Forbidden Zone (1982) Or The Best White Elephant Yet!

Just cause it's dangerous doesn't mean you shouldn't visit

Genre: Comedy Fantasy Musical

Starring: Hervé Villechaize ("Fantasy Island" • The Man with the Golden Gun), Susan Tyrrell (Big Top Pee-wee • Powder)

Directed By: Richard Elfman (Shrunken Heads • Modern Vampires)

Overview: The Hercules family's basement contains a portal to the Sixth Dimension. When daughter Frenchy ends up in this Forbidden Zone it's up to her family to venture forth and rescue her from the diminutive King, his larger-than-life Queen and their host of wacky minions.

Blatantly False Beards • Living Chandelier • Froggy Style • Pooped To The Next Dimension

 

Hecklefest is a social event I engage in once a week without fail since it became an 'officially recorded' event on October 5th, 2007. Every week we watch two or three films and as of right now, the date of this post, the number of malignant mockables I've seen at this event is 193. Usually on these wonderful nights we heckle and rave as people march across the screen, and on extremely rare occasions (like 3) we become transfixed, unable to comment, leaving the film heckle itself. Honest to God's truth, of these 193 films, my #1 favorite Hecklefest film to date, surpassing even Purple Rain, is Forbidden Zone. That's fucking right, bitches. Praise be to the Sixth Dimension.

 

Hervé Villechaize • Oingo Boing • Hitler As A Student • Gorilla Face Pulp • Man Frog In A Tuxedo

Forbidden Zone is a black and white fever dream of adult madness. What could easily have been a children's fantasy musical was gloriously put to death from the first shot to the final breath. With random humping, gratuitous nudity, potty-mouth characters and ever so adult situations Richard Elfman ensures that this musical extravaganza of the strange is rooted in the mature.

 

Random Humping • Totally Topless Princesses • Obese banana eating • WTF Characters

 

It's bogglingly high-art (I didn't say good art) Avant-Garde, that though is relatively plotless, still makes more sense and has more storyline than Lynch or Jodorowski. In short, the Hercules family moves into a house that has a door to the 6th Dimension. When one goes in, the rest of the family slowly trickles in to follow / rescue the others. Toss in some nonsense, some corrupt Machiavellian machinations, some poetic justice, some cloth'd humping and obes'd banana eating and there you have a perfect little adventure into the tastefully obscene. What makes it truly spectacular is that Forbidden Zone doesn't have the blatant faggotry required to be compared to Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's so much ruder, stranger and better that that trite over-rated event (that I've seen 15 times in theaters, I'm not ashamed to say it!)

 

Raygun • Mechanical Intestines • Transvestite ear chewing • Fart boxing

 

Pimps in the back of class

 

Performance: 4 Cinematography: 8 Script: 5 Plot: 4 Mood: 10

Overall Rating: 62% (Dare To Enter!)

Aftertaste:

To put it simply, Forbidden Zone is bad enough that it knows it's 'so bad it's good' and hence becomes good by being 'good at being so bad', which makes it really really bad... so good!

See what other critics had to say about the stinky movies assigned to them for the White Elephant Blog-A-Thon, being held over at Lucid Screening. My submission was Ghoulies. Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to that!