Inside Danny Elfman’s Twisted Cult Film ‘Forbidden Zone’

Long before he wrote the wild, dramatic score for Batman and the twisted song cycle that runs through the beloved Nightmare Before Christmas, Danny Elfman’s original claim to cinematic fame was far quirkier than anything he’d ever dream up for Tim Burton: He portrayed Satan, dressed in a long-tail white tux, conducting an orchestra of goblins in a run-through of every “hidey-hidey-hidey-ho” in Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher.” The episode, in the campy 1980 cult hit Forbidden Zone, found the redheaded composer wiggling, shimmying and writhing as he decapitated his real-life childhood best friend (Freeway director Matthew Bright) and took possession of a topless blonde princess. It sounds horrific; it plays out as pure giddy hysteria, the movie equivalent of a warped Oingo Boingo song.

A vibrant, bizarre hybrid of sci-fi and fantasy with avant-garde, jazz-inflected music by the composer, Forbidden Zone still remains unique decades after its inception. Suburbanites venture into a “Sixth Dimension” where, in addition to Lucifer, they encounter the domain’s diminutive king (Fantasy Island’s Tattoo, Hervé Villechaize), his domineering queen (Cry-Baby’s Susan Tyrrell) and an exiled monarch (Warhol superstar Viva). An anthropomorphic frog servant assists the royal couple; nightmarish Busby Berkeley–like dance sequences pop up out of nowhere. It’s even weirder than it sounds — and thanks to an extras-packed “ultimate edition” DVD reissue that’s being released on November, a whole new generation is about to discover why this movie became a midnight-movie must-see in the Reagan era.

Forbidden Zone began, for filmmaker Richard Elfman, as a jumping-off point from his performance-art musical troupe the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Before the group modified its name and achieved new-wave success with hits like “Dead Man’s Party” and “Weird Science,” he had concocted the bawdy ensemble that took cues from commedia dell’arte, German expressionism, French absurdist theater, Max Fleischer cartoons like Betty Boop and big band jazz. Richard had assembled the expansive troupe in the early Seventies, serving as its creative director and playing percussion; at the onset, he brought his little brother Danny – four years his junior – into the fold.

Growing up, the siblings had bonded over sci-fi and horror movies; Richard remembers his brother having no interest in music for years. “Danny had no guitar, no garage bands, he didn’t go to concerts, didn’t have a record collection,” he recalls. “We got him a guitar when he was 16 or so, and he figured out how to do a [Gypsy-jazz] Django Reinhardt solo. Then he got a violin to do the Stéphane Grappelli accompaniment.” He laughs.