Some movies have it all. They really do. 1980’s The Apple does. *Insert sheepish chortle here*
We’re just going to jump in, folks. The movie opens in 1994 with a battle of the bands, where literally everyone is wearing lamé, spangles, and garish makeup and surrounded by cardboard triangles covered in tinfoil. It’s like Tron had a head-on collision with Thunderdome and this band is singing about something called “Bim.”
When we see sights such as these, we all know what follows will either be a thing of beauty or royally suck.
Guess where The Apple lands? Just guess.
Next up in the competition is lamé-less folk duo Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Alphie (George Gilmour) from Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, who sing a really generic love song, the aptly titled “Universal Melody.” The crowd hates it at first, but then they start loving it.
Meanwhile, the evil Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Shaydal) watches the audience being so moved and all, and he’s not having it because he wants the glam rock band to win. He tells his henchman, Shake (Ray Shell), a sparkly fellow whose grill would make Flavor Flav envious, to hand the engineer a tape. The guy plays it without asking any questions, and some wicked feedback pours out of the speakers.
Mr. Boogalow arouses the suspicions of some of the members of the press, who wonder if the competition was rigged, but he shrugs them off. He also has his entourage take note of who questioned him the most.
That might be the end of our poor folk duo, but they’re still invited to the afterparty, where Bibi meets the glam rocker guy, Dandi (Allan Love), they get offered a meeting with Mr. Boogalow, and they witness the debut of something called the Bim Mark, a mylar sticker which people are supposed to wear somewhere on their faces because reasons.
The next day Bibi and Alphie go to Mr. Boogalow’s office, where they’re ushered into a waiting room and sit surrounded by sad clowns, weird magicians, and a guy dressed as Mae West.
Oh yeah, and a group of dancers cavort around with Mr. Boogalow before sashaying into his office (they’ve got an appointment, after all).
Long story short, after a torrid song about apples sung by a loincloth-clad Dandi in what looks like hell, with everyone wearing Bim stickers and fondling a giant apple, Bibi signs with Mr. Boogalow. Alphi, who’s scared stiff after an earthquake hits, throws the contract down on Boogalow’s desk and storms out. Bibi tries to go after him but is stopped by Shake and his female counterpart, Pandi (Grace Kennedy), who purr out that Bibi is one of them.
Everyone is now supposed to wear Bim stickers on pain of citation or arrest, and every day at four everyone has to stop whatever they’re doing and work out to the Bim Song. Plus, Bibi gets famous. Like, really famous. She’s as glammed up as Shake and Pandi and belts out songs like “Speed.” Yeah, as in meth. This is the one song in the film that is mildly catchy despite being a de facto sell job for drug overdose:
Meanwhile, Alphie is very down on his luck. He can’t sell a song to save his life and he’s still pining for Bibi, so he tries to find her one night, only to be drugged and seduced by Pandi, who sings to him while surrounded by what’s supposed to be provocative dancing. He finally stumbles away, where he thinks he sees Bibi and Dandi in flagrante, and finally wakes up in a park looking into the grizzled face of a kindly old man named Mr. Topps who ushers him to a community of hippies.
There’s not much to spoil about this movie’s ending, but I’m going to spoil it a little bit: God, who is also Mr. Topps, looks like Joss Ackland and drives a flying Rolls Royce. What happens next looks like the Life Day scene in the Star Wars Holiday Special, only everyone is much shinier and they’re not carrying light bulbs. It has to be seen to be believed, if anyone can stand it.
Once the credits rolled on this puppy I had to ask myself: “What in the actual flying fish did I just watch?”
Yep, The Apple is about as subtle as a V2 rocket. With the exception of “Speed,” the music is ludicrously inane from start to finish, frequently consisting of various howls and wails, or at least it seems like it because it’s hard to understand any of the lyrics. The credits say George Clinton wrote that tripe, but fortunately it’s not that George Clinton.
Besides the train wreck of a score, The Apple is clearly an End Times movie with the Bim sticker being the Mark of the Beast, Mr. Boogaloo being the devil, and the hippies being Christians. Problem is, the movie is too awful to be taken seriously but not so awful that it’s funny, although God riding in a Rolls-Royce and looking like Joss Ackland is hilarious.
Actually, I take it back. The Apple boasts some real howlers, especially when viewed through a post-1994 lens. For instance, no one saw grunge coming in 1980? Really? What would these people have thought of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Jeremy”? And where are the flannels? The Doc Martens? The slipdresses? I know it’s just a movie, but seeing as disco was dead by 1980, it stands to reason that glam rock and nu wave would be dead by 1994, or at least highly diminished.
Also, I have to echo what Mark from FanBoyFlicks said about the film’s supposedly futuristic setting: The filmmakers should have thought bigger than 1994. A few more decades or so and then any connection to the eighties could be explained by trend cycles. I guess they were trying to play it safe.
Naturally the movie was panned big time by both critics and audiences when the movie released, so much so that writer and director Manahem Golan reportedly almost committed suicide. Fortunately, one of his friends talked him out of it, and Mr. Golen continued what turned out to be a long and fruitful career as a producer before passing away in 2014. Among Golen’s dozens of credits are Cyborg, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and the Lemon Popsicle series.
Time doesn’t seem to have been kind to The Apple. While it somehow has a small cult following, the prevailing opinion is that it is unexplainable claptrap. Ken Hanke of the Mountain XPress put it this way: “It may, in fact, be the ultimate cinematic two-headed cow—except unlike a two-headed cow, The Apple truly is the strangest sight your eyes have ever beheld.”
A new Shamedown is on the way tomorrow. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…
The Apple is available on DVD from Amazon. It is also available to stream on Tubi.
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