Considering my tastes in films, I’m sometimes surprised to discover offbeat titles that I probably should have known about all along. Case in point, 1980’s low budget musical mayhem Forbidden Zone. Does this have a cult following akin to The Rocky Horror Picture Show that I somehow missed? If it doesn’t, it should. According to writer/director Richard Elfman, it’s basically a filmed version of the kind of experience his and brother Danny’s band The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo produced on-stage (before they lost the circus atmosphere and went all nerd rock). If that’s the case, I regret never seeing them play live. Truly for the weird at heart, the film will quickly scare away more timid audiences with its flimsy cardboard sets, racial and bathroom humor, uber-zany characters, and trippy animated sequences. The story is loosely strung around a portal to the 6th dimension found in a dysfunctional family’s basement, but it’s just an excuse to go visually and musically crazy. This cinematic anomaly attempts to shove as much low brow shenanigans as possible (and affordable) into a little over an hour. Contributing to the spectacle are a tuxedo-wearing frog, a human candelabra, flying heads, gun-toting school kids (and teachers), intestinal passageways, and plenty of hot naked babes. Don’t forget a pre-Fantasy Island Herve Villechaize and his real-life girlfriend Susan Tyrell as the otherworld’s ruling odd couple. Danny Elfman, playing a singing Satan, contributes his first movie score, which sounds remarkably close at times to his celebrated work for The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride. Even some of the surreal musical numbers resemble those films’ animated choreography. Hyperkinetic movies like Kung Fu Hustle suddenly seem tame in comparison.

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