The Alphabet Song

Video Find of the Day

Time for another scene from my all-time favorite movie, Forbidden Zone. First, a colorized version of the seminal source. The ur-spring of alphabet song.

3 Stooges - Swingin the Alphabet



Now, what the Elfmans did to that in Forbidden Zone.

abc alphabet song from the forbidden zone

Pico & Sepulveda

[Above: Screen shot of Google's Street View of W Pico & S Sepulveda Blvd, so you shouldn't want to go there just because the song is so cool.]

Time for another scene from my all-time favorite movie, Forbidden Zone. It's a dance routine to the 1947 song Pico & Sepulveda by Freddy Martin's band Felix Figueroa & His Orchestra. Lyrics:

Doheny / Cahuenga / La Brea / Tar Pits*

La Jolla / Sequoia / La Brea / Tar Pits*

[The chorus repeats Pico & Sepulveda behind the soloist, & calls back on "Tar Pits."]

You can keep Alvarado, Santa Monica, even Beverly Drive.
Vine may be fine, but for mine I want to feel a-live and settle down in my

La Brea / Tar Pits [Chorus repeats Pico & Sepulveda }

Where nobody's dreams come true

[Chorus repeats Pico & Sepulveda.]

Pico and Sepulveda

Why Johnny Can't Read

Video Find of the Day

Time for another clip from the greatest movie ever made. In this clip Squeezit, AKA Chicken Boy, enters his schoolroom, which looks amazingly like my 1st, 4th, 7th, 9th, 10th, and 11th grade schoolrooms. He has to lead the class in the Pledge of Allegiance. Then Flash's sister Susan (Frenchy), whom I have had hots for over and over again, the dozens of times I have seen this movie, sings. Then Johnny shoots Billy, and the teacher tells him he has to go to Mr. Yodelbean's office, and Johnny says, "You ain't takin' me nowhere, you honky bitch!" and the plot moves thereby.

B-Movie Clip - Forbidden Zone (clip 1)

Bim Bam Boom

Video Find of the Day

I haven't posted a clip from my favorite movie of all time since June 4. That and only that justifies this.

Forbidden Zone Clip

Video Find of the Day

One of several videos that are on YouTube that show scenes from Forbidden Zone, my all-time favorite movie. There are probably fewer than ten movies that I've seen more than three times. I've seen The Third Man & Dr. Strangelove each maybe 20 times. I've seen 2001, a Space Odyssey about 10 times. But I've seen Forbidden Zone at least 50 times.

It's a musical directed by Richard Elfman that incorporates quirky old music from the 20s and 30s using recordings and performances by the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo into a cheesy operatic story of childhood sexual ignorance and crudity meeting adult lust and crudity, as one character after another ends up passing through a basement door leading to the Sixth Dimension. All the children are portrayed by adults, as you'll see in the clip. The young woman to the left in the beginning of the video is one of the best performers in the film, the amazing Marie-Pascal Elfman, who at the time was Richard Elfman's wife. She was also the set designer.

The King of the Sixth Dimension is played by Hervé "Dee Plane!" Villachaize. A rather heavy Susan Tyrrell, seen in this video laughing in the foreground just before Villachaize appears at the end, played the Queen. She was also prominent on the poster and video cover.

The film was marketed as having something to offend everybody. It has a vomiting scene, silly examples of cartoonish blackface, yiddish vaudevillian humor, mild above the waist nudity, adults pretending to be children dry humping, highly non-graphic absurd depictions of anal sex, violence, involving the use of some raw hamburger, loads of fart sounds and fart references, a cross-dressing character, and uses of the word fag.

So if you've been following my memoir posts at all you know why I like the movie. It speaks volumes to my life.

It could have been worse. Writer Matthew Bright, who is both the cross-dresser and his/her brother in the film (credited as Toshiro Boloney), would have had one of his characters castrated in a scene, but Richard Elfman cut it. Ha!

Wikipedia has a good article about the film here.