I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

I’m biting Jackie Clarke’s credit for introducing all you nerds to Forbidden Zone (1980), which is like the retarded half-brother to similar “high camp” cult film Rocky Horror. Richard Elfman made it as a vehicle to expand on the live cabaret shows he did with “The Mystic Knights of the Oingo-Boingo” (including brother Danny Elfman, who I was depressed to learn is a Scientologist). It features lots of topless women, black face minstrels, 70 year old Jewish man playing a kid and Hervé Villechaize.

Like most “cult films” most of it is boring. Either keep the hash pipe or your remote’s fast forward button close at hand for all segments that don’t feature a musical number. But the musical numbers (and some surprisingly good animation… sort of Fleisher Bros-meets-the-credits-of-You Can’t Do That On Television) are such specifically wonderful weirdness, like this one—

The bald boxers were a performance art (?) act called The Kipper Kids and as far as I can tell, this is mostly what they did (bronx cheers). One of them went on to marry Bette Midler. The “singer” was some kid they pulled in off the street and told him to lip sync to the track, but he got too nervous and just stood there. So then they had the screenwriter come in and do the mouth and they Clutch-Cargoed it on in post. And then the song gets cut off by pert-nippled toplessness… This is Forbidden Zone in a nutshell.

Netflix has the DVD (along with recent interviews with the cast, if you really want to depress yourself), but most of the musical numbers are on Youtube. Look for the delightful profanity(and disco)-laden retread of “Swingin’ The Alphabet” (a number done by The Three Stooges ), the delightful “Pico & Sepulveda,” and proto-”Oogie Boogie” Danny Elfman showcase “Squeezit the Moocher.” (Find the last one yourself)

In a final monument to selling out, I was alerted that the Dilbert cartoon (largely forgotten by pop-culture historians) used the Forbidden Zone’s theme in their opening credits (or Danny Elfman was too hungover to write a theme song and just passed that along) with lyrics and mumbling Sambo-screams edited out.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 12:03 am and is filed under I Watch Movies.