Forbidden Zone (1980)

"Why does it feel so good to be sooooo bad?" - Queen Doris

A journey to the 6th dimension gets much weirder than you might expect.
Starring: Susan Tyrrell, Marie-Pascale Elfman, Hervé Villechaize, Matthew Bright

Link to IMDB

First, some backstory...
Richard and Danny Elfman wanted to film a showcase of the wacky stage performances of their musical theater troupe, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo (that would eventually evolve into the band Oingo Boingo.) They expanded all their ideas to make a truly demented movie.

Frenchy

The dysfunctional Hercules family have moved into a new house that just happens to have a portal to the sixth dimension in the basement. Frenchy, the daughter, is forbidden to go near it but her curiosity gets the better of her and she falls through to a new world. Considering that the place she came from was a circus sideshow of freaks living in a German expressionist's nightmare, the incomprehensible insanity of the sixth dimension basically looks just like home.

The dimension is ruled by the psychotic Queen Doris, who promptly has Frenchy locked in a dungeon, but it seems like King Fausto has another plan for this beautiful girl that fell into his world.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Hercules family decides to rescue Frenchy from whatever danger she has found through that damn portal.


Very little about this movie makes any sense at all. I guess there is some plot to follow as various people explore the sixth dimension in hopes of finding Frenchy, but it's entirely overwhelmed by non-stop disorder and random cabaret skits. The story eventually takes us to some weird version of Hell (if we weren't there already,) and it seems like half the neighbourhood gets pulled into the forbidden zone sooner or later.

"You know the chickens are always ready to help any way we can." - Chicken

King Fausto and Queen Doris

As expected, there's a lot of music here as the characters occasionally burst into song with plenty of screaming, horns honking and limbs flailing wildly; and although the music isn't terrible I felt that very few tunes were memorable.
Everything on screen is completely bonkers, and the greasy make-up and eccentric art design adds to the sensation of freewheeling chaos that joyfully looms over every moment. Raunchy, depraved and fearless, there's something here to offend pretty much everyone (although it's clearly done for laughs.) This ensures many moments will be forever seared into your brain whether you like it or not, but hopefully someone in the audience will go home traumatized.

The Princess and her Frog servant

If you're in the mood for something too surreal, too juvenile, and too inappropriate to explain with words, this is absolutely perfect for you. There's just so much avante-garde uneasiness going on that you really need to see it for yourself to believe that this deviant vaudeville experiment actually exists.

It's time to boogie !

Be sure not to miss:
- The newspaper headlines.
- A human chandelier looks like the worst job ever.
- Probably the most dry-humping I've ever seen in one movie.

Internet review:
"This is the worst movie I've ever watched... Five times." - CyboAlley

Should I watch it?
Any fans of strangeness need to see this at least once.

Where can I find it?
Vidzi link here.

Forbidden Zone gets...