Richard Elfman
Danny Elfman on the left, Richard on the right in 1980's Forbidden Zone

Madness. Shame. Humiliation: Richard Elfman on Growing Up Absurd

In 1980, Richard Elfman released a very strange movie called Forbidden Zone. No one saw it in theaters. Today it’s one of the best-known underground films around.

Richard Elfman, mastermind of the cult classic Forbidden Zone, is happy to discuss a film he made more than 30 years ago now and one that has its origins roughly a decade before that. Most could have heard a bowling pin drop at the film’s release at the turn of the 1980s, but today the underground effort has a sizeable cult following.

And why wouldn’t it? It has everything one could want in a film: a midget acting legend, beautiful women in various states of undress, wafts of gender dysphoria, and the director’s wunderkind brother singing “Minnie the Moocher” as the devil himself.