Blasting through a ten foot thick wall of titanium while testing his jet-car one day, Buckaroo Banzai experienced some reverse polarity in his Oscillation Overthruster. The vehicle skidded in that weird dimension, still inside the titanium wall. A lesser man with slower reflexes would have rolled the jet-car and perished, but Buckaroo eased it to a stop.

He was trapped in a phantom dimension where he found no people or animals, but found buildings of apparently human origin. Could a neutron bomb have wiped out these people? Inside one of the buildings, he found a normal kitchen equipped with oven, toaster, a telephone hanging on the wall. Tacky wallpaper, it looked new but nine years out of style. The devices all functioned normally. In another room he found a tv, already turned on to the start of the movie. He couldn't fix the Overthruster until it cooled down for a few hours, so he decided to sit on the davenport and watch the movie.

One hundred minutes later, Buckaroo stood, turned off the tv and departed the empty building, shaking his head. The Overthruster was easily fixed, but nothing could fix that movie.

Reporting his experience to his followers, Buckaroo Banzai said, "You wouldn't believe it. There's this hero of some exotic extraction who's supposed to be ultra smart, ultra skilled, the best in his field no matter which field he tries. He has all kinds of gadgets and vehicles he uses in his fantastic adventures, plus he has a group of elite henchmen to carry out his bidding. Each of them are the best and brightest of their field, although none of them are quite as good as their leader.

"I kept wondering, if he's so great, why does he need all these amazing sidekicks? They're window-dressing to make him look even better at everything he does.

"It's unbelievable that a movie like that could have gotten made, but it was so corny that someone must have thought it was campy, so they just ran with it."

Perfect Tommy asked, "What was it called?"...