Verdict
Summary
One of the greatest and most fun cult films ever made, Richard Elfman’s wildly creative and sexy (and absurd) Forbidden Zone is like a Robert Crumb or Max Fleischer cartoon / comic book come to vivid life.
Plot:
A low class drug dealer moves his family into a house that has a portal to the underworld “forbidden zone.”
Review:
Hidden in plain sight within a ramshackle house in a low class neighborhood, lies a portal to the “sixth dimension” – a “forbidden zone” where a horny little king named Fausto (Herve Villechaize) rules over a chaotic anything-goes realm alongside his Queen, Doris (Susan Tyrell), a buxom vixen in quest of stripping anyone in her dimension of any purity or chastity. When a drug dealer on earth moves his dysfunctional family into the shack, his cute sister Frenchy (Marie-Pascale Elfman) steps through the portal to the forbidden zone and ends up being thrown into Fausto’s harem where she will surely be deflowered by the depraved little king and queen unless she’s rescued. Lucky for her, a dweeb named Chicken Boy (Matthew Bright) shows up to rescue his imprisoned sister Rene (also played by Bright) from Fausto’s dungeon, thus instigating a rescue plan that has Frenchy making her grand attempt to overthrow Fausto and Doris amidst their insane entourage, which includes a frog butler and horny, retarded court subjects.
One of the greatest and most fun cult films ever made, Richard Elfman’s wildly creative and sexy (and absurd) Forbidden Zone is like a Robert Crumb or Max Fleischer cartoon / comic book come to vivid life. At less than 80 minutes, the movie is packed with gonzo imagery and song and dance numbers, featuring Danny Elfman from “The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo” as a singing Satan. The movie completely lacks a sense of shame or vanity, which gives it an unabashed creative glory. This weird and amusing musical Alice in Wonderland-style goofball nightmare has remained and endured as one of my favorite wacky movies.
MVD Visual recently released a “Director’s Cut” version of Forbidden Zone onto Blu-ray, and it contains the newly colorized version, which actually gives the movies some “dimension,” as it were. It has a new nerdy clown intro with Richard Elfman, plus a bunch of bonus features, including a commentary, deleted scenes, a new featurette with Richard and Danny on the music, and more.
