| It’s amazing what you can find if you start moving furniture around. Last week, I shifted a bookshelf, only to find my long-lost VHS copy of Richard Elfman’s cult oddity Forbidden Zone (1980) nestled between it and the wall. Hooray! Not only is Forbidden Zone the second strangest film in my collection. It’s also one of the most entertaining musicals I’ve ever seen. It’s prolonged absence was a source of considerable concern.
Descriptors like "quirky" and "odd" don’t cut it here – Forbidden Zone is downright berserk. If your entertainment preferences run to the mundane, you’ll jump out a window to avoid this movie. On the other hand, if your cinematic tastes have ever made your friends identify you as a "weirdo," this flick is pure nonsensical heaven.
The King of the Sixth Dimension (Herve Villechaize in a crown and tuxedo) has been happily married for 1000 years, but he still has an eye for the ladies, and when Susan B. "Frenchy" Hercules (Marie-Pascale Elfman) shows up, he’s instantly smitten. This sends the already-unhinged Queen Doris (Susan Tyrrell) into a fury, and woe betide any chorus girls, prisoners, masseurs or tap-dancing giant frogs that get in her way. Meanwhile, a gaggle of friends and relatives from Frenchy’s world come to rescue her, but get distracted by such bizarre obstacles as chained sex slaves, elaborate musical numbers, exploding tar factories, and Satan himself (Danny Elfman). Got all that? What do you mean, "No?"
Never mind – the story doesn’t matter one jot. This flick abandons all pretence of rationality, and plows through your mind like a bulldozer. It also abandons any sense of good taste and revels in pure outrageous creativity. Forbidden Zone would be extremely offensive if it were possible to take it the least bit seriously. As it is, the film seems to charge forward without any concept of the meaning of obscenity and winds up being hilarious, inoffensive and genuinely fun throughout.
The sets are nothing more than paper and cardboard with various backdrops scribbled on them with Magic Marker. The vast caverns that snake through the Sixth Dimension are made out of papier-mâché and empty garbage bags. One character drives to work in a cardboard box done up to resemble a car. This kind of expressionism goes beyond Robert Wiene and seems more like the World’s naughtiest school play. The sets may be minimal, but the talent involved in the production is considerable, with amazingly good Max Fleischer-inspired animated sequences and terrific songs from Cab Calloway, Josephine Baker and Danny Elfman. You’ll be humming "Bim Bam Boom," "Queen’s Revenge" and "Yiddeshe Charleston" for days.
Fortunately, Forbidden Zone is no longer as rare as it once was. A terrific DVD release from Fantoma (the same people who released The Great Silence and Revengers Tragedy) came out in 2004 and still seems to be available. Pick it up, and be forever changed.
Let’s move on to this week’s VHS giveaway, shall we? Last week, my tape of Larry Cohen’s off-kilter thriller The Ambulance (1990) found a new home. This week, I’ve got an extremely rare collection of animations from Aardman Studios to give away. The compilation includes Nick Park’s acclaimed Creature Comforts (1989), as well as an assortment of other interview-based shorts you won’t find anywhere else. To win the tape, answer this trivia question:
Which of the original three "Wallace and Gromit" animated shorts (A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave), directed by Aardman’s Nick Park, did NOT win an Oscar for Best Animated Short?
Send answers to win@ffwd.greatwest.ca. First come, first served. (Sorry, but there’s only one tape!) |
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