User reviews

It was only a few years ago that I even knew about this Golan-Globus Cannon musical production that came out the same year as similar flops like Can't Stop the Music and Xanadu or better received hits of the same genre like The Blues Brothers and the original Fame. I'll just say that while I was weireded out by the direction of some sequences and the way they were put together, I actually did like many of the musical numbers and the way they tied to both plot and characterization. And I also thought the actors that sang, with the exception of Catherine Mary Stewart who was nicely dubbed by Mary Hylan, also did a good job. So on that note, I'll just say that The Apple is neither one of the worst nor one of the best of the movie musicals. It's just simply a fascinating futuristic look at a time 14 years after this was made at what the music industry would be like if Disco, Glam Rock, and Folk/Adult Contemporary were the only musical trends (or non-trends) to go to as choices...

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". (**)

If hippiedom had taken root in the 1980s, this musical shows how things might have worked out in the 1990s. Of course you have to use your imagination here. The story describes a nightmarish society wherein everyone must eat, breathe, and sleep for something called "Bim", as promulgated by a capitalistic music mogul named Mr. Boogalow. This Mr. Boogalow rather conspicuously resembles the devil; he tempts the lead male and female singers with an apple, because their love song is a threat to his disco empire. I'm not quite sure what "Bim" refers to, except maybe the perpetuation of disco dollars, along with big bucks for bizarre costumes and garish makeup, of which the film has tons.

The entire production is so overdone, so excessive, so lacking in subtlety it's laughable. But there is a worthwhile message here. And that's the idea that people are easily manipulated to become slaves to greed and superficial images; that part of the future the film got right.

As for performances, George Gilmour, the lead male, can sing but can't act; Catherine Mary Stewart, the lead female, can act but can't sing; they make a dandy duo. Songs tend to be uninspired and repetitious; the first musical number is awful. But I did like "Cry For Me", toward the end.

Others have described "The Apple" as the worst musical of all time. I wouldn't know, since there are many musicals I have not seen. But what is certain is that this film is quaint, to say the least. It's a historical film curio, a cinematic time warp back to another era when disco was king, and Reagan was just an American actor trying to be a President with capitalistic ideas.

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.......

A sure contender for worst film of the century, "The Apple" isn't just bad, it is insufferable. Set in futuristic 1994, this musical is basically a lame excuse for some very bad actors (except Catherine Mary Stewart in her feature film debut!) to dress in really campy outfits and sing really, REALLY bad songs. The whole mess looks like a bad outtake from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." The story: Two innocents enter a worldwide songwriting contest. The couple is unaware that the "Star Search"-type global broadcast has been rigged by the evil Mr. Boogaloo, a man who wants to take over the world with his "Bim" music. Don't ask. In short, THIS MOVIE SUCKS. You have been warned. When we ran this awful film at the Paramount Theater (now the El Capitan) in Hollywood in November, 1980, the film's distributor, Cannon Films, gave us souvenir soundtrack albums to give out to the first 1,000 customers on their way in. After the first show we had to stop giving the records out because the few customers that paid to see this disaster started throwing their 12" vinyl LPs at the movie screen during the film. No rips in the screen, just big dents, thank goodness. We then tried to hand the records out after the screenings, but most people refused to take them. In the end, we had cases and cases of the albums left over, which Cannon Films retrieved a year later to ship to some unsuspecting theaters in Israel.

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). 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--it tries so very hard but utterly misses the mark each and every time!

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! I must warn you, however, that although the songs are really bad, you may find yourself singing them again and again in your head. For me, I kept hearing the "Do the BIM" song over and over...and even now I do as I write this!

Look, this is either a 10 or a zero depending on how you view movies. As a movie musical it's objectively awful with bad acting, music, dancing, sets, songs, no story, etc, etc BUT as a stunningly hilarious, jaw-dropping piece of WTF this is pure gold and is maybe the greatest piece of terribleness ever created by humanity. This is The Room of musicals, so bad it's good, worth seeing again and again in large groups. You can't believe how bad it is and it just keeps getting worse until they run out of ideas and just end it. MUST SEE.

However, the make-up, costumes, acting, singing, dancing, stunts, sets, props, hair, story, theme, idea, writing, directing, dialog, and use of a green station wagon were VERY VERY BAD. This was sort of a mix between the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,and Xanadu packed into one mylar-packed, "who-are-these- people-and-what-were-they-thinking?" movie, filmed in a corporate park in Europe on a Sunday. I nominate it for the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 come-back (Ahh, those were the days, when a movie could be mocked with all the honesty and disgust it deserves). BUT, The varied use of MYLAR throughout the movie never ceased to amaze me!

Infamously bad musical, often considered the worst movie of that genre. This film is a treasure for bad movie lovers. It's just transcendently awful, an assault to the ears and eyes. Ed Wood-level auteur Menahem Golan, who produced such classics as Over the Top, The Forbidden Dance, the Breakin' movies, American Ninja, Ninja 3: The Domination, Superman IV and Masters of the Universe, directs this futuristic retelling of the story of Adam and Eve, set in the distant year of 1994. Mr. Boogalow is a record company executive who is symbolically the devil. Catherine Mary Stewart and George Gilmour are two Canadian ingénues who try to revive the long-dormant art of the love song (so 1970s!). Mr. Boogalow quickly puts a stop to that by tempting Stewart to the disco scene. The movie pretty much hits its record industry target, and predicts American Idol (except that, instead of soulless disco songs, for the most part the contestants on that show sing soulless ballads). It's not the stupidest movie in the world. On the other hand, it is one of the most garish imaginable, with its goofy futuristic clothes (people in the future always tend to like shiny things a lot), and the songs are beyond horrible. Well, at least they're laughable. The whole film is, very much so. And I honestly enjoyed it in a masochistic sort of way.

If Xanadu and Flash Gordon had a baby, it would be The Apple.

I'm a fan of campy, trashy movies, especially musicals. I actually think Grease 2 is a better movie than the original Grease for instance.

The Apple is REALLY trashy, in fact I would go as far as to say it has almost no redeeming features. The acting from most of the cast is way below par. Even amateur dramatics societies have better actors than this. George Gilmour in particular as the male lead "Alphie" is appalling. It comes as no surprise that this seems to be his only movie credit... That said, it doesn't help that nobody in this film is given anything in the script that would show their acting "talents".

The sets are basically made up of bits of late 1970s Berlin brutalist architecture. Why is it films set in "the future" are always full of grey concrete?! The costumes are of the silver foil standard of future fashions, along with a lot of outfits that appear again to be straight out of the 1970s. Well they do say fashions come and go..

The film itself, well its a simple tale of an innocent boy and girl getting sucked into and spat out of the music industry.. Along with some very misguided and in your face biblical references. The ending is truly spectacular. Spectacularly awful that is.

The only vaguely redeeming feature of this film is possibly the soundtrack. OK, none of it sounds like the kind of music that was around in the real 1994, but there are some flourishes.

I'm giving the film 5 out of 10. It is truly terrible, but a fun watch at the same time.

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 monstrously 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 an unfinished shopping mall in East 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 realize 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.

I am in awe over the costume designs, set designs, musical numbers, etc. This movie is definitely the best portrayal of 1994 by far. The old 80s station wagons and 80s clothing are still very popular as anyone would imagine. After all, they are timeless classic trendsetting styles. This movie manages to be one of the most homoerotic movies of all time without a single gay sex scene! Every frame of this movie has something very pleasing (or discomforting) to the eye for the viewer to be entertained for all 80 minutes plus of this musical masterpiece. Go see this movie now. I gave into temptation and ate the forbidden fruit recently at the Nuart Theater and I haven't been the same since.

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!

I really struggled with an appropriate title for this review. I mean, there were so many to choose from. How about "Each song worse than the last!"? That was one. How about "It really *is* worse than 'Voyage of the Rock Aliens'!"? That was another one. How about... well, you get the idea.

I can't add much that hasn't already been said, except that I am now one of the few who has seen "The Apple" and lived to tell about it. I know how Alfie and Bibi got their names, and I can guess how Mr. Topps got his, but I'm still not sure about Mr. Boogaloo. And I wish I had known to watch for Yma Sumac. I didn't realize she was in this thing until I saw her listed here. I also didn't realize there was *another* George Clinton. I only knew the one from Parliament and Funkadelic. You know, the cool one.

My theory on the pan-and-scan (the lack of it, I mean) is that the video transfer guy couldn't stand to watch the movie while it transferred so he just set the pan-and-scan thing to the middle of the screen and went on break. My favorite result is a shot of a lamp on Mr. Boogaloo's desk while all the action takes place off-screen. It's when Alfie and Bibi are in his office trying to decide if they should sign his contract or not.

In case you were too overcome to notice, there actually is one funny bit in this movie. It's when Alfie sneaks up behind his landlady and grabs her bosoms. It was unexpected. The rest of the film is deadpan serious. That is its undoing. Well, that and lousy writing, lousy singing, lousy acting, lousy costumes, lousy effects...

I came across The Apple about two years ago when I was flipping channels. I think it was Encore that was showing it about 1AM or so. I was mesmerized by how bad it was...but I was totally getting into it. It's the kind of movie I can laugh at because it's so bad. The acting, the 'plot' and the music are so embarrassingly bad...even though the music was kind of catchy. It's a shame we've seen no more performances by George Gilmour after this. Sure, he was a horrible actor but he was handsome -- only if he had got his start 20 years later, his good looks alone could've got him a career started.

I really do wish that there could've been a "where are they now" segment on the DVD. I'd love to know what George Gilmour, Grace Kennedy, Alan Love and Catherine Mary Stewart are up to now; mainly the three lesser stars of love, kennedy and gilmour seeing that their filmographies are the most bare boned. If you're a fan of 'good' bad movies, take a bite out of The Apple!

1/10

Mind-bogglingly, wonderfully, transplendantly HORRID. More fun than "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (in fact, me and half dozen friends are watching and singing along as I type this) and even more campy than "Showgirls." And that's saying ALOT. All fans of goodbad movies should try and get a copy, any copy, on ebay - even a 10th generation VHS of its terrible not-very-pan-and-scan print is worth watching!

"The Apple" is a futuristic musical (released in 1980, it takes place in 1994) that uses numerous rock and pop numbers to help tell the story of an innocent singing duo from Canada, Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart, who actually is from the Great White North) and Alphie (George Gilmour), who fall prey to the machinations of evil music industry magnate Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal). He successfully drives a wedge in between them, and she becomes a pop music sensation for his company. But Alphie is not about to give up on the great love of his life.

"The Apple" was directed by Cannon Group head honcho Menahem Golan, one of his handful of filmmaking efforts, and written by same, based on a story by Kobi and Iris Recht (they were responsible for the songs). It's utter nonsense, yet it's so cheerfully ridiculous that it's hard to just dismiss it outright. It's nonsense with a purpose, as it seeks to satirize society. The viewer can hardly fail to notice the greed and ambition personified in Mr. Boogalow, as well as the way this movie puts an over the top spin on marketing: any person who doesn't get with the program and wear a "B.I.M. mark" (basically, a sticker) on their forehead will be ticketed by the authorities!

Add to that the very splashiness and gaudiness of this colourful entertainment, and you have something that fans might not describe as "good", per se, but definitely eye-catching and irresistibly goofy. Costumes, sets, and makeup are all hilarious. It took a long time before "The Apple" began to become something of a cult favourite, but now there are fans who readily admit to enjoying it. Presumably, some even do so unironically.

In her starring film debut, the lovely Ms. Stewart is radiant and appealing, and the rest of the cast is amusing to watch: Gilmour as the earnest Alphie, Joss Ackland pulling double duty as the hippie leader and the heavenly Mr. Topps, the unsubtly decorated Sheybal as the Devilish bad guy, Allan Love as his flashy son Dandi, Ray Shell as the effeminate Shake, gorgeous Grace Kennedy as the star performer Pandi, and Miriam Margolyes as the concerned landlady. George S. Clinton, who plays the American reporter Joe Pittman, was already a busy film composer; his credits in this capacity include "Mortal Kombat", the "Austin Powers" series, and "Wild Things".

At once campy and sincere, this is a truly cheesy and tacky entertainment that certainly leaves an impact, which is more than one can say for some movies.

Seven out of 10.

I caught this film several times back when I had only one cable movie channel and no VCR. I watched it the first time in total disbelief. Could somebody have actually made a film this bad? On successive viewings I attempted to analyze this film more deeply. On every level it is bad. Really bad. The attempt at depth, by relating the film characters to characters in the bible was laughable. We don't get characters, but caricatures of the people, so one-dimensional that it hurts. The music, stamped out of the music mill, was in no way inspirational, and the story, acting, directing, scripting and everything else about this film was just horrid.

The Archetypes were not. The music was not. This film should not.

Yes, I want to own it on DVD. I have an extensive collection of painfully bad films. Not just Ed Wood "So bad, they are fun" films, but Dreck like "The Apple". Just to remind me that Hollywood can make some REALLY bad mistakes.

Set in the Dystopian future of 1994, this musical about the record business--and the Satan-like man who controls it--pays homage to "Hair," "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Grease," and even "Xanadu" and "Can't Stop the Music." The first hour is kind of fun, but it gets tedious during the final 30 minutes. And the deus ex machina that ends the film is just a cop-out.

Oh boy, it's a wild ride. I mean, I've seen some bad movies in my time, but this one takes the cake. It's a sci-fi musical that's supposed to be a big-budget production, but it looks like it was made on a shoestring budget with a bunch of rejects from the 70s music scene. The story is about a singer who gets whisked away to a dystopian future where she becomes the key to saving the world from... something. But honestly, I didn't care because the plot was so convoluted and nonsensical. And don't even get me started on the music - it's like someone took all the worst excesses of 70s rock and disco and mashed them together into a cacophonous mess. The acting is atrocious, the special effects are laughable, and the production values are just cringe-worthy. It's like they took all the worst parts of a bad TV pilot and stretched it out into a 2-hour movie. I'm not even kidding when I say that I spent most of the movie laughing at how bad it was. But if you're looking for an actual good movie, avoid this one like the plague.