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