Irony and the self-conscious desire to transgress have been
key elements of cult movies for as long as people have been gathering at seedy
cinemas at midnight to watch drag queens eat dog shit. Like John Waters and his
Pink Flamingoes, Richard Elfman was
trying to make his own politically tuned-in college audience feel icky when he
made Forbidden Zone, and though its over-the-top
racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, etc. will make you feel grosser than watching
Divine devour a turd, it is a beguiling piece of filmmaking. Forbidden Zone brilliantly recaptures
the childlike yet nightmarish abandon of Fleischer Brothers cartoons and the
sleazy hedonism of underground comix with Marie-Pascale Elfman’s absurdly
artificial sets, John Muto’s animations, Danny Elfman’s twisted jazz score,
anthropomorphized animals, and the cast’s distorted and depraved behavior. The
film is so blatant and absurd about its offenses—using blackface and rape as
comedy fodder, for example—that it can be viewed as a satire of the ways such
things are ubiquitous in less in-your-face ways in Hollywood movies. I don’t
think Elfman intended his movie to be read this way (or, perhaps, any way), and in an age when assholes
with badges are still gunning down black people with horrifying regularity and
elected officials use terms like “legitimate rape,” you can’t blame someone for
not seeing the humor in this material and rejecting the idea that to find it
offensive is to miss the point.
Wasting a lot of energy on recounting the “plot” of Forbidden Zone, however, probably does miss
the point. It involves Flash and Gramps Hercules (Phil Gordon, Hyman Diamond) and
Squeezit Henderson’s (co-screenwriter Matthew Bright) descent into a depraved
Wonderland to rescue Frenchy Hercules (Pascale Elfman) and René Henderson (Bright
in a wig and dress) from evil king Herve Villechaize and queen Susan Tyrrell. There’s
also a frog-headed butler, a perpetually topless princess (Gisele Lindley), a
human chandelier, and Danny Elfman as a crooning and rather sexy Satan.
More than anything, Forbidden
Zone is an excuse for the Elfman brothers’ theater troupe The Mystic
Knights of the Oingo Boingo to give one last surrealistic performance. That
means the focus is really on wild costumes, props, and music, and the film
delivers some unforgettable examples of all, though one would be remiss to not
also single out the great—in both quality and size—performances of Tyrrell and
Danny Elfman, and Pascale Elfman, who should have become a star beyond this one
cult item (she never made another movie after it).
MVD Video’s new “Ultimate Edition” of the Forbidden Zone is a marvelous showcase
for both its music and visuals. The soundtrack CD showcases the eclectic music
Danny Elfman made before becoming a pop star in Oingo Boingo and an even bigger
star as the most popular soundtrack composer in Hollywood today. Cab
Calloway-style jazz, French music, new wave, prog rock, Residents-style avant
garde, and synthesized pseudo-baroque pieces wad together like crayons in an
oven.
The film appears in both its original black and white and a
colorized version made in 2008. With so many psychedelic visuals to take in,
you might be tempted to gravitate toward the colorized version, but it’s the
black and white one that is truest to the film’s olde timey inspirations.
Despite a few white specks, the picture looks fab with excellent contrast and
natural grain.
A fine selection of bonus features have mostly been ported
over from Fantoma’s 2004 DVD: 20 minutes of deleted scenes and outtakes, Richard
Elfman and Matthew Bright’s commentary, the truly excellent A Look into the Forbidden Zone
documentary (which finds cigar-wielding Richard interviewing brother Danny,
ex-wife Marie Pascale, Bright, and Muto and features some fascinating vintage
video of the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo). There’s also a brief but zany
new introduction from Richard Elfman in which he teases Forbidden Zone 2 and presents a selection of conceptual
illustrations of a Prussian general leading a microcephalic army. With the sequel
exceeding its crowd-sourced goal of $100,000 last year, there may be some more transgressive
weirdness on the way soon.