“I had my nineteenth birthday crossing the border into Nigeria, “ he recalled. “The border guards all sang me ‘Happy Birthday.’”

He traveled from the west end of the continent to the east for a solid year before coming down with malaria. He was flown back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery. By then, Richard had married the lead performer of Le Grand Magic Circus, Marie Pascale. The two had moved to Los Angeles to form their own musical theater troupe. They called it The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, a mixture of an Amos n’ Andy reference and phonetic gibberish. Danny was immediately enlisted as their musical director. Richard recalls:

“My guiding musical vision for the group was ‘nothing contemporary.’ We faithfully re-created GREAT music that audiences could no longer hear live anymore — Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Django Rheinhardt, Josephine Baker, and did totally original, off-the-wall compositions by Danny, including numbers using an array of percussion instruments that he and saxophonist Leon Schneiderman created for the group.”

The Mystic Knights lineup would vary from show to show; often having as many as 15 performing members swapping up to thirty musical instruments during their set. The show took a classic cabaret format, mixing theatrical bits and comedy skits with the songs. Absurdist narratives and homemade creature costumes were woven into the musical performances. Danny would lead the band dressed as Satan, welcoming the audience into ‘Hotel Hades’ for the evening.

Recordings from this period are rare, usually live, and poor in fidelity, but the crowning achievement of this era of the group would be the raunchy art-house film Forbidden Zone.

NSFW: Brief shots of nudity in the trailer above.

Written and directed by Richard Elfman, the film encapsulates the spirit of Mystic Knights’ live show, mixing in inventive stop-motion, video collage and dadaist comedy bits. This would be Danny’s first film score, arranged by guitarist Steve Bartek and performed by The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.