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The Apple (1980)

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18 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
The Apple BITES! Watch it anyway, though...., 1 December 2004

Author: Poseidon-3 from Cincinnati, OH

Proudly taking its place next to "Can't Stop the Music", "Xanadu", "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and other breathtakingly bad musicals is this rapturously awful piece of celluloid punishment. This one tops all of the aforementioned flicks in the heinousness department because the others, at least, contain some modicum of memorable and, even good, music! Released in 1980, this film is set in the far-flung future of 1994. Music (and apparently most everything!) is controlled by a huge conglomerate called BIM. During a World Music Festival, Stewart and Gilmour, two young, folksy types, pit their sappy love ballad against the over-the-top, synthetic music of Kennedy and Love. They come close to winning the competition, but the evil head of BIM (Sheybal) rigs it so that they lose. Realizing their potential, however, he attempts to sign them to a record deal. Stewart foolishly gives in while Gilmour stands his ground. Once he sees what the money, drugs and sexual excesses are doing to her, he attempts to break her away from BIM. The rather basic plot line takes its cues from The Bible, but is souped up with Rocky Horror Show-style hair, make-up and costuming topped off with ludicrous production design and some of the most dreadful, ear-assaulting production numbers ever to be captured on film. The story is slight to begin with, but is barely allowed to play out in between the endless, increasingly-bad songs. The numbers include a trip into hell, a plethora of couples writhing and posing on beds, a thoroughly zany enforced-exercise sequence and several tacky onstage concert sequences. Fans seem to be split on which songs they like or hate more...the disco-esquire BIM songs or the love ballads cranked out by Gilmour. None of the songs in the film are particularly memorable though, even if one can't get the imagery that goes with them out of one's head! It is astonishing that Stewart could actually carve out some type of career after this. Her fresh face and amiable persona somehow won out. She actually enjoyed a fairly healthy TV and movie resume in the wake of this film. Gilmour dropped off the face of the earth entirely, apparently. His singing isn't all that bad and he had a sexy body (shown off to good advantage at several stages of the movie) but he could not act at all and occasionally resembles Will Farrell! Kennedy and Love were also virtually obliterated by this turkey. Love was quite awful, but Kennedy actually appeared to have a certain amount of talent and presence and it's a shame she was sunk before she even got started. Sheybal had a long career as a character actor and he always strikes a distinctive note, but his singing here is disastrous. Ackland pops up briefly near the end and also can't sing, but manages to provide a little presence in a dual role. The film makers believed that 1994 would bring huge gas-guzzling cars with pointy ends and lots of paraphernalia attached, but aerodynamics actually won the day. However, their insight into the way the music business has evolved isn't all that far off the mark! Useful as a party-enhancing laugh machine. Look high and low, far and wide, but it is unlikely that a more splendiferously hideous film will be found.

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16 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Always bad but never boring., 12 February 2003
Author: FeverDog from Center of the Universe

Here's a godawful "futuristic" musical from 1980 that takes place in 1994 (which gives you an idea of just how campy it is), about an evil record executive debauching a naive couple from (no kidding) Moose Jaw, Canada. There's some kind of religious allegory here and there throughout the murky plot, and the songs must be heard to be believed. (One is a basically unveiled ode to the orgasm, which makes me wonder how the movie got a PG rating.)

THE APPLE is CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC (the music-world milieu) meets ROCKY HORROR (innocent couple corrupted by bizarre characters), and it liberally "borrows" scenes from everything from BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS to HAIR. And, oh my, the costumes. I wouldn't know where to begin describing them, so all I'll say is that camel-toe was apparently stylish for both men and women at one time.

Which is all another way of saying that THE APPLE is the newest camp classic that I must add to my collection, and I thank Showtime Beyond for unearthing this craptastic pop masterpiece. (A widescreen DVD would be nice, though.)

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12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Audaciously Wonderfully Bad!, 15 November 2003
Author: rube2424 from New York, USA

Probably made as a "please God, let what happened to ROCKY HORROR

happen to us!", project, THE APPLE is so audacious, so over the top, so

totally awful that it is simply wonderful. The songs are cheesy, the

acting horrendous, the costumes nightmarish, the concept bizarre etc.,

etc., but when all those negatives are put together, the result is a

positively guilty pleasure to top all guilty pleasures. Please, someone,

release a letterboxed DVD of this film so that all its rocky horrors

squeezed onto the small screen can be seen in all their garish terrible/wonderfulness.......

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14 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
I was there!, 22 February 2004
Author: lynnekjacobs from california

I was stationed with the USAF in West Berlin when this was filmed. (There are W. Berlin landmarks in the film, even though it's supposed to be New York.) My husband was an aspiring actor and always showed up at auditions when something was being filmed. He got a part as a newspaper reporter and general all-round extra, and I got a part as an extra, too. In fact, many of the extras in this movie are service members stationed in Berlin (this was before the Wall fell, so there were Brit soldiers stationed there as well, thus explaining many of the Brit accents). We had an apartment, so some of the dancers came over to hang out and chat, to escape the hotel rooms, Finola Hughes being one of them, as well as Catherine Mary Stuart (my husband REALLY enjoyed escorting her around the base!). One of the dancers, named Dave, said the filming of the hell scene was just "magical." The costumes were pretty cheesey and poorly made; my husband probably still has the silver baseball cap he wore as a reporter and the silver epaulets... It was a lot of fun to be a part of and I'd love to have a copy of it (when I saw it on TV several years ago, I couldn't find myself in the crowd scenes!). It was great reading other comments about this movie -- I didn't think anyone else in the world knew about it!

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Something this bizarre cannot be dismissed so easily., 14 October 2003

Author: gridoon

Vapid (largely due to the male lead's inability to act - not surprisingly, this was his only film), bizarre fantasy-musical-allegory. It gets points for its sheer audacity and the effort that was put into it - it was probably made on a relatively low budget, yet it manages to create a world of its own; apparently it was filmed in Germany, but it seems to be taking place on another universe altogether. For some reason, it reminded me of "Zardoz" (yes, and "Logan's Run" too): these movies are so bizarre that they belong in a league of their own, beyond "good" and "bad". Best song: "If you know how to be a ma-ster". (**)

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8 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
A film so horrible, you can't stop watching, 8 June 2003

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

Kudos to this German production by Golan/Globus. Who else could have conceived of a Sci-fi/Disco/Musical/Religious epic? Unlike Ed Wood's flicks (such as Plan 9, Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster), this movie proves that an embarrassingly silly and awful picture does NOT need to be made on a shoestring budget! Horrible costumes and extremely silly sets cost big bucks!

While some of the actors do actually sing reasonably well, Vladek Sheybal and Ray Shell's singing (among many others) are straight from the "Paint Your Wagon" school of movie-making which states that "just because some actors have NO discernible singing ability does not mean they cannot sing in a musical". I assume based on the banality of the music and lyrics that the same philosophy was also employed. In fact, the same could be said about the acting, sets and directing and choreography (e.g., the great song and dance number in Hell midway through the movie). It's as if Golan/Globus said "let's find as many UNTALENTED people as possible and get them together to make a movie--it will be a real HOOT!".

So, if I hated this movie so much and found it abounding in ineptness, why am I writing this review? My wife tells me I am a masochist and about awful movies, I think she's right. I love to watch wretched movies.

The Apple is not an annoying bad movie (such as ANYTHING involving Pauley Shore), a cheap schlocky bad movie (SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS or ROBOT MONSTER), a disgusting bad movie (any movie involving groups of semi-brain-dead teens being stalked by a hockey masked sociopath) or a boringly bad movie (THE CONQUERER or most of the Jerry Lewis-directed films). Instead, like such notorious greats like THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK, this movie seems to try VERY hard and yet fail on almost every level. This is definitely the case with THE APPLE.

In summation, I call all lovers of dreck to tune in to The Apple. And, I am happy to say, it is NOW available on DVD!!! This makes this is an absolute MUST SEE!

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
"Farenheit 451: the musical., 17 December 2007

Author: ptb-8 from Australia

Never released in Australia, and we get every terrible film, I am now, in 2007, quivering with delight. My new DVD copy of THE APPLE arrived today and I gleefully shoved it into the player.... and it did not disappoint. More ghastly than I could have wished for, THE APPLE made in 1979 as the monsterously mashed together mix of TOMMY and ROCKY HORROR and PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE and LOGANS RUN and FARENHEIT 451 and HAIR...with CANT STOP THE MUSIC campiness, the XANADU dancers, and ZIGGY STARDUST eyeshadow, frosted wavy hair and lyrics poached from the first 8 bars of quite a few Beatles songs as 'new' songs (as another comment noted: ended up sounding like jingles from deodorant commercials) THE APPLE is a film you must see, the make everyone you know see while you watch their reactions. It is more fantastic to own than ELECTRIC BOOGALOO or LAMBADA or SALSA put together! And I own all those too! THE APPLE is more berserk than all those film mentioned above, ground into fluorescent dust-chalk and blended with glitter and then swallowed... and the result the next day is what I saw on DVD. Made in a shopping mall in West Germany by mad Israeli mogul Mehaheim Golan from the famed Cannon Films shed, THE APPLE is c colossal collision of Eurovision and a projectile vomit. Read all the other comments, including the media ones... and then realise we are being kind to this film. It is deliciously worse than everything you will read. As Lina Lamont said in Singin in the rain:" I liked it!"... the irony in 2007 being that MGM sold that wonderful musical to Warners and now represent THE APPLE instead.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
A wonderful addiction..., 1 June 2006

Author: kleiaa from United States

I've waited YEARS to obtain a good copy of this movie! I originally saw it on Showtime in the early 80's and, I'm not sure why, fell in love with it. It IS cheesy and campy but there is something about THE APPLE that draws me in and makes me want to see it over and over and over...

It's absolutely, wonderfully addictive! I found the tunes catching, and can happily say, even after all these years, I know every song by heart. For years I've only had my pan and scan copy that I taped off of cable until my husband recently found the DVD in a local movie store. It was the ONLY copy they had too! I am sure that they are glad to be rid of it as it probably has sat there on their shelf for quite some time. I am aware that it isn't the most popular movie musical ever made.

To me however, it is one of the memorable ones. I can't seem to get the song "Hey, hey, hey, BIM's on the way" out of my brain. So I'm glad I have the movie on DVD now so I can feed my addiction and watch it again, and again and again.

By the way...did any one happen to notice that Shake sported a "grill"? I wonder how many Rappers saw this film and thought it was a cool look?

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the finest "Bad Movies" in existence., 4 February 2007

Author: geekzapoppin from United States

Words cannot express the joy I get whenever I sit down to see THE APPLE. I first experienced it in the best way possible, at an all-night movie marathon with a group of film fanatics. Everything about this film is so grossly over-the-top and gaudy that you just have to marvel that it was ever produced, much less released. I don't want to give anything away, but it is best described as Faust covered in glitter. The music is bad, the acting is worse and the direction is out the window. It's glorious! The lyrics to the songs, though earnest, are so clichéd that they illicit unintentional giggles with every line. The leading man is supposedly from Moosejaw, Canada but mysteriously sports a German accent. The height of future transportation is apparently a station wagon with extra lights attached. You can tell that Golan/Globus (yes, them) thought they were making a sincere statement about the power of love to conquer evil, as there was seemingly a decent budget on the film. Most of the musical numbers are large, crowded affairs and dancers don't come cheap. In summary, any film that features God coming down from the sky in a Heavenly Cadillac is okay by me!

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6 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
weird, trashy, and lots of tunes......, 16 February 2006

Author: TheatreX from Louisville, KY

I have to wonder, in the wake of flicks like Rocky Horror, why this was not more well known? I've never heard of it or seen it until recently, and it does have a sort of "Rocky Horror" tone to it but perhaps not with as strong characters. For me, though, there's far too much music but there's a few things that compensated for that. Like, for instance, the sets and the cars. The cars, especially, are a wonder to behold, like the Chevy Impala station wagon and what looks like a Ford Maverick, all done up to look "ultra-futuristic", complete with spoilers and all, that was hilarious. The story itself is nothing terribly exciting, a young singing couple are dragged into the hell of big business, with the woman being tempted by the evil agent (Boogalow) and the man choosing to forgo temptation in favor of pressing on by himself until he realizes how bad he (Alfie) needs her (Bibi). This was made in 1980 and has "futuristic" sets, all someone's idea of what life would be like sometime in the future, and the only thing the truly hit dead on was how bad the music would really be in 1994. Lots of um, cool looking futuristic clothing and stuff though, even triangular metal baby carriages with Plexiglas domes, wow. There's even a monorail that looks right out of Disney World but this is all filmed in West Berlin. A lot of the cast is gender suspect, too, sometimes you're sure about their orientation and other times, well, you probably don't want to know. I guess this is kind of fun in a Rocky Horror way, I also felt influences of "Phantom of Paradise" and yes, even "Jubilee" at times, but for me to truly enjoy it, well, it had too many musical dance numbers, definitely not my thing. If you like that sort of stuff you'll probably enjoy this more but I enjoyed it mainly for the ridiculous portrayal of "the future" which is now 12 years past. The ending is somewhat odd too, as at one point thing seem to jump ahead with no segue and the film ends...like so did the budget? Dunno, anyway I give it a 7 out of 10, loopy and weird, not for all tastes, but probably great for some.

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