Forbidden Zone (1982)
Year: 1982
Country: USA
Director: Richard Elfman
Reviewed: March 2014
Country: USA
Director: Richard Elfman
Reviewed: March 2014
Truly one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen, I think my experience of it can be best summed up as my response to my mum’s statement that this wasn’t a very funny comedy. I told her it wasn’t a comedy; it was a movie that made you go what the actual f**k at every turn. It’s almost impossible to explain what this film is about, because it’s just so completely strange and up to personal interpretation. Basically, it’s a film about this family who find a strange door in the basement of their house that leads to a strange Sixth Dimension where seemingly anything is possible. The daughter of the family, Frenchy, goes missing and the rest of them have to go and recover her. However, this movie is far from straightforward. The ‘children’ are all played by adult actors, dice is used as currency, there’s a machine gun toting teacher, a horny frog-headed waiter, numerous topless women and musical numbers. In fact, it is largely for the musical numbers that I was so desperate to see the film. Composed by Danny Elfman (famous for creating the awesome soundtracks for Tim Burton films) and his band Oingo Boingo (most known to me for composing the title theme song to John Hughe’s underrated film Weird Science), it’s truly strange but oddly wonderful. The best number is ‘Witch’s Egg’, sung by the buxom queen, which opens with the line ‘When I turned 12, Papa said:/ “Little woman, better get yourself a wife” / “Cause you’re too
mean for a man” and is just an astonishingly awesome scene. This film, however, constantly what makes you go what the hell am I even watching? This doesn’t make any sense. I suppose this, as with many examples of cult cinema, is one of those films where you either get and embrace its strange counterculture weirdness or you turn away from it, and it becomes one of your most reviled films. For me, this film is really pushing the levels of weirdness which I can take (and that’s saying something. Yellow Submarine and the films of Luis Bunuel are some of my absolute favourite movies) but I can’t help but like it anyway. I don’t instantly love it as I have with other examples of movies with a (shall we say) niche audience, but already my opinion of it has changed from ‘that was far too weird’ to ‘actually, that was sort of cool’. It’s one of those films I’ll look back on and say, that was one of those movies I really loved. Or I’ll just look back and realise that I can never quite forget the image of a frog-headed waiter having sex with a naked girl.
mean for a man” and is just an astonishingly awesome scene. This film, however, constantly what makes you go what the hell am I even watching? This doesn’t make any sense. I suppose this, as with many examples of cult cinema, is one of those films where you either get and embrace its strange counterculture weirdness or you turn away from it, and it becomes one of your most reviled films. For me, this film is really pushing the levels of weirdness which I can take (and that’s saying something. Yellow Submarine and the films of Luis Bunuel are some of my absolute favourite movies) but I can’t help but like it anyway. I don’t instantly love it as I have with other examples of movies with a (shall we say) niche audience, but already my opinion of it has changed from ‘that was far too weird’ to ‘actually, that was sort of cool’. It’s one of those films I’ll look back on and say, that was one of those movies I really loved. Or I’ll just look back and realise that I can never quite forget the image of a frog-headed waiter having sex with a naked girl.
Best Scene: The performance of 'Witch's Egg'
Overall Verdict: 8
Overall Verdict: 8