Forbidden Zone (1980)

This is what happens when an avant-garde theatre troupe decides to make a feature film with no money, no script to speak of, and complete conviction that what they are doing is important.

Richard Elfman conceived FORBIDDEN ZONE as a filmed document of the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo - the Los Angeles performance collective he founded, which he would later hand off to his younger brother Danny. Richard and his then-wife Marie-Pascale Elfman financed it by renovating and selling houses.

Hervé Villechaize was the only actor who received a salary; he also kicked his cheque back into the production and spent weekends painting sets. Richard Elfman ultimately went bankrupt during production and had to assign away the rights to finish it, only regaining them in 2015.

What emerged is almost indescribable: a black-and-white expressionist musical set in the Sixth Dimension, accessed through a door in a family's basement, ruled by a lascivious, diminutive king and his deranged queen. Danny Elfman - future composer of Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas - plays Satan and performs Cab Calloway numbers in Hell.

The sets were designed and hand-painted by Marie-Pascale. The animation was done by one person in a garage over several weeks. One LA Weekly reviewer called it "a two-hour Betty Boop cartoon with people." That's close.

It fell out of circulation for twenty years. Bootlegs kept it alive. It is now exactly the cult object it always deserved to be.