Cool World

I wrote about Ralph Bakishi's live action/animated trip through Las Vegas and the Cool World for my day job at the Vegas Seven. A deeply flawed film, but it has its moments....

The Forbidden Zone

In the immortal words of T.S.  Elliot, "And should I then presume? And how shall I begin?"

Unlike most of the movies on this site, The Forbidden Zone is intentionally weird and idiotic, or weirdly idiotic (actually, now that i think of it, it's idiotically weird). It's hard to make an intentional cult film--it often just comes off to self-conscious and smug to be authentically strange and subversive. However, The Forbidden Zone pulls it off because, however art-school absurd it is, it winds up going even further than intended.

 Yeah, i'm pretty sure that's a blunt. It'd better be.

A true relic of the 80s, down to Herve Villechaize as King Fausto of the Sixth Dimension (Yes!) It's also the first movie soundtrack by Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo--or, as they were still known back then, the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo...

This German Expressionist/Max Fleischer aesthetic will continue throughout. Except when superseded by moments of bad 60s horror, 40s musicals, Warhol knockoffs and scat humor.

And we open with this guy running out of his basement and--whoa! Blackface. Before the credits even start.

Wait until they get to the Jews, the women, the trannys and the midgets. And the white guys: Everyone is mocked on the basest level in The Forbidden Zone. If you're not ready for that, note the word "forbidden" and move along. Hurry, before the child abuse jokes and menstruation gags kick in! Hitler and Satan will be here soon! Run!

So, the whole  premise, such as it is, is that there is a gateway to the Sixth Dimension (aka the Forbidden Zone) in the basement of the Hercules family: Ma, Pa, Gramps, Flash and Frenchy.

For some reason, The Forbidden Zone has old people played by twentysomething art goons in Caligari makeup and the kids played by aging Jewish comics in Boy Scout suits. But that is neither the last nor the least weird thing we shall see here....

Flash and Frenchy go to school, with their classmates: nerds, skanks, the knife-wielding pimp, the inbred pigtail twins, Chicken Boy and der Fuhrer.There are craps games and gunfights and some sweet jazz harmonizing, but school sucks. Frenchy jumps out the window, goes home, slips on a rollerskate and finds herself in the Forbidden Zone, where she is promptly treated to some weird boxing dudes and a song! Well, sorta, anyway!

Apparently this kid lost his nerve on set, so they wound up having to superimpose someone else's mouth over his face. Like Bette Davis' incorrectly fitted gown in All About Eve or the cloud that passed over the cornfield during a crucial shot in Bonnie and Clyde, it's the sort of on-set problem that only improves the filmic result. This is one of the movie's better musical numbers: The idea of people lip-synching to old 30s big band tunes was a fun idea, but it gets old if that's the only gag. The "Pico & Sepulveda" number is another excellent bit, but most of them--you're just kind of twiddling your thumbs. Or, given what you're watching, gobbling another handful of 'shrooms.

So, King Fausto of the Herve Dimension immediately falls madly in love with Frenchy, despite her odd mole and her penchant for sticking her tongue out at everybody. However, this does not sit well with his wife...

Behold Doris, the Queen of the Sixth Dimension, none other than Susan Tyrell HerSelf. Bow down!

Not because of Queen Doris, but because Susan Tyrrell. Susan Tyrrell's mom was a British diplomat and her dad was Carole Lombard and Loretta Young's agent. Susan Tyrrell played Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams at Lincoln Center and was nominated for an Academy Award for Fat City. Susan Tyrrell has appeared in the films of Andy Warhol, John Waters and Pee-Wee Herman. I wish I was one-tenth that awesome and so do you.

Anyway, Queen Susan Tyrrell sings a song that i'm pretty sure she did at the Mudd Club at least once and then has Frenchy locked up in the dungeon, where she meets some other locked-up girl... boy... boy we already saw, wearing a wig. (It can be hard to tell in this movie whether it's supposed to be a drag queen or a real female because both are often just boys in wigs.) Also King Herve pops through a window to snap photos in a moment that is creepier than was probably intended to be. And then he goes to make it up to the queen...

Fun fact: Herve Villechaize and Susan Tyrrell were actually dating. And, to answer the question that we're all asking: "I roll her up like a donut!" (Or that's what they say on the DVD commentary.)

In the meantime, Frenchy's brother and grandfather decide to jump down into the Sixth Dimension basement hole to rescue her....

Thus follows more scat humor, some flat rabbi jokes, a crucifixion bit, random whippings, some buggery, some bestiality, just padding out the running time here...

 

Meanwhile, Queen Susan Tyrrell ties up Frenchy in her electrified torture chamber. I must say, i enjoy a nice, scenery-chewing Susan Tyrrell Sprechstimme  more than the tenth or eleventh lip-synch to a Cab Calloway tune. Don't get me wrong: I freaking love Cab Calloway. Did i ever tell you about the time i saw him at a Mets game when i was about six? It was summer and--

--whoa! Alright, yeah, back to the film. I will say one thing: Even if The Forbidden Zone loses your attention, it won't be for long. The evil queen is defeated with the help of Warhol superstar Viva, who is wearing some kind of turd hat and never stops talking--in other words, standard Viva. Frenchy is declared the new Queen of the Sixth Dimension and everyone eats a bunch of hash brownies, drinks some Tequila and gets down to the Go-Gos...

The weirdest thing about The Forbidden Zone is perhaps how gosh darn much everyone involved believed in it. Herve Villechaize not only sunk his pay back into the film, he painted the freaking sets. (Only the part below the wainscotting. Ba-zing!) Many others also played multiple roles both in front of and behind the camera. I'm not sure what inspired such dedication, except for the fact that The Forbidden Zone looks like it was a fuck of a lot of fun to make.

Rock & Rule

Most movies are augmented by their soundtracks. Rock & Rule exists as an excuse for one.

In the spirit of Heavy Metal and Fritz the Cat, this Canadian animated musical extravaganza is justly best-known for featuring the music of Blondie, Cheap Trick, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Earth, Wind & Fire. Unfortunately Rock & Rule came a little late to the party, was buried by its studio and didn't do so well at the box office. Then it hovered in limbo until about 2005 until it finally got a reissue.

So, we have our heroes, a struggling rock band, which is either Cheap Trick with Debbie Harry or Blondie with Robin Zander, depending on whose outfit wrote the particular track. The band itself is never named.

 And we have our villain, ossifying rock god, Mok, whose songs are courtesy of Lou Reed and/or Iggy Pop, depending on what mood he's in.

Oh, and the movie brings up this sort of half-assed effort at post-apocalyptic mutant society in the opening and then just kind of leaves it there. Sure, there's a club manager who looks kind of like a rat and is kind of rat-like, I guess; Omar aka Robin Zander looks vaguely like a dog, but acts nothing like one; Angel just looks like Debbie Harry and acts like a human.

So, the plot is that Mok wants to raise a demon that will make him all-powerful or at least boost his sales--"You must remember that my last concert was not... completely sold out."--but he needs a magical voice for the summoning. He's been scouring the world and the last place he looks is a dive bar in Ohmtown, where the band--again, nameless band--is playing a gig. Omar does a surprisingly rockin' Cheap Trick number that gets their power cut. Then Angel/Debbie takes over with her keytar and plays a pretty badass Blondie song. Omar stalks off, his delicate feels hurt, but Mok knows he has found the voice.

Mok gets the rest of the band loaded on something called Edison Balls, which is some kind of drug--Edison Balls? Really? Then he tries to convince Angel/Debbie to join him, but she refuses because she's gonna stick with her band--which, if it was so important, you think someone would have found a name for said band by now. I mean, I think I've been in a half-dozen bands that were just names.

Anyway, Mok asks Angel to join him, she refuses, he dopes her up with a rose full of roofies and then whisks her off to Nuke York in his blimp because what is more supervillain than a blimp? And the rest of the band sobers up and steals a cop car to give chase. (Usually the stealing and the sobering happen in the opposite order, but who am I to judge?)

 While they bumble around, Angel/Debbie manages to spring herself with the help of Cinderella, a zaftig roller derby girl who is on her way to the "hottest anti-gravity disco in town!"

 Rock & Rule may initially seem to play into the old damsel in distress routine with Angel/Debbie, but upon further consideration, she's no pushover. She insists on playing her own songs; the band follows her, not Omar Zander; she says no to Mok; she springs herself and keeps taking the initiative straight through to the end. Compare this to the males around her (Mok and Omar) both of whom are totally ego-blinded and can't tie their shoes without flunkies cheering them on.

 

Anyway, Angel/Debbie does still wind up at "Carnagie Hall" for Mok's big gig. But the demon summoning somehow goes wrong and Mok simply blows out all the power in Nuke York. He decides to return to Ohmtown--which had loads of electricity as the name may indicate--to try again, with the goofballs of nameless band again in pursuit....

With its angelic singer in the clutches of a demonic rock has-been, Rock & Rule is more than a little reminiscent of Phantom of the Paradise. Rock & Rule has an outstanding soundtrack, but suffers from a lack of plot--the episodic nature of Heavy Metal at least meant that by the time you got bored with one ridiculous premise, it had moved on to the next one. Also, Debbie Harry and Robin Zander should totally have duetted more, as their voices blend really well. Ultimately, Rock & Rule has some nice images, but works better as music than a movie--which is weird, because they never actually released that soundtrack after all...

Perfect Blue

Do not let the pretty face fool you. This is not the anime you think it is. Perfect Blue owes far more to David Lynch than Disney.

The plot of Perfect Blue can best be summed up in one word: Mindfuck. It is a story in which the idea of being unsure what is real and what is fantasy is the story. The main character becomes entangled in the different worlds she inhabits: Her real life, her online life, her memories, her dreams, a character she plays on TV, someone else's imitation of her, who her fans think she is. And then people start dying...

Our heroine is Mima Kirigoe, who sings in Cham, a B-grade J-pop group. She does meticulously choreographed arm-waving and twirling in a pink tutu, crooning sugary tunes about love and angels to little girls and fixated fanboys, three of whom serve as a kind of Greek Chorus throughout the film.

Mima isn't satisfied with the low-grade, malls-and-fairs fame of her singing group. We open with her last show before she quits for a new and hopefully more glamorous and lucrative career as an actress. She's been offered a role on a sordid, sex-and-violence police procedural -- there is much debate about her pop idol image vs. actress image, how hard it is to become famous and stay famous.

She lives in a tiny, cluttered apartment, shops for groceries, feeds her fish, rides the train, lives a pretty ordinary life aside from the occasional fan letter... but then she begins getting odd hang-up calls, peculiar faxes, strange notes and then there's the website. Someone has set up an intensely detailed "fan site" for Mima, all in first person and accurate down to the brand of milk she buys. And then there's an accident with an exploding letter...

Things accelerate when Mima's role on the TV show is expanded -- via a graphic gang-rape scene. (This sequence is especially disturbing and disorienting.) Her pretty, pure, pink-clad pop idol self haunts her, taunting her in the window of a passing subway car, cursing her from a mirror's reflection, mocking her from "her" website about being a "filthy slut" with a "tarnished image."

Then the show's writer is murdered. Mima does a nude photo shoot. The photographer is butchered. And much as Mima doesn't know where she is, neither do we. A murder turns out to be a TV show episode that is actually a dream but is really a murder after all. The turn of the millennium brought a number of "what is real" movies, like Fight Club and Memento and Perfect Blue may be the most multi-layered example of the "tumble down the rabbit hole" genre.

 Darren Aronofsky was a fan of Perfect Blue and contemplated doing a remake ( I, uh, knew somebody who was in a position to know and let's leave it at that.), but i do not see how it could possibly be done live action. (Also, there are some movies that are done so right the first time, there's no point in a remake. I wish more filmmakers would realize that.) One doesn't have to pay a whole lot of attention to see the inspiration of Perfect Blue in Black Swan -- the idea of a young woman trying to move from mid-level fame to stardom by exploiting her sexuality and haunted by an alternate version of herself.

Perfect Blue is prescient on a number of counts: Stalkers, creepy fans, people tormenting others by pretending to be them on the internet, the never-ending amping-up of sex and violence for TV ratings, how teenybop starlets go "adult" via scandalous photo shoots and cameo roles. At least the bizarre fate of Mima Kirigoe isn't any any more twisted and self-destructive than Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan or Amanda Bynes....