Forbidden Zone

No live-action movie has ever captured the anarchic feel of the rubbery Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1930s better than "Forbidden Zone." It's an LSD-fueled Betty Boop picture mixed with "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Inferno," all filtered through David Lynch's kaleidoscope (or run through R. Crumb's Cuisinart).

The story, such as it is, deals with the adventures of Frenchy Hercules, who lives over a doorway to the "Sixth Dimension," which is ruled by King Fausto (Herve Villechaize) and Queen Doris (Susan Tyrrell) with sadomasochistic glee. The whole flick really fits the Betty Boop formula perfectly--a shapely heroine (who loves to rumba) falls from her own bizarre "reality" into an even stranger one. Much mayhem and cool swing music ensue, as Frenchy's brother and grandfather (playing the roles of Bimbo and Koko the Clown from the old Fleischer cartoons) try to rescue the unfortunate girl.

This strange mix of animation and live action really has to be seen to be believed--all very low budget and very imaginative (a quality sorely lacking in movies lately). Fans of Oingo Boingo won't want to miss this one (especially group leader Danny Elfman's Cab Calloway-like turn as Satan in the flick's best scene). There are racial and ethnic stereotypes galore, but since this movie seems to exist in an entirely different universe, it doesn't come across as offensive.

Not for everyone--but a "can't miss" for some. Worth seeing just for the musical numbers alone.

"Forbidden Zone" is up there on the list of strangest films of all time. It's a hell of a lot of fun, even though it doesn't make much sense. The film was created by Matthew Bright and Richard Elfman from the 80's rock band Oingo Boingo. They also did the film's music. The story concerns a family who buys a house from a drug dealer. Little do they know that it has a door that leads to the sixth dimension. The film becomes a crazed B&W surreal musical of comical strangeness. Tattoo of "Fantasy Island" plays the king of the sixth dimension. There's a depraved queen, a giant frog, a topless princess, drag queens, gigantic dice props and other things that you have to see to believe. It's as if John Waters and Jodorowsky teamed up to film "the Wizard of Oz" in black and white. The funniest part of the film has to be the guys wearing jockstraps who make musical fart noises while boxing. This is definitely not your average musical!

Danny Elfman's outlandish 1980 film "Forbidden Zone" has to be seen to be believed, and if you are not at least slightly demented you should probably pass on the seeing part. Imagine a cross between "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", with lots of animation in the style Monty Python's Flying Circus and the rubbery Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1930's (which probably inspired much of the original Monty Python stuff anyway). Also deserving mention is the fact that this relatively low budget black and white film is a musical.

There are a lot of characters and the story is somewhat hard to follow so here is what I hope is a helpful summary. The Hercules family (father, mother, son, daughter, and grandfather) live in a house with a door to the Sixth Dimension a/k/a The Forbidden Zone (think Wonderland). Their daughter Frenchy (think Alice) and son Flash (who looks like third stooge Joe Besser in a cub scout uniform) go to school one day. When a gunfight erupts in the classroom Frenchy runs home.

Tripping on a roller skate she tumbles through the door into a large intestine and ends up in the sixth dimension, which is ruled by a King and Queen of dice-used instead of wonderland's playing cards. There are a lot of half-dressed wonderland type characters down there although only the Frog Footman looks the same. There is a shapely princess who runs around topless, a living chandelier that eventually decays into just a skeleton, a devil (Elfman) who is like Cab Calloway playing the Cheshire Cat, and a rival queen.

Frenchy's family and one of her classmates go into the Forbidden Zone to attempt a rescue. The film is a mix of live action and animation. The editor deserves a lot of credit because the whole thing is sequenced quite well and even has a strange unity. There are racist stereotypes (generally too silly to be offensive), lively swing music, and sets that look to have been painted and constructed by a third grade art class.

If this whole wacky concept sounds interesting you should check it out.

I used to own a VHS copy of this movie but didn't own a VHS player. When I finally watched it, I couldn't imagine why anyone would make a movie like this. And, maybe more importantly, who would watch it? It's like the dreams you might have with a 104 degree fever while taking shrooms. If John Waters and David Lynch made a live action cartoon with Max Fleischer, it might look something like this. And yet, as weird as it is, it's watchable and has an interesting score by Danny Elfman. I could only give a 6 because so much of this made no sense that I wasn't quite sure what I was reviewing.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson once said, "It never got weird enough for me." With all respect and love to that late-great Gonzo God, I wonder if he would eat those words following a viewing of this. This is truly one of the weirdest movies ever conceived, shot, executed, whatever-ed. But it's brilliance is in the fact that amid its chaos and delirious mayhem is that it's not really all that incoherent. It may not be any more or less crazy a piece of avant-garde experimentation than a super-obscure picture like Pussbucket.

The difference, I think, lies in professionalism. In a small way I'm reminded of Russ Meyer; Richard Elfman is a very careful director with his camera, never making a shot unintentionally out of focus or deranged in masturbatory terms, and with his production designer (if maybe it was just him and his wife who also financed the picture) create madness that can't exactly be called shoddy in production value. Like it or not, and I can imagine people definitely NOT liking this, there's some art going on here.

It's also the kind of movie you can't peg down. I was laughing mad throughout, almost convulsively at one other step after another in the 'plot' (and yes, there is one, once checked into the 'Zone' and the 6th dimension and the annals of the Queen and the family going through the zone), but is it entirely a comedy? Actually - yes, it is. But what kind of comedy? There's a sensibility that borrows heavily at times from those delightfully insane cartoons from the 1920s and 1930s (Un Iwerks' obscurer shorts come to mind), but only at times like bits in that classroom singing old songs.

There's also characters in black-face (yes, black-face), obvious caricatures of black people and Jews, a little person (the actor from Man with the Golden Gun), a guy with a giant frog head and a suit, and Satan. Did I mention it's a musical shot in black and white and that it's also like if Rocky Horror Picture Show wasn't likable for its badness but was genuinely f***ed-up as a true cult hit?

Enough trying to explain it- this is cult in the sense of Eraserhead or Ichi the Killer, or even one of the real old-school guards of the avant-garde like Jack SMith. You really do have to see it to believe it, and understand how much of a mix of forms and styles work its way into it, of the obvious and joyfully exaggerated "characters" (just between that one Queen with the hair and the little guy it could be enough, but then what about the little guy's new French mistress?), of the sudden title-cards, of the animations from time to time with most prominent example a travel down an intestine.

Not to mention the music, which is some of the purest genius in the picture (this and Blues Brothers, both good for a double feature not too oddly enough considering one specific song I need not mention here, are great wacky musicals of 1980). There's two facets: the usage of old blues and show-tunes of the 30s, almost like speakeasy songs, and then the songs of Oingo Boingo, Danny Elfman's equally weird band he had before becoming a composer. Needless to say he composes his first time here, and it's a great training ground for the likes of other great scores in Tim Burton's pictures; his one appearance as Satan is a howler, though overall he matches up to what his brother has to offer as a filmmaker of verve and daring.

How much you might respond positively to the daring of Forbidden Zone will depend on how seriously you take it. I don't think I got any profound life lessons, but if you can tap into the vibe of the picture then you got it made. It doesn't get much weirder than this, and I love it for it on whatever terms it makes as imaginative low-budget gonzo comedy.