Ancient Geeks episode 36: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension

Kind of an homage to pulp heroes, kind of deliberate camp, and definitely one of the most 80s-ish movies you'll ever see. It's The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! It has been about 40 years since we saw this movie for the first time, and we're still trying to figure out what it was supposed to be, and how we feel about it. OK, so the title character is a brain surgeon, a physicist, a rock star, a test pilot, and a comic book hero....? OK, cool.

Join us as we re-visit this movie, with a great cast who may or may not have known what this film was supposed to be. 

Super-science! Space Rastafarians! Orson Welles! Shock treatments for fun! John Lithgow having a great time! An unnecessarily long movie title! Very 80s fashion! It's all here. 

Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!

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© 2025 Tom Grant and Steven Taylor