Monday, November 15, 2021

The Apple (1980)

The year is 1994 and the world is controlled by BIM! BIM in fact being the highly addictive musical concoction of Mr Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal), who spends most of his time indulging with orgies with a whole host of freaks (and the rest of the time he wastes). 

Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Alphie (George Gilmore) are naive kids from rural Canada who have a dream to sing songs, but Mr Boogalow wants to drag them into his showbiz machine...

He indeed does get Bibi to sign but Alphie resists and he cast adrift from the extremely camp Mad Max style cast of BIM. Bibi gets drawn into a life of drugs and sex while Alphie lounges around writing songs and groping his landlady. Finally, Bibi sees the light and flees, and is reunited with Alphie who by now is in a hippy commune but Mr Boogalow isn't finished yet...

Quite frankly this is one of the strangest films ever made. A sci-fi comedy religious allegory musical. Although the future portrayed is largely nonsense you could say that the dark future envisaged back in 1980 did come true in some ways, with popular culture under the thumb of big corporations controlling kids of dubious talent. Unfortunately we didn't get the Mad Max / Gary Glitter-esque future outfits and cars with extra fibreglass panels added to them. 

The music (of this musical) isn't that bad and the sheer weirdness and campness of this film makes this highly enjoyable and entertaining despite how awful the story and acting mostly is. 

Brilliant nonsense. It really is quite extraordinary.