

So now you have in the archives you have these history of these different screenplays that he developed completely different stories, each one of them kind of like an adventure that Buckaroo Banzai woulda went on.

I can interject real quick the the there was a he said a singing minstrel.

There was a serial.

David you might remember this.

Maybe not Gene Autry serial.

Yeah, it's science fiction setting it.

Gene Autry and.

So the Phantom Empire.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I heard that.

And the director said, yeah, this is the number one influence.

So Gene Autry played a cowboy.

He plays himself.

He's singing Strange.

He's on a ranch.

It's the radio show ranch.

And he has to do a radio show program every single day at a certain hour.

If he doesn't, he loses the ranch.

All right?

So he's got his band and they come every day.

They they get into adventures along the way.

Well, they discover that there's an empire of advanced civilization living five miles beneath the earth.

Who have is robots.

Ray guns.

The robots have cowboy hats.

Again, this is a Gene Autry series.

Of Autry serials, 13 episodes.

It's fantastic.

It's so much fun.

Well, Buckaroo Banzai and I don't think we've really explained this too much, but Buckaroo Banzai is kind of like a modern day Leonardo da Vinci, where he does a whole host of.

The Renaissance.

Guy, Renaissance rock.

And roll.

Singer.

He's a modern day Gene Autry to some extent.

He's a scientist.

He has a rock and roll band.

We get to hear some great eighties music inside of Buckaroo Banzai that was kind of on the cutting edge at that point.

He's very fashion forward.

He's a neurosurgeon, a race car driver.

He designed science experiments, but he's perfectly normal, purring, a normal human being.

He doesn't have any superpowers.

He's just kind of doing the best that he can do as a human.

But more importantly, and I think this is the appeal, his whole focus is getting other people better.

So in the movie he develops like Jeff Goldblum's character is very insecure.

He's very un.

Sure of himself at the beginning.

Buckaroo brings him into the team, inspires him.

And by the end of the movie, Jeff Goldblum is a strong character.

He has confidence.

He's helping save the world.

Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, the New Jersey.

Calvin the cowboy.

Boy.

You thought you Cavaliers you thought I need to dress up.

Hong Kong.

Cavaliers this is the group is buckaroos.

Inner circle in the band and he shows up thinking that he needs to be in uniform and the other buckaroo bonsai guys go you know.

And they call him New Jersey.

And it's kind of funny, but go boom.

I love the fact that you open up.

You see, the near the beginning of the film, the crew's doing brain surgery on an Eskimo with Jeff Goldblum.

And then he says, Have you thought about joining the team?

And he goes, Well, you know, can you sing it?

And Jeff goes, No, but I could dance.

I mean, it's a little lines like that, too, and that's.

That's part of the language.

Yeah.

So, Buckaroo Banzai, you know, that line will come up over and over when you're talking to someone and just an inside little joker.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's talk about John Lithgow.

Oh, you talk about the other character, Ellen Barkin's in it.

Oh, yeah.

Very good.

Ah, you're Breaking Bad.

Have you seen Breaking Bad?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Do you recognize Jonathan Banks?

No.

When Lithgow leaves the hospital, he's encased in it.

He takes the guy out.

The guy that stops.

Yeah, that's Jonathan Banks.

Oh, Breaking Bad.

Oh, he's great in that.

Small little.

Part.

Oh, I know it.

He's like his keeper.

Yeah, right.

SALEM Yeah.

CHRISTY Where are you going, Doctor?

Moon No, no, no.

Planet ten and there's all kinds.

Well, anyway, I'm going off on a tangent to you.

Lithgow.

You're it.

Okay, let's go.

Let's go before we go to Lithgow.

Okay.

You're an engineering guy, Dawson, and there's all kinds of gadgets in this film.

And Lithgow, when he puts this gadget of it on his mouth and everything and goes back into the past and it just kind of gauges and everything flashing around.

So the Lectroids in the movie like to consume electricity.

So that's just one of the aspects.

So they they are there's actually a scene where one of them has a car battery and he's got the a straw and they cut a line out of it.

It's in the deleted scenes because they were the producers were afraid it would make the aliens too comical.

We were talking a minute ago about whether they're really evil or they're kind of like the Three Stooges.

But there's a line where he he offers the battery and he's like, here, you want to you want to hit on this battery.

And and Christopher Lloyd says, No, no, I'm cutting back.

But they cut that out.

But but the Lectroids consume sugary substances and electricity.

Well, of course.

So, you know, that gives him a boost of energy, literally and figuratively, and allows him to kind of remember his past.

But, yeah.

It's kind of a tragic character, too, because I've always thought, you know, Dr. Lozano was a scientist trying to do what Buckaroo Banzai his dad was doing, trying to break into, you know, go to the solid matter.

And then.

But he got infected by the Johnny.

Yes.

So when he crosses, he half crosses over across to the dimension.

Dr. Luzardo is the John Lithgow character.

Yes, yes.

But Italian scientist.

Doctors are as Italian scientists when he goes in Luzardo is an alien and he inhabits he takes over his brain.

So so now you have a is actually a human if it's not confusing enough.

Yeah he's actually a human with a Lectroid living inside of him and they say that there's someone living inside of him.

Yeah.

People listening to this.

Right.

I know this is probably driving off the road.

We please stay on the road, folks.

But trust me.

Yeah, he's he's kind of like I said, he was kind of a scientist working along with Buckaroo Bonzai, his father and assistants and stuff.

And then he gets inhabited by this bad alien.

And he even makes the line at one point, if there's one thing I cannot stand is to be mistaken for somebody else.

Well, obviously the only thing that I ever happens is mistaken for someone else because he's in the body of a different person.

Yeah.

So is this this bizarre humor?

There's just all through the movie now?

Lithgow, they must have just given him free rein to go bonkers on this film.

Oh, yeah?

What did you.

I did.

I was I was watching some of the did it any Mussolini today you listen to some Mussolini.

That's part of the inspiration.

Yeah.

Because of you he does this big speech near the end it.

Yes.

And if you watch it you're thinking it's Mussolini.

It's yeah.

He's up on a podium and everything and everything.

They have all the big signs, all hanging up and things like that.

I do think.

So a lot of what turned me on early in this film is I was in engineering, studying engineering.

There's a lot of science behind the film itself.

So even though you might say, well, oh, driving through solid matter, that doesn't make any sense.

But there's actually a whole scientific, superstring theory.

That talks about how it would be possible to move through objects.

The writer Earl Mac Rauch.

He's extremely, very, very, very intelligent.

There's some science behind all the pieces that happen inside of the film.

So I think that brings a great aspect to it.

I think also it's nice it was a break away from where we so used to starships, you know, either, you know, the Star Wars type of through 2000, one type to Star Trek type, the ships and this are like like taking off from the sea.

Chris.

Chris.

Yeah, I can't.

What's the word?

I'm looking for an organic, organic and crusty crustacean.

Somehow I'm not, you know, but very cool.

It looks like coral or seashells.

Or something you'd find on the beach, you know, these ships.

And it's like a really that's an that's a that's really cool, too.

It may not be to your liking.

We're so we're so trained to like these really slick starships, but to see something like this is another interesting aspect.

When they're setting a little cocktail tables.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That's the good.

The black Lectroids.

Yeah.

And there's two different Lectroids in them.

There's the other good.

That's the good.

But in the design they definitely were trying to get, they wanted something that was completely different.

Well, it is definitely.

Completely for the for the ships.

The aliens in the ship designs are very fascinating.

Yeah.

Okay, guys, let's go to some other cult movies now.

I think we've got everybody just kind of really scratching their heads about Buckaroo Banzai, which they should.

I mean, you have to see it.

You can't explain it to folks.

Okay.

Other cult movies, fan favorites.

I've seen some list of fan favorites cause Rocky Horror Picture shows up there, Big Lebowski, A Blazing Saddles, among other top vote getters.

Are there others worth watching besides those?

I'm sure you have some favorites.

Well, let me just talk about, you know, remember that we were talking about the definition.

Of course, Lebowski is an interesting one because there's a lot of people are still haven't seen that of the Coen brothers film.

And they do bowling.

They do they get together for bowling across the country.

Bowling events for Big Lebowski, you know, because of the bowling.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's a good example.

I'm trying to think of a really interesting one off the beaten path because like I said, there's a lot of obvious ones where people are I think they're cult films.

I would say "Local Hero" would be one I would recommend as a kind of a cult classic.

It's Peter Riegert, who was in "Animal House".

And I don't know where else he would people would know him from.

And Amy Irving and Burt Lancaster.

It's one latter day Burt Lancaster rooms.

And this guy is sent from a to a corporation from Texas to go buy up land in Scotland for oil refinery.

And he gets sucked into the land and the people, but he has to buy the town.

And there's all these little eccentric characters and they're wedge from Star Wars.

What's his name?

The actor.

But he's.

Kagan.

Yeah.

Kagan.

No, not Wedge or the other one.

Gosh.

Anyway, one of the starfighters in Star Wars is he's an actor in this thing is he's Ewan McGregor's.

Oh, cool.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Erik Larson.

Yeah.

Larson.

Yeah.

But anyway, I'm babbling here.

But anyway, it's, it has a following and it has that they, they actually there was like one phone booth in the town that he's trying to buy up and he has to call Burt Lancaster and give him reports.

So they've actually painted and put up a phone booth from that town to go see it.

And there's a Facebook page devoted to it, and there's a really core group that just love this film.

And I remember people walking out when I saw it at East Park.

It's a beautiful, little, gentle film, and I think that's kind of it's kind of a cult film.

So, Duane, what are some of your favorite cult classics?

I have to go with a couple of, you know, standards.

Night of the Living Dead.

The original is from the time I first saw it, it was is actually considered and I know that's kind of like a mainstream cult film, but it was one of the first films that worked into midnight showings.

And this notion of where, you know, in the seventies you didn't have the flexibility, all the options of watching things at home.

So if you wanted to see it, you'd go to the theater.

So they started showing this over and over and over.

Audiences would come in to see it.

It becomes just such an iconic symbol of all the things that are happening inside that movie.

And from that film we have the, you know, all the zombie stuff is I mean, it's the.

Influences are just.

Unreal now.

Zombie apocalypse.

Zombie apocalypse is a common language now.

Yeah.

And anybody I never saw Night Living Dead.

Yeah.

And there's cult films in each genre.

Westerns, comedies, horror.

Well, you know, everybody, you know, everybody talks about, you know, the "Fistful of Dollars".

People know more about "The Good The Bad & The Ugly.

Leone I'm going back to one of my loves.

Leoni But a lot of people haven't seen his masterpiece.

The fourth Western he did was "Once Upon a Tme in the West" with Charles Bronson and that.

That's kind of overlooked and that's kind of got its interesting own little cult following because it's such a unique feeling, looking, pacing, music.

Everything about that film is so unique and it stands the test of time.

I thought of another film "The Day the Earth Caught Fire".

Probably not one.

Not different.

Than what?

Kern.

Leo Kern.

Janet Monroe.

So it the earth has shifted off of its axis.

It's starting to move towards the sun.

Slowly the earth starts to heat up all these natural disasters.

The film is set in a a newspaper office, and so it goes through the newspapers trying to understand what's going on.

How can we counter this?

The reactions of all the people, the main character, he's gone through a divorce.

He doesn't have custody of his son, but so he's kind of given up on life in and as he's studying what's happening to the earth and he sees all these things, he finds inspiration to live and move forward.

Great, great film.

That's actually the next article I'm working on is digging into.

This is one of the first disaster movies, 1962.

It was originally, you know, so you see all these tidal things happening or a society beginning to collapse because there's there's this awareness in four weeks, the Earth will have moved close enough that we're all dead.

So they attempt to set off these bombs to get us back on back on track society.

You know, everyone reacts differently inside of the film.

So I would throw that one out.

There is one I really, really like a lot of interesting aspects to it.

He makes a good point, too.

That's a film that I think was Off the radar for a long time, but because of DVD and Blu rays and there's all these boutique companies out there that are run by fanatics like us and they know these things are out there and they're putting out special editions of these really strange , obscure than that, you know, and that's more of a mainstream film.

What I mean, it's not really that way.

Offbeat, but I mean, but it was sort of and we're getting like, you know, Andy Warhol films and all these are and Paul Nashi is a Spanish.

He likes to dress up as a wolf man at a Wolfman movies in Spain and just Franco and and what's a mario Bava a big giant book done on him these things are coming out on special editions loaded up with extras for a film that's really common exploitation film or kind of like you would watch and go , this is kind of bad, you know?

But there's these just feverish followers for it and they're getting better editions and a mainstream film does on Blu ray to make.

Well.

I think B-movies too.

Yeah.

They make you make great cult classics.

And of course, the Atomic Age launched all these movies about these monsters and and all the crazy stuff that goes on and with radioactivity.

Yeah.

"The Incredible Shrinking Man".

Just came out on Criterion this week.

I saw that in that one.

There it is.

I can watch it over and over.

It just it's it's so fascinating and fun.

It's just a lot of fun to watch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you've got it on some of these B films, the exploitation films, part of the the fandom for it is because you change your you got to change your perspective watching it.

You're not going to walk.

You're not going into a David Lean film.

You're not going to a Stanley Kubrick film.

You got you got a somebody working a low budget, doing the best he can, really putting all his energy.

I mean, that's why kind of now Ed Wood's kind of revered "Plan 9 From Outer Space", you know, everything.

That's just a piece of crud.

But now you watch it, you go, no, you kind of enjoy it because, you know, Ed Wood's story, you know, it's he just want to make movies.

He does want to make these movies.

And he can, you know, get Bela Lugosi, these, you know, drug problems and door Johnson and an old wrestler, you know, just and vampira.

And it's just amazing when you watch it and, you know, you enjoy it and you want to know more about it and you just keep one.

Want to read more and find out about it.

Now, in the compendium, Dewayne, you have Buckaroo Collectibles, is that correct?

That's right.

So one of the great things I mean I mean, not so great, but the great thing is that there's not a lot of them produced at the time the movie came.

Out because it was a one shot movie.

So it was intended to be a bunch, you know, it was only there was only one.

They had a hard time selling the movie to people who wanted to merchandise it.

So we have some View-Master slides.

They did some interesting things.

They knew they had to have a different approach to marketing the film.

So ahead of the film, at conventions they produced 35,000 headbands.

So these are a yellow and red headband with a Japanese symbol on it that says Beauty in Everyday Life, Buckaroo Banzai.

Where's this?

And one of the key moments of the film, and they gave these out to convention attendees to promote the film.

So they're fairly rare, even though there's a lot of them out there.

When we were down in Atlanta last weekend.

A number of people came up to me and said, Yeah, I still have my headband.

Here it is.

I got this at the Atlanta Fantasy Fair in 1984 when they were handing them out, showing clips and things from the movie.

And so I think the collectibles become very unique.

They made a little toy, a magical jet car toy.

I know on the radio you can't see it, but it's a little circle and it's got the car and it's a magic trick.

It was produced by a little mom and pop toy store that did novelty toys in New York.

They optioned the license and produced this thing for the film.

And so but somehow they they said, I love this film.

It's so unique.

I want to do something really unique relative to the film.

That's very.

Unique.

That is.

Where'd you get that?

This year I got on a mail order.

At the time there was a mail order of some buckaroo banzai and I bought an entire box of these.

It was a box of 12.

It came in a really nice container.

And I gave them I gave.

It to me.

I saw it right away.

I go, Oh, I want it.

Dewayne, been gracious enough, gave me.

And over the years I've given out to somebody who really loves the film, you know?

I think it's just fantastic to share that type of thing.

We have like a kind of a kind of a cranium type item here.

And so explain that to everybody.

Inside the film.

One.

This was underneath the vehicle, wasn't it?

Yes.

So as buckaroo drives through the mountain, he comes out the other side.

He finds a creature has attached itself to the drive train of his Ford F-150 pickup truck, which is what he uses to go through the mountain.

And he pulls it off in.

The significance is that he makes in the film, as you could pulverize the mountain, go through all of the you know, the crumbs, and you would never find this life form.

But this life form came out of the eighth dimension with him.

And so this is a casting a from a prop of the movie.

I painted it myself.

A lot of fans, you know, will have the masks or other props associated with the film.

It's a great, fun way to, you know, collect different types of things or unique things because it's kind of handmade.

And of course, this film, "Buckaroo Banzai: Adventures in the Eighth Demension" was marketed overseas as well to do very well overseas.

It did have some success in a few countries.

So in the United States, they when the film was completed, 20th Century Fox looked at it, said, this is really bizarre.

We're taking control of it.

So they gave it to a marketing team that came up with a marketing campaign that shows buckaroo in a yuppie suit, a casual suit, nothing like what he wears in the film.

It shows a spaceship blasting out of a brick wall that looks nothing like any spaceship in the movie that remember, the alien ships are organic looking.

They look like coral.

This thing is a rectangular square mechanical ship.

When the director saw the poster, he said, I've never seen a poster that looks less like the movie than this poster looks like.

And so when you look at it, you think, is this representative of the film, which is what you want to catch?

And it really isn't.

When they went to release it internationally, they went to a company called Producer Sales Association, which is an organization, which specializes in taking movies and translating them to other countries.

So if you had a hard time translating it to American audiences, imagine translating into a German or French audience.

And but they they created entirely different marketing campaigns.

So in Germany, they have a silhouette of Buckaroo.

It's all black with a green highlight behind it.

Yeah, we have the poster here.

We have the poster here is very mysterious.

And if you can imagine living it, then.

Once you get that poster here, you can.

Imagine living in Germany in 1984, the year George Orwell's novel 1984 was set.

You had a divided Germany at that point in time, so you had a lot of mysterious, you know, paranoia types of things.

And so this poster and even the the phrase up here, there are aliens living among us.

They can see you.

And they use the German word for you personally.

They can see you, you know, but you cannot see them.

Okay.

In so using some of these types of things, they tried to connect.

That audience is very, very different than what it is in the U.S..

Even the what's called lobby cards.

So these are pictures from the film.

They are posted in the lobby in promotional pictures, use very different images than in the U.S..

They show the man, if you like, the the the hangar bay.

They show the science experiments.

They show Buckaroo hooked up to this technology.

They they emphasize the industrialization and they emphasize the science behind it, which would have appealed to a German audience.

They don't use those pictures in the U.S. promotion at all.

Spring forward to France.

France has the most interesting of the posters, and I'm not sure why you would.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

David, does that remind you of anything?

It looks like RoboCop.

Well, RoboCop is one aspect, is there?

I think I'll give you a hint.

Mel Gibson.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

Road Warrior.

Yeah, yeah.

And Road Warrior.

Matt Maddox, especially.

Yeah.

So if you're on the radio, this is a character who's completely an all black leather outfit and a gun that's is almost as big as what he is.

Nothing like that in the movie.

He has never appears in the film.

And, you know, so they were targeting the violent aspects in this futuristic to appeal to that audience.

The lobby cards in France, very different images.

In fact, over half of the images show guns being brandished.

So an uzi or a nine millimeter and different guns, which is not really a core part of the movie.

No, not at all.

In the U.S., you see no guns in the lobby cards in Germany, only in a couple.

But here there's these violent images.

They show there's one where Penny is being wrestled to the ground.

So they were trying to what.

This is about the French.

Yeah.

Appeal to violence, the the apocalyptic aspect, those types of things.

Now, was the film rated then at one time was did they have ratings then?

Yes.

So PG it was a PG okay.

In the U.S. and it was rated for 15 and above overseas.

Okay.

So all right.

Before I forget, let's talk about Bruce Campbell films.

And I understand, Dewayne, you have met Bruce Campbell.

I sure did.

B movie star.

Yes.

So he was at a convention.

I had an opportunity to I was actually on a front row of a panel with him.

And I got to listen to his personality in real life.

He's very much like the personality he plays in a lot of his films.

And one of the big things I remember really well, he talked about a couple of things, but he talked about his favorite movie of all time and favorite actor, and that was Bridge on the River Kwai with William Holden.

He said William Holden was no hands down his favorite actor.

He loved Bridge and River Kwai because of the practical effects.

He's like, you know, he's like, I just can't believe they blew this.

They built a bridge.

They blew a bridge up a real bridge.

You don't get a second shot.

You only want one chance to blow the bridge up.

Well, there is there's actually that's not totally correct because in The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, they had the bridge scene at the end and Sergio was going to give the the mayor or somebody dignitary to say that give the command to blow the bridge.

It got it was told it was set early.

Cameras are not rolling and the bridge blew up, so they had to build it all again.

Oh, my God.

Shoot it again.

But that shows you the budget the Leone had.

Well, lean had power to there.

But but Bruce Campbell, I mean I, I was huge, huge fan growing up.

Are you to David because you're doing really well but what brought you to Bruce Campbell?

Well, I think the the Army of Darkness was a good one.

The third one, that's.

Well, when's the one where he goes?

Yeah, no time.

But you know, if you watch him in order.

Evil dead.

Evil Dead II.

And then Army of Darkness.

Because you to watch the evil dead.

The second one to see how he gets where you.

Right.

Right.

But do are you going to say I didn't interrupt you there?

Well he has the the chainsaw.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

That's that happens.

Groovy.

The second, the second movie, the first two are pretty dark and violent.

The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II and including where he cuts his arm off and puts a chainsaw on there.

But then at the end of the second movie, he wakes up in the Middle Ages.

They wanted to break from the the horror aspect of Evil Dead I and II and said, we're going to make a brand new Army of Darkness in kind of created as its own standalone movie, which it does work very well as it's .

Yeah, of course.

Now do you realize how much more of Ash Bruce Campbell lets character's name Ash, how much more stuff there is out there of him?

No, no.

That was a TV series.

TV series.

Comic books is he's crossing it with the vampire or some of the other characters.

I don't know.

It's crazy.

But I do.

An interesting connect this to Buckaroo Banzai.

Bruce Campbell was on a TV show called Brisco County Jr.

I mean, he was a.

Very high recommended.

You.

Yeah.

If you like him, he's a cowboy and he has these kind of comedic adventures.

It has the feel of Buckaroo Banzai.

There's there's little science, there's all these things going on.

And I think there was some cross writing.

There's a few jokes show up across there as well.

Yeah, I'd have to go back and look, but.

But definitely that same brand of humor.

Okay.

Bubba Hotel Strange Movie with Bruce Campbell.

He plays Elvis maybe in a yeah.

Well, he thinks he's Elvis.

Yeah.

And he's in a in a nursing facility and and it's just strange.

And another good actor in there, too.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's been a while since I've seen it, too.

But what, Roger?

I just stumbled across one.

Well, I stumbled across that.

And then is there's some kind of Egyptian entity that is killing people in the nursing facility.

And he's trying to solve this mystery.

And what am I thinking about?

Bruce Campbell I'd like to is that he ends up he turns in all this low budget.

Ossie Davis Oh, RZA.

Ossie Davis is in.

And he turns up in these exploitation films.

And lower films are films that become cult classics or whatever.

But every once in a while he'll show up in a really mainstream, a budget film.

And he's also he's, you know, good buddies with Sam Raimi, who did The Evil Dead and, well, Sam's good buddies, the Coen brothers.

So Bruce Campbell would go, I think he's like, We shot it at least once in a Coen brothers film.

But I always love when Bruce shows up in a bigger film and you get to see like, No, he's a good actor.

He didn't like, Oh, you know, Bruce Campbell, funny.

Ha ha, he's in Evilke Dead.

He's Ash, whatever.

But no, he's he's a lot of fun, you know, he showed up in.

The Spider-Man movies.

Yeah, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies.

And I don't know if he will be in the upcoming Doctor Strange.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It'll be interesting to see if he makes an appearance, because it's pretty normal for him to appear in a Sam Raimi movie.

Yes.

Now there are some movies that are just too bizarre to sit through that you would not recommend of cult films.

Well, I just saw I mean, I saw one recently that I would say a lot of people would just go, Ted, you're crazy, Mandy.

Nicolas Cage.

Nicolas Cage.

That's a whole hour.

Because his career is just it's almost.

That's almost insane.

Oh, that's that's a whole program.

That's a whole program.

It is.

But he he'll he'll do it.

Every time you turn around at Wal-Mart, I see a new Nicolas Cage.

Right, right.

This one's called Mandy.

And it just goes off the rails and goes cuckoo.

And it's really bizarre and but it's it's wonderful, but I it's wonderful.

Me Oh, I know.

Another one is Ryan Gosling, that film Drive.

Drive.

Yeah.

But the follow up, Only God Forgives if you got the same director, same Ryan Gosling, if you people thought, oh I like drive them to go see this one, oh they're, they're, they're going to be running on the theaters.

But I, yeah, I love it.

I love it when a director has a really crazy vision and he drives it over the cliff and you just go with him, but you have to go with him over the cliff.

If you don't want to go over the cliff, then, you know, it's it's yeah, it can be very you know.

This Nicolas Cage movie gets in my head right now, Bad Lieutenant.

Oh, that's yeah.

Yeah.

And he was like in New Orleans in it just goes off the rails, which is a.

Really weird that's a Herzog film.

That's actually one of the better ones.

And it's kind of a weird follow up to the first Bad Lieutenant, which was Harvey Keitel, and that was even that's kind of got a cult status.

Okay.

Well, speaking of the Colorado space.

Oh, that's the other one.

Yeah.

I want the same time that it came out.

Fantastic adaptation.

And it stars Nicolas Cage adaptation of H.P.

Lovecraft's story, a horror story, which are very difficult to do because he's a very psychological writer.

That movie, dead on, really, I recommend.

It's not one of them that I would say no, they'll stay away from, if you like that type I would definitely recommend.

But well done.

And not Nicolas Cage.

They're Jim's and he's a.

Toned down Nicolas Cage.

Sometimes you get him and he's just like all out.

Oh, yeah, he's he's playing Nicolas Cage.

But I have you know, I've got I have a good group of friends who love movies, love cinema, and a couple of them just now saw Buckaroo Banzai because I kept, you know, bludgeoning him with it.

And then they were like, Yeah, it's okay, you know?

I mean, it's like, No, no, don't you get it?

You know, you you got to love it, you know?

Well.

And I'll mention that when the film came out and I cover this in the book Film Review magazine, which is a it was compiled at that time.

It's it's a over a thousand film reviewers and they put all the statistics.

It's like The Rotten Tomatoes of today, put the statistics together.

It was split almost perfectly.

One third really liked it.

One third said me, one third hated it.

And I would say four from a lot of audiences with Buckaroo Bonds and a lot of these types of movies, that's the type of, you know, you get a real split juror on whether or not someone's going to like it.

And that maybe brands it as a cult movie then.

Definitely.

Now, before we wrap this up, the closing scene in Buckaroo Banzai, the closing credits, it's just strange.

They're walking through some kind of a drainage area.

Which is used a lot in L.A.

If you watch a lot of Hollywood film, know.

They have a lot of races in.

Terminator and just.

Sort of the end of all the concrete.

In of Greece.

It's aqueducts.

Yeah that's.

Right.

A drainage area and of Greece they do their dragstrip racing down through there.

The producer did didn't like the film tone but this is an interesting story about.

So is the film wrapped up if you if you I'll spoil the ending to some extent the ending ends with the alien buckaroo kissing you know his love interest in the alien just as so big deal.

And so that was the end of the movie.

And the producers like you can't end a movie on such a sour and bizarre note.

And they announced there was going to be another one.

Yeah, there was an announcement.

Coming.

"Soon.

Coming soon.

'Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League'".

But to have aliens say that, it's like, what?

And so the producers like, we got to we got to put something upbeat in this.

Okay.

And so they actually called everybody back.

All the cast came back and they developed this end March.

And initially they march to the tune of Uptown Girl by Billy Joel.

And, you know, and that's they they you'll see them kind of repel down the sides.

And then as Buckaroo's walking he's joined his team assembles all these people come in to the team from the side and they're just marching along to the beat.

Billy Viera is just an incredible musician.

He this is one of his first starring roles.

He does this little twist.

His stage presence comes out.

So he's walking along and he does this little twist with his feet.

One character changes outfits in.

The middle outfit, and one.

Character is technically dead.

Yes, I know.

But I don't want to spoil anything.

But in case you're going to watch the smoke.

So.

But it's just but I.

This is.

The most fun in the universe.

Really.

You can just Google it and watch that ending.

The song is fantastic all the way.

It's just I think it almost makes it elevates the film today.

And I think one of the most iconic moments and then and also its influence, Wes Anderson, of all people, puts that at the end of life of aquatic with Bill Murray, Bill Murray, Bill Murray in the cast and in that film, they're a little march of the end credits of that film.

That's another strange movie.

So that really is.

Well, guys, this has been a great fun.

My guests have been Dewayne Todd.

He's author of the Buckaroo Banzai Collectors Compendium and movie reviewer Ted.

Hey, Craft, thanks for this wild ride with Buckaroo Banzai.

I am it.

All I have to say is the better where you go.

There you are.

They will in with that.

Thanks, guys.

This has been a lot of fun.

I'm David James.

This is Two Main Street presented by Jeffrey Burger a burger well services at Baird Private Wealth Management.