CULT DVD: FORBIDDEN ZONE (1982, BLU-RAY)

This is what you get when a band called The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo make a film.

Danny Elfman & friends

Oingo Boingo were a surrealist theatrical avant-garde 30's jazz-blues revivalists. The film was produced, directed and co-written by their then-leader Richard Elfman (brother of soon to be famous film music composer and also key member of the band who also scored and appeared in the film) Danny Elfman. Starring Herve Villechaize as the King of the 6th Dimension and Susan Tyrell as his wife (who had been until not that long since his actual wife), Richard Elfman's newly acquired French wife dancer Marie-Pascal as Frenchy, and most of the members of the band. Sets are made from paper and cardboard and make no attempt to hide it. The loose plot concerns the King wanting Frenchy to be his new Queen and his old one trying to stop it but that's often just an excuse for musical numbers as this is really a musical (sort of). There is some miming to old songs but most of it is new albeit in old styles.

Frenchy, speaking with a French accent

Most people will probably run away screaming after a few minutes (if they last that long) but give it a chance and you could well warm to this bizarre theatrical piece of musical-comedy surrealism. If you can accept the weirdness of its world it really is actually quite charming.

There's an excellent making of in which Richard Elfman interviews key members of the film including his brother, his ex-wife, and Susan Tyrell who says something so hilarious and so outrageous your jaw will bounce off the floor. Discussing her relationship with Villechaize, she says casually but no doubt very deliberately, "I always wanted to fuck a dwarf."

Really, you've got to see it to believe it.

Note.

Monochrome and colour versions are also on the DVD. I watched the latter.

This review is the same as appeared on Amazon, minus grammatical errors and spelling mistakes,  but with one added sentence. Can you guess what it is?

Also I forgot to use the phrase which would clearly mark me as an intellectual: Theatre of the Absurd. I'd write it in French (with a French accent) but don't want to sound pretentious.

Another Note.

The movie has been accused by simple minded people of being racist* and anti-semitic. Which amused the Jewish director Richard Elfman.

* In part it's also a tribute to black musicians like Cab Calloway. One of the extras includes a clip of the band with Danny Elfman (wearing his devil's horns) playing trumpet and singing St. Louis Blues.

Money was so tight that many of the cast, including Villechaize, would help with building and painting the sets.

Okay, I'm done now.

No I'm not. Forgot to mention that despite the cover stating the rating of the DVD is 18, on release it was only 15.

DVD: THE MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND

So:

Is there more gore than Brides of Blood? Yes!

Is there more nudity than Brides of Blood? Yes!

Is there more sex than Brides of Blood? Yes! (But then there wasn't any really at all in BoB)

Is the monster better than Brides of Blood? Um, possibly.

Is it better than Brides of Blood? Yes! Er, no, er, maybe. Ah hell, I just liked of Brides of Blood more.

First off, this isn't the same Blood Island as the last one. It just happens to be an island named Blood where strange things happen. There are no wobbly plants or other mutations. John Ashley returns as the lead but he's a different character. So it's a sequel in name only, and that it's a horror movie set on an island named Blood.

Ashley (see main cast on poster above) is a pathologist sent by the government to investigate stuff. Pettyjohn (a younger actress than Beverly Hills in BoB but just as well endowed) has come to find her father whom she hasn't seen since she was twelve -he's become an alcoholic beach bum. Remy is the doctor with a gammy leg, a sinister manservant, and a superior attitude. Guess who is the title character? Go on, guess. No, you're wrong, it isn't Ashley it's Remy. What a shocking reveal. Not listed above but the third person on the boat is young Alfonso Carvajal as Ramu who has come to get his mother off the island where his father died several years ago. His mother, Tita Munoz is quite a hottie (40 at the time and looks younger and Ramu -or rather the actor- looks as if he's looking at her wishing she wasn't his mum or what she's doing when shooting is finished for the day) and she doesn't want to leave, preferring to stay and help the Mad Doctor. Also hanging around the Mad Doctor's house is Ramu's childhood friend Marla, now a nubile and available young woman.

Um, oh yes, the Chlorophyll Monster. There seem to be a few people O.D.ing of excess chlorophyll as diagnosed by the Mad Doctor who recommends soup for a recovering victim, "but no vegetables." But there is only one Chlorophyll Monster who follows a naked native girl (she'd been skinnydipping) and rips her apart in the opening scene.

After that there's a lot of character stuff and info dumping broken up by odd stuff like Pettyjohn's alky dad doing the peeping tom act on a skinnydipping native girl -bad! bad!- before we cut back to the monster doing the hack and slash and shaking it (severed heads, limbs) all about.

Ramu finds a letter from his departed daddy dated a few months after departed daddy's death. What can this mean? Let's open his tomb and find- a python which Ashley manly throws into the bushes- but no body.

To cut a long story short: Marla had sex with Ramu's dad starting when she was fourteen and he was the best lover she's ever had but this doesn't stop her stripping off and jumping on Ramu. Pettyjohn gets naked and gets it on with Ashley. Tastefully, despite a briefly glimpsed boob. Or it might have been a shoulder. I'd taken a statin tablet earlier than I should have, closed my eyes and opened them again at the scene below.

The Mad doctor kidnaps Ramu. The Monster kills several more people. Ashley discovers the secret laboratory where the Mad Doctor has been experimenting on people and rescues Ramu. The Monster (Ramu's father) arrives and rips his nubile young ex-girlfriend to shreds Oh, and he also killed his wife earlier, the luscious Tita Munoz whom I suspect I've gone on way too much about. Big explosion, Mad Doctor and Monster die. Our three heroes leave the island older and wiser.

Well, yes I enjoyed it but it somehow lacked the more naive charm and clunky chunky monster of its predecessor. The jacket blurb quotes someone saying that it's the goriest of horror movies from the 60's except for Herschell Gordon Lewis's sadistic schlock. This may be true in terms of body parts strewn about but you don't actually see them being removed in detail unlike, as I've said, the sadistic and cruel garbage by Lewis so they don't really have much impact. Still, I'll be keeping it and watching it again sometime.

And before I go, here's the Mad Doctor himself with Ashley and Pettyjohn.

And here's the Mad Monster about to turn his ex-girlfriend into top quality mince.