Forbidden Zone

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is just full of bad acting and one-liners. Forbidden Zone is like the ultimate weird movie. Oo I dunno if they would like it.

I've been thinking about watching this with my 14 year old and realized that the only streaming version is colorized and edited to replace the blackface characters with clowns. I'm not bothered by the blackface replacement but the colorization bums me out.

The story goes that originally the plan was to ship the film off and have it hand colored, frame by frame which was far too expensive for their budget at the time. Now it's far cheaper using computers. Maybe that hand coloring would have given it a nice finish but the way it turned out doesn't improve it in my eyes. Before it was obvious that the sets were paper and no-budget, but in the grainy black and white it worked, sort of like Eraserhead. It actually looks cheaper in color. The newest blu-ray edition only has the edited color version as well. I managed to find the prior blu-ray version for $50 and ordered that, assuming that soon it will be impossible to find. The Special edition (there's also an Ultimate edition with a soundtrack CD) is the one I ordered; it does not have the clowns.

Besides all of that, I'm surprised there's not more about this here? Maybe it's in another thread. But I love this movie even though it's something that couldn't and shouldn't be made today. Everything about it works for me, the references to old cartoons, but bad acting, the great Minnie the Moocher performance, etc.

There was talk of a Forbidden Zone 2 but I don't think it ever came out? I can't imagine it being good.