Forbidden Zone

1982 musical

Rating: 24/20 (Anonymous: 16/20) [Rating Note: I told Anonymous after watching this that I was going to rate it eight points higher than he did. Hence, the 24/20.]

Plot: The Hercules family lives just a large intestine above the Sixth Dimension, a mysteriously goofy land ruled by King Fausto, a little fellow, and his wife Queen Doris. Inevitably, one of the family members, in this case Frenchy, finds her way into the Sixth Dimension and has to be rescued by her family and friends.

"Hot damn! The Sixth Dimension!"

Ever want to hear the little guy from Fantasy Island say, "I love to feel your nipples harden when I caress them with my fingertips"? Yes? Well, this is your movie then, mo-fo! And that's not all. With Forbidden Zone, you get a guy in a gorilla suit, an evil half-man/half-frog creature, Danny Elfman playing the devil, lots of topless women, an old guy in boxers (boxers always threatening to unflap and give a little too much information, if you know what I mean) who humps everything he encounters, a human chandelier, racial stereotyping (the first character you see is in black face), bald beatboxers in jock-straps, askew jazz numbers, and Herve Villechaize. It's hard to believe that a film this weird can sustain momentum. A lot of weirdo flicks run out of gas and get stale, but not Forbidden Zone. This starts weird, gets weirder, continues to hit you with left turn after left turn, calls you a jackass right to your face, and then ends weird. And the whole time, blood's just rushing to your balls, and you're slapping the couch with your palm or accidentally (and unknowingly) fondling your own brother. This makes Rocky Horror seem like white bread by comparison. This is what Pee Wee Herman dreams about when not molesting himself inside an extra large container of buttered popcorn. This is David Lynch, John Waters, Tim Burton, and Terry Gillium deciding to travel back in time to the 1930s to make cartoons together after having a surgery performed in which they're attached at the lobes but then killing each other in a dispute over whether or not the frog should have a sex scene and the film being completed in their absence by the second coming of Christ. This is the type of music that people form religions after watching. The music is pretty incredible--an eclectic mishmash that is part-Residents, part-jazz, part-cabaret, part-cartoon-sound-effects. The entire movie is director Richard Elfman (Danny's brother) trying to create The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo's stage show on the big screen. I didn't expect much, not being a fan of Oingo Boingo, but color me impressed. Fans of Danny Elfman's soundtrack work should seek this out as it's a lot of fun to see where he started. Any filmmaker watching this in '82 (Tim Burton maybe) would have no doubt been impressed with Elfman's potential, and it was fun for me to hear traces of Nightmare in a few of the songs. I was also impressed with the mix of animation and live action which, along with the black and white and the woman who played Frenchy's stage design, makes this unlike anything I've seen. This low-budget affair is far from cinematic perfection, but it's such an obvious labor of love, such an explosion of creativity, and such an oddball visual feast, that it's easy to forget the imperfections.

Forbidden Zone admittedly isn't for everybody. But I'm not going to like people who don't like it. Hot damn!