I'll tell you why so serious

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

10/10. Had to watch it again to make sure, yes, 10/10.It's like a Max Fleischer nightmare gone bizarre fantasy dark comedy musical science fiction horror meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show type of a film. The below definition pretty much sums it up for me.Bizarre: adjective markedly unusual in appearance, style, or general character and often involving incongruous or unexpected elements; outrageously or whimsically strange; odd.Synonym study Bizarre, fantastic, grotesque, weird share a sense of deviation from what is normal or expected. Bizarre means markedly unusual or extraordinarily strange, sometimes whimsically so: bizarre costumes for Mardi Gras; bizarre behavior. Fantastic suggests a wild lack of restraint, a fancifulness so extreme as to lose touch with reality. In informal use, fantastic often means simply "exceptionally good": a fantastic film. Grotesque implies shocking distortion or incongruity, sometimes ludicrous, more often pitiful or tragic: a grotesque mixture of human and animal features; grotesque contrast between the forced smile and sad eyes: a gnarled tree suggesting the figure of a grotesque human being. Weird refers to that which is mysterious and apparently outside natural law, hence supernatural or uncanny: the weird adventures of a group lost in the jungle; a weird and ghostly apparition. Informally, weird means "very strange": weird and wacky costumes; weird sense of humor; and pertaining to the film in question, weird f¤¤king flick!Love it! =)

The midnight movie circuit is my home away from home, whenever I feel depressed I hop on over to the tower for their midnight showings. Recently, a re-release of Forbidden Zone in colour was playing, and previously only having a poor VHS copy I had to see it in the theater, plus I wondered what the bizarre world would look like in full colour.Forbidden Zone is something like a cross between John Waters & Terry Gilliam. Bizarre, surreal visuals permeate the film, as do quirky, offensive gags involving bodily fluids you've never even seen, and probably didn't want to. Despite the gross out humour and low budget, Forbidden Zone is a treat for the eyes, you'll never see a movie quite like it visually. In a way, the low budget actually makes it unique and only lends to the humorous atmosphere. The films soundtrack is a great mix between Danny Elfman's band, "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" (Who have an appearance in the film) and classic 1930's tunes. So all in all, FZ looks and sounds great.The plot is relatively simple: King Fausto and his Queen rule over The Sixth Dimension, a bizarre netherworld full of female slaves, fetishistic desires, and general chaotic insanity. The entrance to the Sixth Dimension lies in the basement of a house, the very house that the Hercules family moves into. The young daughter of the household, "Frenchy" (Because she's French, of course.) enters the Sixth Dimension through the door, and it only gets stranger from there. Exploding bald men speaking gibberish in jockstraps, frog butlers, Tattoo from fantasy island playing a horny king, and even Satan appear in the Sixth Dimension's bizarre plane.The film itself is absolutely hysterical. With all the strange sights on display, it uses them for some surprisingly funny shock humour, and even when the humour isn't in your face or easily visible or audible, you'll still be chuckling at the set design and strange quirks beneath the surface.If you consider yourself a fan of Midnight Movies, then why in the name of GOD haven't you seen this film? Go! Go now! Enter the Sixth Dimension, move in the wrong direction! Just see the damn movie!

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson once said, "It never got weird enough for me." With all respect and love to that late-great Gonzo God, I wonder if he would eat those words following a viewing of this. This is truly one of the weirdest movies ever conceived, shot, executed, whatever-ed. But it's brilliance is in the fact that amid its chaos and delirious mayhem is that it's not really all that incoherent. It may not be any more or less crazy a piece of avant-garde experimentation than a super-obscure picture like Pussbucket. The difference, I think, lies in professionalism. In a small way I'm reminded of Russ Meyer; Richard Elfman is a very careful director with his camera, never making a shot unintentionally out of focus or deranged in masturbatory terms, and with his production designer (if maybe it was just him and his wife who also financed the picture) create madness that can't exactly be called shoddy in production value. Like it or not, and I can imagine people definitely NOT liking this, there's some art going on here.It's also the kind of movie you can't peg down. I was laughing mad throughout, almost convulsively at one other step after another in the 'plot' (and yes, there is one, once checked into the 'Zone' and the 6th dimension and the annals of the Queen and the family going through the zone), but is it entirely a comedy? Actually - yes, it is. But what kind of comedy? There's a sensibility that borrows heavily at times from those delightfully insane cartoons from the 1920s and 1930s (Un Iwerks' obscurer shorts come to mind), but only at times like bits in that classroom singing old songs.There's also characters in black-face (yes, black-face), obvious caricatures of black people and Jews, a little person (the actor from Man with the Golden Gun), a guy with a giant frog head and a suit, and Satan. Did I mention it's a musical shot in black and white and that it's also like if Rocky Horror Picture Show wasn't likable for its badness but was genuinely f***ed-up as a true cult hit? Enough trying to explain it- this is cult in the sense of Eraserhead or Ichi the Killer, or even one of the real old-school guards of the avant-garde like Jack SMith. You really do have to see it to believe it, and understand how much of a mix of forms and styles work its way into it, of the obvious and joyfully exaggerated "characters" (just between that one Queen with the hair and the little guy it could be enough, but then what about the little guy's new French mistress?), of the sudden title-cards, of the animations from time to time with most prominent example a travel down an intestine.Not to mention the music, which is some of the purest genius in the picture (this and Blues Brothers, both good for a double feature not too oddly enough considering one specific song I need not mention here, are great wacky musicals of 1980). There's two facets: the usage of old blues and show-tunes of the 30s, almost like speakeasy songs, and then the songs of Oingo Boingo, Danny Elfman's equally weird band he had before becoming a composer. Needless to say he composes his first time here, and it's a great training ground for the likes of other great scores in Tim Burton's pictures; his one appearance as Satan is a howler, though overall he matches up to what his brother has to offer as a filmmaker of verve and daring.How much you might respond positively to the daring of Forbidden Zone will depend on how seriously you take it. I don't think I got any profound life lessons, but if you can tap into the vibe of the picture then you got it made. It doesn't get much weirder than this, and I love it for it on whatever terms it makes as imaginative low-budget gonzo comedy.

What a disappointing piece of schlock this was! It was obviously a low budget wonder and it looked like it. The first giveaway was that it was shot in black and white but not for artistic reasons – it was just cheaper that way. The Elfmans should be ashamed of themselves. This was a big disappointment compared to later collaborations between Tim Burton and Danny Elfman (Beetlejuice, Edward Sissorhands, Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride) which were clever and inventive. This was amateurish and silly. There was no point to it other than to say "we can do something completely outlandish and it doesn't even have to make sense". Maybe we were supposed to consider it "Avant Guarde", but it was just a big waste of time for me. I was not surprised that Hervé Villechaize would do something like this just to get a starring role, but I was disappointed that Susan Tyrell, whom I consider an excellent actress, even agreed to do this. I kept watching it all the way through just to see how bad it really was, and I just kept thinking "I don't believe they did this!".