You have been warned.
Forbidden Zone is an early 1980's movie about a family that moves in a house that has in the basement a door to the sixth dimension that they pretty much try to ignore, but when the eldest daughter returns from her studies in France, curiosity attracts her to investigate... oh, and did I mention is a
completely bonkers fantasy musical? No? Well, you don't know what you're missing.
This movie is groundbreaking for being the first film that
Danny Elfman ever composed a soundtrack for (no surprise considering his brother is the director and screenwriter, his brother's wife is the protagonist, and their father and grandfather both play characters in the film), Danny himself plays the devil while the rest of the original Oingo Boingo band (when it was known as
The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo) are here as his minions. The film also includes a pre-
Fantasy Island Hervé Villechaize and pre-
Cry Baby Susan Tyrell.
This movie includes examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Squeezit and Renee's parents.
- Badass Grandpa: More like metally-distubed violent grandpa.
- Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The Bim-Bam-Boom sequence, Squeezit saying the Pledge of Alliance, the old Jewish merchant. About a third of the movie.
- Busby Berkeley Number: Parodied.
- Chew Toy: Squeezit to a ridiculous extent. Originally the scene when his father beats him while his mother laughs was going to be ten minutes long and the weird scene when he was going to say the pledge of alliance actually was going to have him castrated.
- Cloud Cuckoo Land: The sixth dimension. Reality isn't much normal in this film, though.
- Cover Version: About a third of the songs are covers of 1930's songs, especially Cab Calloway ones.
- Crowd Song: Pico & Sepulveda, Queen's Revenge, The Alphabet Song and Finale.
- Cult Classic
- Cut Song: "Johnny" and "Giter Brider Itzik"
- Dead Baby Comedy
- Deleted Scene: A scene where Gramps sings about his days as a wrestler.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Well, maybe not deliberately. The director intended the black-and-white footage to be colorized by hand, but found it would be too costly to pull off; it's since been digitally colorized.
- Deranged Animation: The intro and the sequences to the sixth dimension.
- Deal With The Devil: Squeezit has to do one in order to save his sister and Frenchy
- Disney Death: Queen Doris
- Distant Duet: Queen's Revenge.
- DownTheButtHole: The only way to reach to the sixth dimension
- Dysfunctional Family
- Dysfunction Junction: The most normal character of the film is the wife-beating Norwegian-accented tarpit-working father.
- Ear Worm: Geez, where to start.
- God Save Us From The Queen
- Improbable Hairstyle: Queen Doris
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: While she's far from innocent, the Princess doesn't seem to be under any pressure to cover her breasts.
- In The Style Of: Fleischer Bros. and early Warner Bros. Cartoons.
- Large Ham: Queen Doris of the sixth dimension.
- Les Yay: The former queen and the current queen of the sixth dimension.
- Ms Fanservice: The Princess. Oh, the Princess.
- Named After Somebody Famous: King Fausto and Susan B. Hercules.
- No OSHA Compliance: La Brea Tar Pit Factory.
- The Napoleon: King Fausto.
- Playing Hamlet: The actor playing 10 years-old Flash was in his early 70's, at least. All his classmates are also examples of this.
- Rape As Comedy
- Refuge In Audacity
- Shout Out: The whole Satan sequence is one on Betty Boop's Minnie The Moocher cartoon.
- The Alphabet song is a cover of an old Three Stooges short.
- Frenchy "sings" a Josephine Baker song, and Pa "sings" a Cab Calloway song.
- So Bad Its Good
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Pa Hercules singing a joyful cover of Pico & Sepulveda with a chorus of men while going to their crappy job at La Brea Tar Pit Factory.
- Spoiled Brat: The Princess, and to a lesser extent, Susan.
- Stock Underwear: Aside from the mooks mentioned below (who wear jockstraps), everyone whose underwear is part of their costume wears tighty whiteys.
- Those Two Guys: The boxer... mook... twins (?) whatever those two are.
- Why, they're the Kipper Kids, bizarre British performance artists! They actually made a moderate career doing exactly what they did in the movie.
They also appeared on Bette Midler's "Mondo Beyondo" and breifly, dressed as Uncle Sam (both of them), in another cult favorite movie, "UHF."
