: (Danny Elfman) As the era of "The
Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" was waning for the musical theatre
troupe in the late 1970's, original leader Richard Elfman was handing
off its future to his younger brother, Danny, so that he could pursue a
future in filmmaking. For his initial project, he conceived of
as a Mystic Knights affair that featured the acts
of his colleagues in the group, summarizing its surrealistic antics in
cinematic form before essentially saying goodbye. It took several years
to produce the movie, and it personally bankrupted him. Meanwhile, Danny
Elfman was transitioning the group into the subsequent "Oingo Boingo"
form while retaining only some of the original members. His intent was
to pursue more of a traditional band entourage that was easier to tour
with than the cabaret styled complexities of the Mystic Knights. By the
time
was finished, its soundtrack formed something
of a tribute to both the previous and future iterations of the gang, its
musical format totally demented and intentionally senseless. It's guided
by an incomprehensible plot involving an underworld in the sixth
dimension called the "Forbidden Zone" that exists through a basement
doorway in the home of the Hercules family. The bizarre people
encountered in this realm illuminate all ranges of commentary in various
topics of race, gender, and other sociological aspects, some of which
quite offensive at the time. Throw a slew of terrible language and a
plethora of religious blasphemy into equation, especially with Danny
Elfman appearing as Satan, and you have pious types running for the
doors. Aside from its Monty Python-inspired animated sequences, the
production values of the film were meant to be hideous for humorous
effect (much of it is on par with a typical 1980's high school video
production, but definitely nothing you would have ever wanted to submit
for a grade in class), and the same could be said of its music. The
soundtrack is comprised of an equal combination of songs and score, some
of the songs original creations by Danny Elfman and all of the score
handled by him as well. One could say that this blend of outrage is part
new wave, part jazz, and part sheer insanity, but it was definitely
representative of the performing group at the time.
The vocals and instrumentals of
Forbidden Zone
are all afforded a juvenile and unsophisticated edge by design to match
the ridiculously amateurish visuals, and to appreciate this score, you
have to accept that countercultural approach as a feature rather than a
detriment. Danny Elfman admits that he was flying blind when it came to
writing his first film score in
Forbidden Zone. Despite sharing a
common appreciation of classic film music by Bernard Herrmann and others
with group mate Steve Bartek, who quickly became his career
orchestrator, there are basic tenets of musical construction that go
unfollowed in this work. Aside from one minor, recurring love motif,
there is absolutely no thematic continuity throughout, and the song
melodies don't clearly carry over to the score cues. Nor do the score
cues share common styling with each other, yielding a truly
stream-of-consciousness kind of effort. The instrumental ensemble
included the expected, standard rock band elements (guitar, bass, drums)
and included flavors derived from the Mystic Knights like saxophone,
flute, piano, trumpet, accordion, harp, and synthetics. A fair amount of
carnival and school-yard sound effects is also employed, and when
combining those random, child-appropriate noises with the distinctive
guitar, synth, and reed-oriented tones of the group, you hear a pretty
faithful preview of the composer's oddball mid-1980's scores that
eschewed orchestras. The bouncing rhythms of "Hercules Family Theme" is
one such foreshadowing. The noisemakers carried over to the two Pee-wee
Hermann scores as well, especially in the maddening "Factory." His
approach to the Oompa Loompas in
Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory is teased in the deep male vocals of "Flash and Gramps."
There are faint hints of Elfman's more dramatic tendencies in the
faux-serious portions of this work, but they are brief. The thumping
keyboarding and percussion of "Journey Through the Intestines,"
"Squeezit's Vision of His Sister," and especially the keyboard and piano
solos in the shared motif of "Love Theme: Squeezit and the Chickens" and
"Love Theme: King and Queen" show a glimpse of future melodrama. In
other cases, the score cues are fairly unique, from the amusingly grungy
guitar work in "Cell 63" to the 8-bit analog tones of "Chamber Music"
and the explosively divergent jazz, action, romance, and chanting of
"Battle of the Queens."
As for the wild songs in
Forbidden Zone,
Elfman's own performance in "Forbidden Zone" is the lasting headliner,
following a suspenseful synthetic opening with an Oingo Boingo faithful
rendition that eventually became the instrumental theme music for the
"Dilbert" television series, too. Elfman's only other really notable
vocal performance comes in "Squeezit The Moocher (Minnie the Moocher),"
where he plays Satan; this Cab Calloway piece clearly associates blues
music with the underworld (assume what you will about the race
connotations of that decision), and listeners will recognize the roots
of the "Oogie Boogie's Song" in
The Nightmare Before Christmas
here. Lead actress Susan Tyrrell actually supplies the most engaging
vocals in
Forbidden Zone, her performances in "Queen's Revenge"
and "Witch's Egg" more memorable despite being spoken half the time. The
latter is actually quite a mesmerizing performance in the movie, and not
just because of her manipulation of her breasts. The contributions by
Richard Elfman's then wife, Marie-Pascale Elfman, are decent but not as
enticing in "Queen's Revenge" and "Pleure," the latter a genuinely
annoying French source-like piece with only accordion and voice. Other
songs include the truly perverse "Alphabet Song," a centerpiece
classroom scene in the film with impressively offensive lyrics that
throws all boundaries of homosexual, transgender, and race conventions
out the window. Other adapted pieces from the history of jazz include
"Some of These Days," "Bim Bam Boom," and Yiddishe Charleston," which
are each mangled as necessary for this context. Overall,
Forbidden
Zone is an admirable shitshow of a musical, its lyrics often sick
and the sounds of farts and spitting never too far from the forefront.
The music is stuck in an odd place in history, because it may not truly
appeal to either the Oingo Boing crowd or Elfman's later film music
crowd. That was the point of the film, certainly, but its cult status is
something all its own and leaves this work as an extremely awkward way
for Elfman to start his soundtrack career in retrospect. Given the
composer's shift back to rock-oriented stage performances with his band
in his later years, one has to surmise that the sound of
Forbidden
Zone is closer to his heart than that of
Batman. The album
for this musical has long been readily available and in decent sound for
the era. Seek this one as a film score enthusiast only to appreciate its
place in Elfman lore, because it will drive you mad.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.12
(in 95 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.26
(in 154,830 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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