The Apple

If you are gay and of a certain age (as I am), you may remember a certain glossy "magazine of entertainment." This was AFTER DARK, which was the gayest non-porn magazine ever, and it was most popular during the 70's and 80's. People like Liza and Bette appeared on the cover, and lots of tasteful male nude and nearly-nude photos abounded. It was glitzy, heavily-mascared, skimpy underwear-clad, pre-AIDS fun.

That brings me to THE APPLE. Beyond the title number, set in Hell, which has to be one of my favorite bad rock movie free-for-alls (with horrid lyrics and extremely hard-working dancers), the "sex" number, with multiple beds full of women in slips and men in gold briefs, absolutely proves my point that this movie was merely a film transcription of the late, lamented AD.

If XANADU and GREASE 2 can be issued on DVD, why not a remastered and remixed wide-screen edition of THE APPLE? Call your local congressman or gay cult-film fan TODAY!

I've been waiting for this movie all my life.until now,my favorite film musicals were "xanadu","voyage of the rock aliens",and "the pirate movie", but this one far and away exceeds them all.I'd heard about it for a few years,and finally got the chance to see (and tape) it.this was about three weeks ago,and i've seen it at least a dozen times since then.my friends have stopped coming over because i keep "subjecting" them to it,but i don't care,i'm part of the BIM family now.my coworkers have been giving me strange looks just because i walk around singing "popping power by the hour-SPEED","light my way child of love", the entire APPLE SONG,which i know by heart,and of course"hey hey hey bim's on the way".they may think i'm crazy,but i know someday Mr. Topps will come down and take me away in his holy pimpmobile.

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...

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 was channel surfing a few weeks ago when this...this...this..THING showed up on Flix. I was mesmerized. I grew up in the late 70's, early 80's and this felt like I was zapped back in time to movies like "Little Darlings", "Over the Edge", and "Xanadu". The whole look was scary. It looked like it was shot in a shopping mall. When I checked out the title, I thought "Where has this GREAT BAD movie been all my life! How come I've never heard of it before?" This is one camp classic that truly deserves a full resurrection. VH-1 should do a whole "Where Are They Now" on this movie. I'd love to know what the "actors" in this movie think of it now. Truly bad in a classicly bad/great way.