Buckaroo Banzai, an odd film boasting some pretty serious star power (Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Ellen Barkin, etc.), became a favorite of the
Starlog staff. Considering that it bombed big-time at the box office, I can only assume they were the other four people in the theater when I went to see it. But they did their best to raise awareness of the flick, so it gets the cover treatment this issue.
Unfortunately, it's a rotten photo they chose for the cover. It's too busy, there's no obvious place to focus, and the right one-third of the cover basically features multicolored wires. Though it might have appealed to electricians, I'd assume this issue didn't exactly fly off the shelves of the bookstores.
Starlog #86
70 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $2.95
Here's an aside that you're completely free to ignore: The Next Month section on the last page is broken into three sections, each headed with a title from an old game show (
To Tell the Truth, Celebrity Sweepstakes, and
Password Plus). Which whimsy reminds me of a former colleague at a magazine who told me of someone he used to work with who worked the entire Lord's Prayer, phrase by phrase, into a long article as the subheads to the separate sections of the article.
The rundown:
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is featured in the two-page foldout poster this issue. In his From the Bridge column, publisher Kerry O'Quinn tries to guide young readers so they appreciate their uniqueness; Communications letters include a bunch of readers commenting on David Prowse and Darth Vader, the continuation of the does-
Starlog-hate-
Lost-in-Space controversy, feedback on the Chicago
Starlog Festival, and more; short news items in Log Entries include a check-in with writer Harry Harrison, a new Henry Thomas movie (
Cloak & Dagger), lots of short headlines, and more.
Lee Goldberg interviews
Buckaroo Banzai star Peter Weller; David Gerrold recounts the good and the bad of the Chicago festival; Brian Lowry interviews Dan O'Herlihy, lizard star of
The Last Starfighter; Patrick Daniel O'Neill interviews veteran
Trek actor Mark Lenard; David Hutchison continues his multi-multi-part exploration of the special effects of
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi; Steve Swires interviews writer/director John Sayles (
The Brother from Another Planet); David McDonnell and John Sayers interview Rick Moranis (
Ghostbusters); British correspondent Adam Pirani interviews David Tomblin, assistant director on the
Indiana Jones films; Brian Lowry interviews Chris Columbus about
Gremlins, for which he wrote the screenplay; Lenny Kaye's Space Age Games and Computers column reviews a lot of games, such as
Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom; Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier interview Noah Hathaway, the original Boxey from
Battlestar Galactica and Bastian from
The Neverending Story; Steve Swires interviews Tanya Roberts about her starring role in
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; and Howard Zimmerman wraps it all up in his Lastword column with a few words about
Gremlins, Ghostbusers, and other recent films.
"We cracked the schedule again, ... But it was much more difficult, inasmuch as Harrison Ford had a bad back, so we had to shoot for three weeks without him."
–David Tomblin, Indiana Jones assistant director, interviewed by Adam Pirani: "David Tomblin: A.D. to Indy Jones"
To view previous
Starlog issue descriptions, click on "
Starlog Internet Archive Project" in the keywords below or visit the
Starlog Project's permanent home.
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