Thursday, February 13, 2020

THE APPLE 1980

The BIG Science Fiction Romantic Rock Opera of the '80s
                                                                           Movie poster tagline

It comes as a bit of a surprise to me when I realize that after so many years heralding the relative merits of often inarguably awful movies (and we're talking MAJOR bombs, mind you); this piece on Cannon Films’ dystopian glam-rock musical The Apple will be my first hate-watch movie post.

What do I mean by hate-watch? Well, when it comes to bad movies, whether unabashed camp-fests like Girls Town, Kitten With a Whip, and The Oscar, or pedigreed stinkers like Audrey Hepburn's Bloodline or Barbra Streisand's A Star is Born, there’s not a single terrible film I’ve disparaged and poked fun at on these pages for which I don’t also harbor genuine feelings of affection. Even if that affection is merely gratitude for all the hours of enjoyment they've given me at their expense.
Call it an affinity, call it a connection…, but if I'm going to watch a movie for the sole purpose of laughing at its ineptitude and wrongheadedness, I have to have at least a tiny soft spot for it in my heart. Otherwise, the experience feels only mean-spirited and snarky.
I call it hate-watching when I'm masochistically drawn to watch a movie that, for whatever reason, I already know I don't like all that much. What I expect to get out of such an experience is hard to parse out, but I'm gonna guess that self-flagellation, schadenfreude, and misanthropy play into it.
All of the above and more are to be found in schlockmeister director Menahem Golan's notorious 1980 musical misfire, The Apple.
"First you sell it, THEN you make it. That's marketing!"
The line of dialogue above is from The Apple, a movie set in the world of music. But it could just as easily stand as the business model for Cannon Films under the auspices of the producing/directing team of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. A company that never met a misleading ad it didn't like. There's a very good chance this trade ad began appearing (cobbed from the wishful-thinking likeness of John Travolta's 1978 Time Magazine cover) long before a screenplay was written or a dime of funding secured for this $8-10 million miscalculation

The Apple, if known at all, is widely considered one of the worst musicals ever made. A credential it exhaustively earns and defends in every sequin-encrusted, spandex-encased frame. But movies dismissed by the masses invariably end up as prime candidates for cult adoration, and The Apple is no exception (although it took some 24 years to bring that about). Today, The Apple is enthusiastically embraced for the very things that, in 1980, brought the World Premiere audience at the Montreal Film Festival to its feet in a chorus of boos. The Apple swiftly disappeared when the film's limited American release yielded a groundswell of less demonstrative but no less unfavorable critical response. So few people saw it that over time, The Apple's must-be-seen-to-be-believed awfulness became the stuff of myth.
Despite my fondness for cinema dogs and movie turkeys (fittingly, The Apple's L.A. release was a week before Thanksgiving), I failed to catch The Apple during its initial theatrical release. Not because I accidentally missed it... for some reason, I just had no interest in seeing it. Which is grossly out of character for me. A guy who dotes on disco, is mad for musicals, and who ordinarily can't get enough of craptacular cinema. 
Catherine Mary Stewart as Bibi Phillips
George Gilmour as Alphie
Vladek Sheybal as Mr. Boogalow
Grace Kennedy as Pandi
Allan Love as Dandi
Ray Shell as Shake

The Apple is a pseudo-Biblical Faust allegory set in a hyper-futuristic vision of America in 1994 that frequently betrays its true setting: Berlin, 1979. Taking significant liberties with the Book of Genesis, the film presents us with an unreasonable facsimile of Adam and Eve hailing from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan (a colorless folksinging duo with the Teletubby names of Alphie & Bibi) tempted by fame and lured into the Mephistophelian clutches of one Mr. Boogalow, the head of an entertainment megacorporation known by the acronym BIM (Boogalow’s International Music).

But much like Disney or The Kardashians, BIM has very little actual interest in entertainment itself, its primary interest being global mind control and the deployment of its far-reaching pop culture tentacles for world domination. Mr. Boogalow's fiendish plan--as far as I could make out, anyway---has something to do with weakening people's will through the forced exposure to tacky, Vegas-style glitter-rock-cum-disco revues performed by substandard talent. Enter Alphie & Bibi. 
The Bland Leading The Bland
Flavorless heterosexual folk music in a Eurovision-style face-off against spicy, gay disco 
 

Boogalow schemes to hornswoggle the naive, soporific duo into a restrictive recording contract, replacing his current BIM Stars Dandi (Allan Love) and Pandi (Grace Kennedy). After the high-minded Alphie has a premonition of disaster (the film’s premiere, no doubt), he refuses to sign with Boogalow but is unsuccessful in persuading the soft-headed...I mean, soft-hearted Bibi to do the same. So, while Alphie beats as hasty a retreat as his extraordinarily tight pants will allow, Bibi signs away her soul for stardom, a crimped hair makeover, and a pair of perilously high, pointy-toed thigh boots.  
I've Seen the Future, and it's Starburst Filter Lenses
The Apple frequently looks as though it were shot by a film school student given
an assortment pack of camera filter lenses they're dead-set on making use of 

Leap ahead an indeterminate amount of years (or is it days?): a despondent Alphie is learning that sanctimonious soft-rock doesn’t sell; Bibi has become a literal howling success (“Speeeeed!”); and America/Berlin has fallen under the despotic, fascist way of BIM and Mr. Boogalow. Beset by state-mandated dancing, compulsory mylar sticker-wearing, and the micromanaging of individual behavior, the country has been transformed into a soul-killing, dystopian glitterscape oddly reminiscent of some six months I spent back in the mid-‘90s working for fitness guru Richard Simmons.
The National BIM Hour of Exercise

The power of love ultimately proves more potent than the power of bad music, and it isn’t long before Bibi starts questioning her fashion choices and Alphie embarks on a quest to rescue his lady love from the evils of multiethnic nonbinary pansexuality. It's at this point, for reasons known only to the drug suppliers of The Apple's creative team, that Alphie and Bibi’s musical odyssey takes an abruptly ecclesiastical turn, complete with superannuated hippies, rapid-growth offspring, and a celestial visitation that made me think Janis Joplin was way ahead of her time when she asked God to buy her that Mercedes Benz.
BIM pop stars Dandi & Pandi (she's the one dressed like Ami Stewart)
Seriously, what's with these names?

Adding further to The Apple's compendium of crazy is a litany of undistinguished pop songs; a Deus ex machina character named Mr. Topps who pops up out of nowhere; future BAFTA-winning actress Miriam Margolyes as a chicken soup-wielding Jewish stereotype; and costumes and sets that evoke memories of the Dolly Parton quote, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”
Yes, every descriptive detail pertaining to The Apple confirms its reputation as a Grade-A, four-star disasterpiece.
BIM Headquarters
Alphie forgets to check his package at the door

Following the success of Tommy (1975), Grease (1978), and 1977’s Saturday Night Fever (not a musical, but its #1 soundtrack album revolutionized the movie marketing tie-in), studios everywhere rushed pop/rock musicals into production. The megabudget flops of The Wiz (1978) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) signaled a potential shift in public tastes, but by then, the soundtrack-driven musical juggernaut was already too far underway.

1980 alone saw the release of FameThe Blues Brothers, Can’t Stop the Music, Xanadu, Coal Miner's Daughter, The Jazz Singer, and Popeye. Hit hardest were Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu, two high-profile musicals that went into production at the height of disco mania and hoped to capture its white-hot, up-to-the-minute urgency. Of course, by the time they hit the screens, both movies looked hopelessly dated and old-fashioned. The Apple (which would have had its work cut out for it no matter the cultural climate) was initially slated for Easter release, giving it the jump on most of the year's other youth-oriented musicals. Alas, The Apple arrived at the very tail-end of the year. By that time, movie musical oversaturation and public impatience with disco, legwarmers, shiny fabrics, and glitter had all reached the point of no return.
Harbinger of Doom: The Apple opened in Los Angeles on November 21st, 1980 at the Paramount Theater on Hollywood Blvd. The same theater where Can't Stop the Music flopped so resoundingly just six months earlier. This newspaper ad promotes the opening day soundtrack giveaway that is said to have resulted in less-than-thrilled patrons hurling the LPs at the screen like Frisbees.

Although I wasn’t all that crazy about its dull poster art and no-name cast, I didn’t want to see The Apple because of my familiarity with Cannon Films. Even before its purchase by Golan-Globus, I associated the studio exclusively with Charles Bronson and schlocky low-budget action movies. Alas, later, when I'd read the flood of terrible reviews The Apple received, it crossed my mind that perhaps I'd missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime "I was there!" moment. The kind of experience cherished by folks who saw the original theatrical releases of legendary fiascoes like The Swarm or Lost Horizon. But mostly, I just felt as though I'd dodged a bullet.
I finally got around to seeing The Apple some 25 years after its release, not long after it had resurfaced on the midnight movie circuit and emerged as a surprise cult hit.
But the circumstances surrounding my watching The Apple for the first time were not the most advantageous for a film this off-the-rails: I was in bed with a particularly nasty bout of the flu when my partner surprised me with a DVD copy of The Apple to cheer me up.
Maybe it was my very real flu-induced fever colliding with the movie’s fever-dream weirdness, but The Apple not only failed to cheer me up, it genuinely made me sick. 
1. Things started out badly when I gave myself a headache from trying to make out if the endlessly-repeated chant in the opening number is “BIM’s on the way,” “BIM’s the only way,”BIM all the way.” or whatever the fuck.
2. The jewels glued to Shake’s front teeth looked less like glitter rock bling than grossly neglectful dental health, so that kinda turned my stomach.
3. My fluey stomach synced with the film's clumsy choreography and started turning sympathy flips.
4. The script was so rushed, chaotic, and nonsensical that it created the disorienting impression that I had dozed off at intervals, missing pertinent plot points. (I hadn't.)
5. This is a musical that clocks in at only 90 minutes. So why did it feel as long as Barry Lyndon?
6. Did my feeling so lousy at the time ultimately influence my first impression of The Apple? Yes. Was The Apple still pretty lousy without any help from me? Oh, most definitely. 
What's it all about, Alphie?
I hope you like George Gilmour's expression here 'cause it's the only one he's got 

By rights, my flu-viewing experience should have ended my having anything more to do with The Apple. And it was. That is until Christmas 2019 saw the release of a film that threatened to unseat The Apple as The Worst Musical Ever Made: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats
The critical drubbing those CGI kitties received got me thinking of how it had been 15 years since I last saw The Apple, igniting the nagging question of whether...given how badly I felt...I had really seen the film at all. So, with the added inducement of a recent Blu-ray release, I decided to give The Apple one more try.
I have to admit, it was a considerably better experience. 
The passing of 40 years has been kinder to The Apple than perhaps it deserves. Of course, it’s just as silly as ever, but much of what I once found annoying has been softened through the distancing filter of time. 
I still think the music is pretty terrible, but the songs “BIM,” “Showbizness,” and especially “Speed” actually make me smile (OK, laugh out loud). They may be tacky, but they are also a lot of fun. In fact, the first half of The Apple is actually rather enjoyable. Unfortunately, the second half is bogged down by one too many lugubrious ballads and that weird evangelical turn the story takes.
The musical number "Coming," staged as Pandi's choreographed date-rape of a drugged Alphie,
is not only hilariously crass but takes bad taste to Springtime for Hitler levels

None of the performances gave me a headache the way they did the first time around, although from the start, I thought Grace Kennedy was a little too good for this film (her discomfort in that "Coming" number is palpable) and would have made a fantastic Lucy in the Sky in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band---a case of going from the frying pan into the fire, I know. And I discovered it's really not possible to dislike Catherine Mary Stewart, coming across as she does like a spunky, well-intentioned understudy shoved at the last moment into the star role.

What emerged clearer on second viewing is just how good Vladek Sheybal is. Playing a character saddled with a name no two individuals in the film ever pronounce the same way twice, Sheybal is the only actor to hit the right over-the-top tone without the effort showing. He reminded me of Karen Black when she began appearing in all those low-rent horror movies. She "got" and understood the weird...she didn't need to strike attitudes.
Vladek Sheybal appeared in the films Casino Royale From Russia With Love,
and Ken Russell's Women in Love and The Boy Friend

I enjoyed The Apple more on the second viewing, but finding out that I don't loathe the film isn't the same as saying that I actually like it. I'm afraid I still don't.
And just why that is, boils down to this: I wouldn't like a John Waters movie in which Donny and Marie triumphed over Divine and Mink Stole. Nor would I like an Auntie Mame in which the Aryans from Darian scare away the free-thinking bohemians.
Playing Alphie's cliche-a-minute Jewish landlady, Miriam Margolyes' character doesn't
have a name, but her performance is so full of ham she should be labeled not kosher

I like my cult movies subversive. Mainstream films always have people who look like Bibi and Alphie triumphing over the forces of evil (i.e., anyone who doesn't look like Bibi and Alphie). What's great about underground films is their anarchic attack on the status quo; they are movies that celebrate the misfits.
They advocate for the outsiders, for the socially shunned, and for the ones society has branded "different" or "strange." In these films, the conformity power balance is upended, and the underdogs of the world...those who don't fit into heteronormative boxes and non-inclusive social structures...are celebrated for their being true to themselves and for their uniqueness.

In The Apple, Alphie's rejection of Boogalow's world feels as much rooted in homophobia and diversity fear as in professional distrust. When I watch Rocky Horror, I relate to Dr. Frank N. Furter and his "unconventional conventionists," not Brad and Janet (who, even as the vapid hero and heroine, are still written with more complexity than Alphie and Bibi).
The Age of Aquarius
Menahem Golan takes a page out of An American Hippie in Israel (1972)

The Apple, for all its visual outrageousness and rock & roll posturing, has always struck me as being staunchly middle-of-the-road and conformist in its worldview. The narrative is anti-fascist, anti-corporate, and anti-capitalist, to be sure. But it never sat well with me how the film subtextually aligns all the interesting, queer, and iconoclastic people in The Apple with negatives (degeneracy, depravity, evil, fascism), while the hetero, white, white-bread hero and heroine are the only symbols of innocence and good.
Much in the way Can't Stop the Music has never been an all-time cult fave for me because of the self-repudiation inherent in its closeted take on The Village People, The Apple is anti-rock and roll (which everybody knows is the great liberator of all souls!) and celebrates conventional blandness too much for my taste.   
Apparently, Hell is a lot like Chippendales on a Friday Night


BONUS MATERIAL
Before they were Dandi & Pandi, Allan Love (he got the "L" out before the film) and Grace Kennedy had professional recording careers. Love, who was most recently in the restaurant business, can be seen in a 1978 musical video HERE. Kennedy, who had her own BBC variety show for several years, pays homage to that other 1980 musical flop Can't Stop the Music HERE
Before he was Alphie, Scottish singer George Gilmour (center) fronted the band The Bo-Weavles.
Ray Shell went on to have an extensive career in theater. Seen here (in considerably less makeup than Shake) he originated the role of Rusty in the 1984 London production of Starlight Express. He's also a producer, director, and author (among others, a book on director Spike Lee).
The Apple's lyricist George S. Clinton (l.) and composer Kobi Recht (r.) appear throughout the film as different characters. Co-lyricist Iris Recht appears as the receptionist in the "Showbizness" number.


Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2020

19 comments:

  1. I missed this when it (briefly) played the Alamo Drafthouse, and your marking it as a hate watch made me curious enough to seek "The Apple" out. Some stray observations:

    1. Given the biblical allegory was rather tacked on and sloppy, it played more like one of the 6874674076 mid century juvenile delinquency films. The only difference here is our Miracle Whip and Wonderbread "hero" must save the delicate flower from disco/glitter/sex/drugs.....rather than jazz/liquor/bobbed hair/sex. It also shares the habit of those same films to relegate non caucasians and "libertine" rather queer coded characters to the villainy bin (which I was also bothered by while watching).

    1a. In relation to the above, was it strictly necessary to have multiple tight close up cutaways to the two main POC characters gleefully singing the chorus during the song praising "the master"? At least they got Dandi in the shot on the third go.

    2. Much like those earlier exploitation cautionary tales, our oddly workout bender Will Ferrell resembling protagonist is such a sanctimonious prat, it is impossible to root for him, at all, ever. Also.....why the fuck did the supposed moral center of the story straight up GROPE the landlady/his mom/whoever when she asked about the back rent? At best, he's a sugar baby. At worst, he just sexually assaulted someone as an attempt to get his debts forgiven with a boob grab and bad song seduction. I didn't need any more convincing Alphie was an asshole.

    3. The "Amazing Stories" sequined kimono robe Shake wears the morning after the party.....I would wear that gloriously trash piece. Every day. It almost redeemed the rest of the ill fitting costumes and ashen make up choices that made 2/3 of the cast look like cyanosis cases.

    4. Vladek Sheybal gets the Gina Gershon award....he's the only person who recognizes what an utter pile the film is, and has some campy fun with his costume jewels and single devil horn. Budgetary constraints masquerading as stylistic choice? Who knows? Who cares?

    5. Refugees from the 60's in 1994.....would be the same age as some of the non flower child characters we see in other segments of the film. Unless they hid in that cave the entire time, they wouldn't look like rejected Laugh In extras.


    All of that said......I couldn't in good faith hate this film.
    Is it sloppy? Sure.
    Is it a dismal failure on every possible level? Yep.

    Is it hinged on a bunch of music trends (disco, glam rock, a certain strain of so lightweight it disappears AM radio ballad) that were already becoming passe when it was released in 1980? Fuck yes.

    However, it is also abundantly clear that that a good chunk of the people responsible for this film gave a damn about it, and were legitimately attempting to make something they saw as good, as important, or as something new and cool. It's a putrid zombie baby, but its mother loved it. Even if everyone on the planet told Mr. Golan this film sucked, I doubt he would have taken it seriously.

    I'd put it in the same bin as monuments to mania and hubris like "The Room", anything by Ed Wood or Andy Milligan, or (more arguably depending on who's stories you believe) "Sextette".

    I reserve my loathing for intentionally, cynically things like "Zombeavers" or "Sharknado" which are having an oily snicker at the stupidity of audiences and the ease of a crap film fast buck.


    Thanks for another great post, and encouraging me to watch a film a bit out of my usual wheelhouse, but that I had fun with. My apologies for the novella in your comments section. I get excited when discussing awful film.

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    1. Hi GoreGirl
      You’re absolutely right, any film worth hate-watching is bound to be several grades above lazy, nobody-ever-went-broke-underestimating-the-intelligence-of-the-American-people debris like Sharknado. For the director “The Apple” was a true labor of love. I think he cared more about this film than any of his others…which speaks volumes about Menahem Golan’s limited gifts as a director. The commentary on the DVD relates how sincerely and seriously Menahem Golan took this film. He was determined for it to be the next TOMMY, and was so devastated by its failure, he almost killed himself. Sounds like everybody worked hard on the film, not because they had faith it, but because Menahem’s commitment was so complete.
      I’m impressed that you saw this film so quickly! Especially because I can feel the immediacy and freshness of your impressions of it. Many terrific observations throughout, particularly noting how the films moralizing plays out like those cautionary social guidance films from the 50s and 60s.

      I laughed at and agreed with all of your comments, the insight and humor leading me to believe that one’s opinion of “The Apple” is likely to be improved if it’s seen on the big screen with an audience, or at least with someone you can laugh at it with. After bearing through it when I had the flu, my partner had no interest in subjecting himself to “The Apple” a second time.

      By the way, I love that you coveted Shark’s “Amazing Stories” sequined kimono! I liked it, too!
      Thanks for reading this post and sharing your thoughts with us. A very enjoyable read!

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    2. I watched it alone the first go, in the weird space between late night and early morning.

      I sat through it a second time last night as my partner loves Cannon Films output and rock musicals, and was curious/more of a masochist than I had previously realized.

      You are absolutely correct in that "The Apple" is way more fun with a comrade in crap.

      Thanks again for introducing me to new trash cinema!

      Delete
  2. Few films are as unusual as "The Apple." I'd say it's a love it or hate it sort of movie, but I don't feel that strongly towards it in either direction. I like to view it every so often just to revel in its visual outrageousness. I was a big fan of Catherine Mary Stewart back in the day from her time on "Days of Our Lives" (and was thrilled when she consented to be interviewed by me at Poseidon's Underworld!) Did you see the documentary "Electric Boogaloo" (2014), which is the story of Cannon Films? It was captivating and very informative. The DVD has an extra 30 minutes of interviews, which I enjoyed a lot, too. This movie was to be Golan & Globus' "Tommy," but was an abject failure. And the tossing of the record albums at the screen during a preview really did happen! (God knows what people today would do... tear up the seats and burn the place!? LOL) I'm glad you don't have quite the same hatred for this the second time around. Compared to today's product, almost anything from years ago looks better than it ought to! Ha ha! Happy Valentines' Day.

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    1. Hello Poseidon
      I couldn’t respond until I had the opportunity to read your interview with Bibi herself (how great is that!) and your hilarious take on THE APPLE.

      You’re right in that THE APPLE is a so weird it even divides even bad movie fans (“I’m all for bad taste…just not THAT kind of bad taste”). As major movies today grow more corporate and over-responsive to the pedestrian tastes of internet fanboys, movies displaying any sort of eccentricity are welcome. That’s even why I was drawn to see THE APPLE again.
      I did see that marvelous documentary about Golan-Globus and Cannon, though not the DVD with extra interviews. It’s really very entertaining. I found an internet podcast that featured the husband and wife songwriting duo, and a few other people involved in the film. After hearing their stories, you get a real sense that one of the reasons the script was so hard on Mr. Boogalow (but cast him with the best actor in the film) is that Boogalow WAS Menahem.
      In your post on the film you mentioned how the 1980 film got certain aspects of the future down pretty accurately: the totalitarianism of the music industry and (what I noticed) the normalization and acceptance of fascism.
      Speaking of which, have you ever seen that 1968 British film with Jean Shrimpton by the name of PRIVILEGE? It’s all about a rock star being manipulated by fascist forces in the music industry. I saw it not long before rewatching THE APPLE and they have a few things in common (except PRIVILEGE makes sense).

      Thanks for reading my post, Poseidon. Should I ever get it in my mind to watch THE APPLE again, I think I might try the Rifftrax version with all the comic barbs on the soundtrack. This is a film that needs company.
      Hope you had a lovely Valentine’s Day!

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    2. There's a Rifftrax version? (J/K). I know that "The Cinema Snob" made fun of that movie. And since it was mentioned in a comment on your review of "The Cool Ones," I was starting to wonder if Brad Jones has any intentions of slamming that movie.

      Delete
    3. The Rifftrax version is available here: https://www.rifftrax.com/the-apple
      Not really ready to purchase it myself, but the sample clip shown reveals THE APPLE to be ripe for the kind of ribbing these guys are masters of.

      Delete
  3. Where can I download the Grace Kennedy album? "I'm Coming" is my favorite number in the movie so I must have more of her.

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    1. I wish I could help, but I've had little luck in finding anything but a few cuts from the album on YouTube. She released four albums between 1979 and 1981, but their online presence is scarce.
      Any readers out there know the answer?
      I can see why "I'm Coming" could be a favorite..its arrangement is pure disco/Donna Summer, and Kennedy easily has the best voice in the film.

      Delete
  4. I have to confess, I was one of those "first-day-first-screening-at-the-Paramount" ticket buyers and did indeed get a free LP of the soundtrack. I laughed my ass off all through the movie as did every other member of the 30 person audience. None of us went "frisbee" but I'm sure as the Friday night audiences endured this ridiculous film, it must have been mayhem.

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    1. How remarkable!! In all my years I've NEVER met anyone who saw THE APPLE before it had grown into a cult hit! And for some reason, I never entertained the idea that the theater wasn't packed until word of mouth got around! To hear about a "30 person audience" is quite revelatory to me.
      I'm so impressed...I've already cast you as some kind of survivor and trailblazer. People seeing THE APPLE now have many guideposts helping them to make sense of what they're seeing, but in 1980, on opening day...you were out there without a net. Incredible. I hope you saved your LP, and I thank you so much for clarifying a bit of history for us here (it makes sense that the evening audiences would be rowdier, larger, and more frisbee-the-lp prone).
      So happy you commented. Thanks, again!

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  5. Dear Ken: Hi! Like goregoregirl above, I watched "The Apple" for the first time after reading your hilarious blog post. I guess that makes you a "social media influencer"! :)

    Eric and I sat down with the movie (which is available for free for Amazon Prime members--and worth every penny!) over the weekend. He enjoyed it more than I did, I think--but then he couldn't believe that the movie was made with serious intentions; he thought it was a "Rocky Horror"-type spoof. And he couldn't quite believe me that the whole thing was not meant as a joke.

    I guess for me, I prefer my "bad" movies to be like "Xanadu" and "Can't Stop the Music"--inept but fun. Somehow, other than a few sequences (like the over-the-top title song, which the filmmakers thoughtfully reprise for us over the end credits), "The Apple" just didn't feel like much fun to me.

    In a way, though, I found the movie's ending oddly touching. I have sympathy for the 1960s hippie "peace and love" viewpoint. Although I have to wonder: if going back to the 1960s is going to be our society's salvation (as seems to be argued both by "The Apple" and that other wrong-headed, misconceived movie allegory, 1998's "Pleasantville"), why didn't the 1960s save us the first time around?

    Like you, I thought Grace Kennedy was the most talented of "The Apple's" cast, and I liked "I'm Coming" best of the movie's songs, probably because as you say it was a blatant attempt to write a Donna Summer-like disco hit. I think the movie could have used more disco, rather than so much badly done rock.

    I also felt great sympathy for Ray Shell, who seemed at moments to have difficulty speaking with all those fake gems glued to his teeth.

    Perhaps the most charitable thing to say about the movie is that the creator's reach exceeded their grasp. And also, the low budget didn't help. There were almost as many underpopulated crowd scenes in the movie as there was relentlessly mediocre choreography. And Eric and I had fun trying to guess where the various "futuristic" scenes were filmed (we think the lobby of the BIM building was either a small airport terminal or perhaps some city's Convention Center).

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  6. Hi Dave
    In our brief discussions about musicals, I guess you can see why this one hadn't come up. In a weird way, I have it in my mind that those who would like THE APPLE have somehow already seen it.
    I'm thrilled (but feel a little guilty) in inadvertently steering you & Eric to this film, but in the end, I'm sure you must feel there IS something "must-see" about THE APPLE for fans of movie musicals. Even if only to challenge one’s belief in how off the rails a labor of love can go.
    I can see why Eric thought the film was an intentional sendup...I believe parts of it WERE intended to be a Rocky Horror-like romp (Mostly evident in the character of Boogalow himself and that initial party scene where Bibi is seduced by Dandi to intentionally ironic romantic choreography). But after that self-aware scene, I'm with you...the film takes itself seriously as a rock and roll romance/fairy tale/allegory in the way TOMMY took itself seriously. There’s wit in the dancing nuns and patient on the operating table who must do The BIM with his surgeons, but the uplift message is as cautionary and heartfelt as when Roger Daltrey ends TOMMY by returning to the place of his conception. But Menahem Golan is no Ken Russell, and the music is not up to the task.
    Like you, I am certain the film would have benefitted from a soundtrack leaning more to disco or dance pop than the ersatz rock and make-my-ears-bleed folk music.

    I really like that you responded to the film’s ending. It’s the one area of the film that is so weird it has to be coming from someplace very personal. The APPLE, for all of its goofiness, gets it right in predicting a future in which corporations, government, and entertainment media are one. If you ever saw the 1972 cult film AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISREAL, you will see the same basic theme of this film played out: evil corporate world vs the utopian ideals of the hippie philosophy.

    The ideology makes sense as a repudiation to the dehumanizing world presented to us by corporations, but you ask such a good, provocative question; why didn’t it work in the ‘60s?
    As depicted in both films, I only get the sense of it being an inhumane cult being replaced by a humane cult…the hippie vision never looks like freedom to me, it only looks like rigid traditionalism with a more casual dress code.
    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on seeing THE APPLE for the first time. And should I add both congratulations for surviving it, and a flattered "much appreciated" to your being inspired to do so by this post. The idea that you and Eric made a game of trying to guess what those futuristic locations really were reinforces my belief that this film is made bearable by seeing it in the company of others. Thanks, Dave!

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  7. The lobby of the BIM building (as well as the exterior from the title credits and the theater, in which the song contest takes place) is actually the ICC (International Congress Center) in Berlin, Germany, which openend in 1979 and was considered quite "futuristic" back then. Today it still stands but is closed due to asbestos contamination, which is very common for buildings expecially from the 70s.

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    1. I've always wondered about the locations...thanks very much for the info!

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  8. I'm late to the review party, but glad you reviewed this film! So few people I know have ever actually seen it, so im glad there are others out there. I first saw it on late night TV in 2020 and it felt like a fever dream (though I didn't have an actual flu at the time unlike yourself.) So of course, I immediately tracked it down to watch it again.

    I think your line "embarks on a quest to rescue his lady love from the evils of multiethnic nonbinary pansexuality" nails my issues with this film. It reeks of the bizarre oppression fantasies the leaders of Florida and Texas and their ilk make their trade in.

    In the same vein it brought to mind articles I've read about the whitewashed new age spirituality to fascism pipeline, where very racist, sexist, and homophobic ideologies were adopted into white counter cultural narratives as some sort of radical paradigm shift, when in fact it was the same tired dance with a bland heterosexual folk music melody.

    However, I was born too late to have first hand knowledge of the times that influenced the creators of the film. So I humbly admit to having a Monday morning quarterback view of things and could have it all entirely wrong.

    Thank you so much for all of your reviews, your writing has been a continued source of joy for me and I look forward to every essay you publish.


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    1. Hello, Shea
      I’m glad you didn’t let the age of this post deter you from sharing your thoughts on this lunatic film. Particularly the issues you have with the contradictory messages it seems to be sending. I don’t know anything about the people behind the screenplay or whose idea it was to include that weird ending, but I think you are spot on in recognizing the ways strict (oppressive) religious dogma can be shrouded in a lot of “new age” ideologies.
      I am less aware of what was going on in the new age era, but when I was young, I did take note of how the whole hippie/flower child thing was so closely aligned to Jesus freaks and the kind thing that led to the popularity of GODSPELL and Jesus Christ Superstar.

      It all teases radicalism, is very white-bread and heteronormative, and is everything you instinctively picked up on in the subtext of THE APPLE. You actually lay the groundwork for what would be a fascinating essay on THE APPLE and how it uses the bible fable of Adam & Eve and just runs with it, ultimately (and perhaps unintentionally) creating a work that looks progressive on the surface, but is saturated with exactly the kind of homophobic, racist, and sexist wave of faith-based bigotry that is nect door to fascism.

      I’m happy you enjoy my blog (you are so kind in your compliments) and I’m grateful to you for continuing to visit the site. I really enjoyed your comment and it makes a first-rate, thoughtful contribution to this post. Take care, Shea!

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  9. It's reviews like this that make me love reading your blog Ken. Keep it up. Now I have to ask have you or will you review a roller disco movie, either Roller Boogie or Skatetown, USA?

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    1. Hi Dave, I'm flattered as hell and very pleased you read this post and enjoyed it enough to comment. I've seen both of the titles you mentioned (I'm not exactly thrilled to admit), and of the two "Roller Boogie" would be the most likely candidate to be written about on these pages. I actually paid good money to see it at a theater when it came out (I love Linda Blair and especially Beverly Garland) so it holds a nostalgic appeal for me, reminding me of my first year living in Los Angeles.
      Thanks for expressing an interest in my writing about these movies. Hmm...are they "So Bad They're Good" favorites of yours, too? Ha!
      Thank you for reading and commenting, Dave!

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