Forbidden Zone (1980)

forbidden-zoneKinky black & white new wave musical aimed squarely at the midnight movie crowd. Weird sex, weird violence, weird everything else. It plays best when you’ve got a few drinks in you. The story is your basic Alice in Wonderland concept, but with more topless women. Hidden in the basement of a deranged family’s home is a doorway to an alternate world. It’s called the Sixth Dimension and it’s a lot like those surreal Fleischer Brothers Betty Boop cartoons from the 1930s, complete with a scene in which Danny Elfman impersonates Cab Calloway. The king of The Sixth Dimension is Hervé Villechaize and he gets in big trouble with the bouncy-boobed queen, Susan Tyrell, when he falls in love with new arrival Marie-Pascale Elfman.

The whole thing is based on the wild stage act from the early, more theatrical incarnation of the new wave band Oingo Boingo, back when they were called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Former and then-current Oingo Boingos handle the directing, the writing, the music score, and most of the major acting roles.