Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Apple (1980)

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Call me downright stupid, but I desperately want a big-budget version of Cannon Group’s 1980 anti-corporate, proto-surreal, biblically twinged, satanically dystopic, hard-rocking, soft sci-fi, neo-musical, The Apple, set in the distant year of … 1994.

That’s when I first heard about The Apple. Reading a snarky synopsis in a zine I can’t remember, I thought it was right up my weird alley. A decade later, I finally picked up a new copy at, can you believe it, the then-burgeoning Best Buy. Recently, selling old DVDs to Vintage Stock, I found this at the bottom of my collection and had to rewatch it. I truly liked it, more than I had in the past. Time heals all wounds, right?

The Apple uses the futuristic set designs of shopping centers, hotel lobbies and abandoned malls to create its 1994, where the spiritual fate of the world rests on the demonic visage of Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal), head of the music label BIM, which has its own theme song, “Do the BIM.”

Pre-American Idol, small-town Canuck kids Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Alphie (George Gilmour) appear on a futuristic talent program warbling the oh-so-syrupy “Universal Melody,” making them total superstars to the trend-swilling public. Well … one of them.

You see, Bibi is seduced by the voracious system, fully taken by the drugs, the sex and the unflattering costumes. Meanwhile, the virtuous Alphie eschews the whole system, writing protest songs nobody hears — probably the truest thing about this movie!

Something happens that makes the story even stranger: In between songs about how to “taste the apple” to make your dreams come true, Boogalow turns into Satan, small horns and gnashing teeth abound. Yikes!

Bibi becomes a total sellout in the period of two days. Although he’s tempted by the devil’s daughter (singing the sensuous, disco-fied come-on of “I’m coming … coming for you”), Alphie comes upon a hippie cult led by Mr. Topps (Joss Ackland), who is, to be sure, the Almighty.

As a matter of fact, Topps sings about a “child of love” and then, in his stately showroom-model Chrysler LeBaron, takes Bibi, Alphie and the rest of the commune to, I believe, Heaven. Praise be!

From its strained biblical allusions to Cannon’s low-budget way of depicting the apocalypse, The Apple is a PG-rated blend of Jesus Christ Superstar and Escape from New York. For a musical, the songs are the odd-man-out component; their lyrics are banal and the music substandard, but, I must admit, they’re also the biggest earworms I‘ve ever heard!

So, sure, the movie is pretty much “so bad it’s good” material, but perhaps it deserves more love — or, really, any love — so others can see what I can now see in The Apple.

And maybe we can start the campaign for a remake. Let’s all do the BIM! —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Thriller

Die Screaming Marianne (1971)

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By name alone, Pete Walker’s Die Screaming Marianne sets you up to expect one of his signature horror films that pushed boundaries in Great Britain. Instead, it’s a crime thriller, but it does contain a Marianne — in the shapely shape of Straw Dogs’ Susan George, no less. Bikinied and barefoot, she go-go dances her way through the opening credits, demonstrating why she’s billed as “The Hips” by the nightclub employing all her parts.

On the cusp of turning 21, Marianne has been estranged from her family for more than a half-decade when father (Leo Genn, Walker’s Frightmare) hires her freshly spurned boyfriend to retrieve her. Marianne believes dear ol’ Dad and Sister (Judy Huxtable, Scream and Scream Again) are plotting to kill her for her portion of her dead mother’s inheritance. Which they absolutely are.

And yet, brought against her will to the family’s oceanside estate in sunny Portugal, Marianne accepts an invitation to join her sibling in the sauna. What could possibly happen? A line Marianne gives her lover-cum-kidnapper (Christopher Sandford, Walker’s also comma-less Cool It Carol!) could be thrown right back in her face, not to mention the uneven film itself: “You really are quite unstable, aren’t you?”

Die Screaming is not “The Ultimate in SUSPENSE” as its poster proclaims. Heck, it’s not even the ultimate in Susan George vehicles by any measure. In Walker’s first three years of making features, from The Big Switch to Marianne, what he gained in production values, he lost in storytelling tightness. For example, I’m unable to work in Barry Evans’ (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush) role as the ostensible second lead because the mechanics of his character’s introduction are so convoluted, it would take more space to share than you’re willing to read. —Rod Lott

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Action

Seven Snipers (2026)

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Seven Snipers is one of those movies where you just know the first line of dialogue telegraphs — if not DMs — how the climax will play out. That’s standard op procedure for a setup so plain and simple: With a $10 million bounty on her head, former sniper Voodoo Child (Radha Mitchell, Silent Hill) is targeted for death by people from her past.

Having 116 verified kills over your career is bound to do that to a girl. Since leaving that particular skill set behind, Voodoo’s lived off the grid in the picturesque Australian countryside with a daughter (Annabel Wolfe, My Pet Dinosaur) bratty enough to skip school to bang boymeat.

One morning, a supposed real estate developer (Ryan Kwanten, Flight 7500) shows up at packin’ more than a fancy business card. One shootout — and bulldozer attack — later, Voodoo knows the next person to turn up for revenge will be The Dragon (Tim Roth, 2022’s Resurrection), so she calls former co-workers for reinforcement. Dropping in via helicopter, they also have stupid codenames, such as Milk (Ioan Gruffudd, San Andreas).  

I wish I could say Seven Snipers has more to offer than exchanges of gunfire while Roth scurries around in a shaggy grass suit for camouflage. But that’s all it is. Although it’s nice to see a woman, The Dustwalker’s Sandra Sciberras, in the director’s chair of something as male-coded as gun porn, the Oz action film is predictable, right down to trained experts exhibiting perfect aim … except when presented with the easiest, clearest shots, of course. Like everything in the characters’ sights, you see each beat coming from a mile away. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Reading Material: Short Ends 5/31/26

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If not for the centennial yielding such a tidy title, I suspect Tony Lee Moral might want his latest to be called Go to Hell, Donald Spoto: And You, Too, Tippi! From University Press of Kentucky, A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy seeks to restore Alfred Hitchcock’s reputation as the Master of Suspense rather than a posthumous #MeToo casualty. To that end, it’s concentrated on the making of The Birds and Marnie more than any masterwork, casting aspersions on Hedren’s harassment claims by outright disproving them or presenting statements from other present parties (including a contradictory Hedren herself). Later, Moral grants a peek into how the seminal Hitchcock/Truffaut came to be, charts Hitch’s physical decline and examines 2012’s pair of biopics (HBO’s The Girl and Fox Searchlight’s Hitchcock). Moral’s Century is not Just Another Hitchcock Biography, but a keen mix of reportage and criticism that ultimately succeeds at its author’s rather ambitious goal.

In telling the making of Dog Day Afternoon, Rachel Walther leans heavily on the real-life events inspiring the film. One of the people involved is described as “pleasant, spunky, a little crazy, and up front about his high sex drive.” I believe the same could be said about Walther’s Headpress book, Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon. It grabbed me immediately with the story of Sidney Lumet, Frank Pierson, Al Pacino and others crafting the all-time crime classic, then surprised me with how intoxicating the true tale of bank robber John Wojtowicz and his transgender lover, Liz Eden, is. Although the lover is present in the film (via Chris Sarandon), the volatile relationship between John and Liz Eden was fraught with so much tension and turmoil, it quite frankly deserves a movie all its own. Lastly, Walther ties the fact-based and factual narratives together by examining the legacy both bear even today. At around 150 pages, Born to Lose may be fairly slim, yet it makes a large impact. Attica! Attica!

Although growing up in America, I suffered my own Video Nasties battle; my Mary Whitehouse was my mother, so overprotective she deemed Grease 2 off-limits. So horror movies? Verboten! Although clearly British-focused, Peter Turner’s Unsuitable Film and Video Audiences: Underage Viewing Memories and Practices in 1980s United Kingdom translates well to my own cross-the-pond memories. That includes investigating the now-lost experience of the video store; the adjacent VHS culture, bootlegs included; and the uneasy, yet exhilarating feeling of “I shouldn’t be seeing this,” which was often literal in the UK’s case and extends from gory horror to T&A comedies. Taken page to page, Unsuitable Film is largely stodgy, despite the subject matter, so I often found myself skipping the academic passages to get to the next quoted recollection from study participants — not unlike fast-forwarding to “the good parts.” —Rod Lott

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Judgment Night (1993)

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The Judgment Night soundtrack was (and still is) one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, with rock/rap collaborations between Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul, Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill, and Helmet and House of Pain. Pick up a copy!

That being said, I’d never seen the actual movie Judgment Night until one recent afternoon. And you know, it’s not bad. If I had watched it in 1993, like I should have, I would have liked it quite a bit.

The plot is extremely simple: Emilo Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Stephen Dorff, and, ugh, Jeremy Piven rent a luxury camper for a title fight in the big, bad, unidentified city. Looking for a shortcut to the bout, they come across Denis Leary and his goons trying to kill them, turning the dangerous streets in a small-time bloodbath, with the climax in a rundown department store or a Chinese warehouse — I can’t be sure.

With the exception of Piven, who is mercifully taken out in the middle of the film, it’s a good little urban survivalist film, with Estevez, Dorff and even Gooding on the top of their game — whatever that game is — with Leary playing against his acerbic comedian persona as a real menacing figure.

Sure, Judgment Night’s at the bottom of my list of great good action films list, but it is pretty darn entertaining with some real playful setups, like the whole scene at the apartment slums, and enough white-knuckle suspense to keep you on your toes. And even though it won’t be remembered for anything but the insane soundtrack, it’s a pretty good watch overall. Give it a try.

Earlier that year, Estevez and Leary were also in National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1, a pretty perfect rip-off of the ZAZ formula that I happen to love. So Judgment Night should have been at least a rental — why did I miss this? And were Estevez and Leary the Hope and Crosby of their day? We’ll never know. Either way, get that soundtrack. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

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