PRODUCTION NOTES

Notes on the Forbidden Zone by Richard Elfman

The Forbidden Zone was essentially an attempt to capture on film what I had been doing on stage with my musical-theatrical group, the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo (which later morphed into rock band, Oingo Boingo). The rule of original group being "f*** contemporary," our music was either totally original, care of younger brother Danny, or loving recreations of classics that people could no longer hear live, such as Cab Calloway, Josephine Baker, early Duke Ellington and Django Rheinhardt. The theatrics were Absurd; Felliniesque characters, Max Fleischer cartoonish sets, Three Stooge physicality- all sublimated with refined and original ballets, movement and modern dance. We had fun and so did our audiences. 

The son of schoolteachers, I grew up with Danny in the vibrant, multi-ethnic (mostly black), Crenshaw district of inner city Los Angeles. After a brief stint as a percussionist with an Afro-jazz group I began staging musicals in San Francisco. While at a Festival of New Theater in Toronto, I met the French avant-garde musical comedy troupe, Le Grand Magic Circus. Their leader, Jerome Savary, would soon become my mentor and ultimately he went on to be the director of the French National Theater. Jerome persuaded me to move to Paris and join the troupe, as things were just heating up. The legendary Peter Brooke, of Royal Shakespeare Company fame, became the executive producer and we went on to have a number of hit shows. During one summer I got younger brother Danny his first professional gig, playing music with the group during a European tour. I married the female lead, Marie-Pascale, who later would play Frenchy in Forbidden Zone. She also created the original sets. Anyway, it was during this period that I formulated my own ideas for an Absurdist musical comedy troupe and moved back to Los Angeles to start the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, along with Frenchy and childhood friend, Gene Cunningham (aka Ugh-Fudge Bwana / Pa Hercules). Danny, who went from Paris to Africa (for a year) was just returning and he became our musical director.

The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo were a twelve person troupe and can be seen playing on screen in the Squeezit the Moocher / Devil sequence of Forbidden Zone. Brother Danny plays the devil, of course. The Mystic Knights also play all the original background music in the film. Matthew Bright, a childhood friend of Danny's and one time a bass player with the Mystic Knights, plays Squeezit Henderson in the film as well as Squeezit's sister Rene. Matthew was a contributing writer on Forbidden Zone, which was his first screenwriting credit. Matthew went on to write Guncrazy, which broke Drew Barrymore as an adult, then he wrote and directed Freeway, which broke Reese Witherspoon as an adult. My own later films Shrunken Heads and Modern Vampires were based on original Matthew Bright scripts.

Matthew's roommate at the time was the charming, diminutive, Herve Villechaise, well known as Tattoo on television's Fantasy Island and also King Fausto in the Forbidden Zone. Herve's ex-girlfriend, Susan Tyrrell plays the Queen as well as Squeezit's nasty mom. My grandfather (may he rest in peace), Herman Bernstein, plays Mr. Bernstein, the yarmulked money changer. I play the Yiddish masseur and do many of the character voices in songs such as The Alphabet and the Grand Finale.

Other chief credits go to Martin Nicholson, who was my assistant director as well as my editor and to Carl Borack, who bailed us out and really stuck with us to get the film completed. John Muto did a standout job with our animated sequences before becoming a major Hollywood production designer. And, of course, brother Danny Elfman composed what was to be his very first film score.

I originally shot a 16mm experimental prototype of the film, called the "Hercules Family," in our rehearsal studio in Venice. Friends persuaded me to redo it in 35mm using a professional cameraman. As the look was to stay black and white in keeping with our Max Fleischer/German Expressionist motif, I chose a more mature director of photography, Gregory Sandor, who had actually shot black and white earlier in his career. Our art direction budget may have been only 12 rolls of seamless paper but Greg knew how to light it and get all the camera moves I had designed for the musical numbers.

Music is the core of the film and the plot of Forbidden Zone is built around its musical numbers, much as we did with the early Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. The degenerate Hercules Family (we kept the names the same as the earlier film), stumbles into the Sixth Dimension, which is no less screwy than the "real" world from which they came - and also my own satiric take on contemporary urban decadence.

When Forbidden Zone first came out in 1982, I had lost my shirt paying for it and moved back to France for a while. When I returned, the film had played out its summer theatrical run and seemed to disappear. It wasn't until a few years ago, when I went on line with my first website and had several hundred thousand hits from people all over the world, that I realized that the film had become some sort of a cult hit. What was more surprising was that much of the following were students who weren't even around in the days of the Mystic Knights.

I guess the film has "legs," although an oddly twisted, black and white set of them. 

Richard Elfman
Los Angeles, March 2004