Into the Zone: Richard Elfman recalls the shooting of his cult classic Forbidden Zone

Audiences who stumble into the indescribable musical fantasy Forbidden Zone (1980) -- whether from a late night cable TV showing, a bootlegged VHS tape, or repertory theater screening -- are instantly whisked away to a paper-and-glue netherworld called the Sixth Dimension. In the film's overheated 73 minutes, a veritable parade of ethnic stereotypes, topless princesses, dancing frogs and chorus girls fly by, leaving the viewer befuddled, shocked and enchanted.

The film Forbidden Zone grew as an extension of the cabaret act The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, which later would become the new wave rock group Oingo Boingo, fronted by current film composer wunderkind Danny Elfman. It was through the vision and hard work of Danny’s older brother, Richard Elfman that Forbidden Zone came into existence. Though bizarre and delightful, Forbidden Zone is merely like most other musicals, insists Richard Elfman: an excuse for a dozen hot song-and-dance numbers.

And like the majority of musicals, Forbidden Zone’s plot is a vaporous one, best left to the inebriated film fan to decipher. To whit: Slumlord Huckleberry P. Jones (Gene Cunningham, acting in minstrel blackface under the name Ugh-Fudge Bwana) is rutting around in one of his bungalows in Venice, California looking for heroin to unload. He stumbles through a basement portal into the Sixth Dimension, presided over by midget King Fausto (Hervé Villechaize) and insane Queen Doris (Susan Tyrrell). Jones manages to escape -- and according to one of many silent movie intertitles -- finds and sells the heroin and then rents the property to the dysfunctional Hercules family.

Composed of Swedish Pa (Cunningham again), Ma (Virginia Rose), Flash (Phil Gordon II), Jewish wrestler Gramps (Hyman Diamond) and daughter Susan B. “Frenchy” Hercules (Elfman’s then-wife Marie Pascale-Elfman), the basement has already swallowed up neighborhood kid Rene Henderson (Matthew Bright, acting under the name Toshiro Boloney), the transvestite “sister” of abused child Squeezit (Bright again).

While colorful, the Hercules family was based on real-life characters Elfman says he knew at the time. “Among the things that I wished to portray in Forbidden Zone, besides simply a filmed version of an entertaining stage musical, was an Absurdist satire on contemporary amorality and society’s utter lack of ethical responsibility. My next door neighbors at the time were a poor white trash family -- the drunken father would scream at the mother, who yelled and slapped the teenage piggy slut-daughter, who beat her younger brother, who threw shit at the dog,” Elfman says.

Ma and Pa sternly warn Frenchy against venturing into the basement while stoking her curiosity. “How cure-yee-us!” Frenchy exclaims in her exaggerated Gaelic accent. Attending school with Gramps, Frenchy jumps through the window when a disagreement over a gambling debt between black students (played by adults in Blaxploitation pimp attire) erupts into gunfire.
Returning home, Frenchy disobeys her parent’s edict and enters the basement, where -- in just one of a series of remarkable animated scenes courtesy of John Muto -- she is swallowed whole and sent through gigantic intestines and a Rube Goldberg device before being shat out of a cartoon anus to land on fecal pillows.

“Hot damn! The Sixth Dimension! Is that a rumba I hear?” she exclaims.

Lured to a boxing ring surrounded by gigantic heads, Frenchy discovers two Dadaist boxers (performance art group the Kipper Kids), dancing frog manservant BustRod (Jan Stuart Schwartz) and a rather rotund young man in Mickey Mouse ears singing the 40's Latin classic, “Bim Bam Boom.” In a hilarious scene designed to send all viewers on lysergic chemicals screaming from the room, lips mouthing the nonsensical lyrics in Spanish are superimposed over the kid’s face.

A question foremost in the minds of many of the film’s fans was where Elfman discovered this actor. Elfman has long forgotten the young man’s name. “He was a neighborhood kid in Venice, California. Very, very shy. He froze up in front of the camera, so I had to superimpose Squeezit (Matthew Bright) Henderson’s lips over his.” The scene is still used by Elfman as a warning to actors who fail to memorize their lines.

The dance is rudely interrupted by the Kingdom’s topless princess (Gisele Lindley), who brings Frenchy before her parents King Fausto (Villechaize) and Queen Doris (Tyrrell). Fausto is instantly smitten with the gamine, much to the Queen’s dismay. “She is French, and therefore of the Master Race!” Fausto later rationalizes. The queen consigns Frenchy to the dungeon, and between numerous romantic peccadilloes, a power struggle for the Sixth Dimension ensues.
Frenchy’s friends and family all enter the Sixth Dimension in an attempt to rescue her; the former queen (Warhol Superstar Viva) is found rotting in a cell ; there’s a smoking hot Cab Calloway number starring Danny Elfman as Satan; and a coup d’état. It’s all over before the audience has a chance to catch its breath, and no one can resist jumping back on the roller coaster ride for yet another viewing.

Where did all this wonderful nonsense begin? According to Elfman, it all began in Southern California, with a detour courtesy of Paris, France.

Forbidden Zone is a crazy quilt of ideas and visuals. One can cite the Fleischer Bros., underground comics, vaudeville, Yiddish theatre, silent films, “late 19th Century French Absurdist Theater; maybe French theater in general. And the Ascended Masters, of course!” says Elfman. This writer, a native of the Golden State, points out to Elfman that a lot of Southern Californian malaise seems to have been a major inspiration as well. I ask if his upbringing was a traumatic one.

“Mine wasn’t too traumatic,” he replies. “Except for getting beaten and bloodied by anti-Semitic poor-white-trash kids and taunted and ridiculed for being a Jew through much of my early youth. And maybe the time, a few years later, when Dorsey High won a football game at Manuel Arts High here in South Central L.A. when an angry black mob pulled me and few white friends out of the broken car windows and stomped us. Luckily, the police arrived ... but other than that and several dozen other incidents -- nothing too traumatic. Danny, a few years my junior, seemed to get off easier in terms of harassment.”

The creative Richard and Danny fled California for the higher artistic climes to be found in Paris, France in the Seventies. There, the brothers joined the theatre group The Grand Magic Circus under the hand of James Savary, who would later become the director of the French National Theatre. It was also the Elfmans’ good fortune to work with Peter Brooke of the Royal Shakespeare Company during this especially fecund period. After studying a wide array of music, theatre and stagecraft, Danny and Richard returned to the United States to form the avant-garde musical combo The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.

Unlike other musical acts of the day, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo eschewed rock and roll to concentrate on such Harlem Renaissance hipster artists as Cab Calloway and Josephine Baker. Retro long before the coining of the term, the band would dress in wild costumes and engage in bizarre bits of cabaret.

It was during the late Seventies that Richard decided to transpose the Mystic Knights’ stage show to film, and the result was the hour-long, 16 mm, lost-to-the ages The Hercules Family, which was never completed. Friends encouraged Richard to make the leap to 35 mm to capitalize on the Midnight Movie crowd audience, which was then lining up at multiplexes for such fare as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Pink Flamingos (1972).

Production money was raised by “buying and refurbishing old houses, credit cards and help from Ugh-Fudge Bwana and producer Carl Borack,” says Elfman. Shooting Forbidden Zone proceeded off and on over a two-year period. Elfman says that the cast was recruited from friends and acquaintances. “Matthew Bright (Toshiro Boloney) was a classmate of my brother Danny. Matthew’s roommate at the time was Hervé. Hervé’s ex-girlfriend was Susan (Tyrrell). Matthew also was friends with Joe Spinell. Pa was in the Mystic Knights with me. The Princess did a bit in our stage show.” Many other faces were literally plucked from the street, as in one scene where a Greek chorus of drunks is seen chuckling at the action. “The 'inebriated gentlemen' you refer to were sitting on the casting sidewalk that day on 4th and Alameda, awaiting some bottles of acting booze,” says Elfman.

Villechaize and Tyrrell, jealous lovers on film, were jealous ex-lovers in real life. “The two loved and admired each other profoundly. Yes, they had some tempestuous chemistry as a couple, but the love was always there.” Elfman also shares that Viva, who portrays the garrulous ex-queen, had a contentious relationship with Tyrrell, and that the catfight they engage in at the climax of the film was real.

Disaster struck when a lighting fixture fell and struck Matthew Bright on the head during filming. Elfman says he will never forget the sight of Bright lying on a hospital emergency room gurney while dressed in full Rene drag and makeup. Ever the trouper, Bright returned the next day for shooting, albeit with a sprained neck.

Everyone pitched in and did double duty on the project. As soon as the cameras stopped rolling, Marie Pascale-Elfman would relinquish her place in front of the camera in order to spend long nights painting the expressionistic sets. Hervé Villechaize, himself an accomplished artist, would lend his artistic expertise to the painted flats on the weekend.

Many actors filled secondary roles. Among the most notable is Susan Tyrrell’s turn as Rene and Squeezit’s barfly mom Mrs. Henderson. In a dark wig and long nose makeup, Tyrrell berates and torments Squeezit (“Oh, Chicken Boy!”) and declares that her waterfront date for the evening is his long-lost father (Joe Spinell of Maniac [1981] infamy).

Shot years before advances in digital technology, many of the sped up sequences in Forbidden Zone were accomplished by painstakingly removing individual film frames and then reassembling them one at a time. While many props and costumes were on loan from the Mystic Knight’s stage act, one bit of wardrobe -- Mickey Mouse caps with distinctive round ears that one can buy at Walt Disney theme parks -- is worn without apology by many characters throughout the film. Elfman remembers that one insurance company refused Forbidden Zone coverage due to the caps, but the items, shorn of their distinctive corporate logos, flew under the radar of the usually litigation-happy multimedia conglomeration.

Once completed, Forbidden Zone had a hard time drawing an appreciative theatrical audience. Released when Midnight Movies had faded in popularity, the film “was condemned by the 'politically correct' when it came out, banned from PC campuses. Arson threats drove it from theaters.” Many accused Richard Elfman of anti-Semitism for his inclusion of an elderly Yiddish money changer character, unaware that the actor was played by Elfman’s real-life grandfather.
This writer became familiar with Forbidden Zone through the odd late-night cable TV screening. “The original cable version was a piece of shit low-res dupe of a rough cut that I had my lawyer pull off the air,” says Elfman. The film was released briefly on VHS on the Video Gems label, where it quickly went out of print (but now fetches high prices on Internet auction sites). “Most people saw shitty bootlegs that I wasn’t aware of. It was only a few years ago that Fantoma Films put out a decent version, and now Legend Films has done this new amazing color job on the film.”

Elfman says it was a longtime dream to have Forbidden Zone in color, hand-colored by Chinese craftsmen in the manner of silent films. The Legend Films DVD release has bright, stylized hues recalling hand-painted postcards of yesteryear. This writer asks if this expressionistic color scheme was intentional. “No, we choose a more ‘realistic’ looking route,” replies Elfman. “The film is cartoony enough already in terms of art direction.”

In the years following the original release of Forbidden Zone, many cast and crew members have gone on to many other projects. Danny Elfman would later score countless motion pictures, in particular the films of director Tim Burton. Matthew Bright would later direct Freeway (1996) and Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby (1999), and currently is working on other film projects. Richard Elfman would go on to direct Shrunken Heads (1994) and Modern Vampires (1998), as well as serve as editor-in-chief of the glossy entertainment periodical Buzzine. Kipper Kid Martin von Haselberg would later marry comedienne Bette Midler, leading the Divine Miss M to quip to her tittering fans during her stage show, “I married a German. Every night, I dress up as Poland, and he invades me!”

Several Forbidden Zone cast members have since passed away. Actor Joe Spinell was found dead in his Queens apartment in 1989. Hervé Villechaize, despondent by the dwindling acting jobs offered him after his long run as Tattoo (“Da plane! Da plane!”) on TV’s Fantasy Island, would take his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1993. Susan Tyrrell would have a brush with death in 2000 when she became stricken with the rare blood disease essential thrombocythemia, necessitating the amputation of both legs below the knee in order to save her life. Confined to a wheelchair, Tyrrell still takes the occasional acting role, but now concentrates on her artwork. At a packed-to-the-rafters screening of the new colorized version of Forbidden Zone at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood, Tyrrell was greeted with thunderous applause as she took to the stage for a post-screening question and answer panel.

Midnight film, VHS and Beta, DVD, and finally a spanking brand new colorized version on DVD: I ask Elfman what wild permutation Forbidden Zone will take next. “3-D. Then Holograms in your living room. And finally, hallucinations inside your head.” One last question for Elfman: With every cult film favorite, there are always obsessed fans. What was the most remarkable fan adulation that he has seen as a result of Forbidden Zone?

“Maybe the time those three 19-year-old Playboy triplets, all dressed as the topless Princess, tried to sneak into my bed one night when I was particularly drunk and single. They did lewd things and tried to provoke me -- but of course I told them that such behavior was unchaste, and I ran straight away to the Rabbi for guidance. I told the Rebbe what had occurred. He said I was full of shit and didn’t believe I had resisted--only Abraham or Moses were capable of something like that. I offered my fingers for him to sniff, to prove my innocence. The rabbe left the room... and returned dressed like Susan Tyrrell in ‘The Queen’s Revenge.’ He lashed me with whips and forced me to recite 20 Hail Marvens.”

(Fans can observe other projects by the mad genius by logging on to http://www.richardelfman.com/)