I can't imagine a more brain-damaging "musical" (I use the term loosely) than this futuristic disco fantasy from money-shovelling Israeli merde-meisters Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Concocted by hack filmmakers (or should I say, skagbag businessmen?) who were weaned on the worst of Vegas pop culture from the moment they staggered outta their kibbutz, the result is a combination of CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC meets LOGAN'S RUN. And it's fucking hilarious!!... The story revolves around the World Vision Song Festival in the ultra-futuristic year 1994, where the new dance craze The Bim (which consists of sticking a sparkly, gov't-regulated triangle on your forehead, then gyrating to generic muzak) is taking the moronic population of America by storm. Meanwhile, the villainous, gouteed Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Shaybal) sets his power-hungry sights on a pair of squeaky-clean folk singers who warble third-rate Manilow-inspired sewage. And a few innocent "little pills" later, the sweet young girl (NIGHT OF THE COMET's Catherine Mary Stewart) signs away her life and career, against her boyfriend's better judgment. What follows is your typical Faustian fable, enlivened by overwrought, jaw-dropping musical numbers. There's a Dante's Inferno-styled bit entitled "Taste the Apple", featuring Boogalow as Satan, and backed up by so many fay young men you'd thing it was a Morrissey concert. Or how about the psychedelic disco sex scene, when Mr. Wonder Bread gets dosed and watches the rest of the cast writhing through a kaleidoscope? But by far, the best is the Bim Exercise Hour, when the entire city shuts down to dance (badly) in the streets -- bikers, nuns, even doctors and the patients on the operating table! But it gets EVER WORSE! Because the last-minute heroes turn out to be a commune of futuristic hippies, whose idealism, love, and GODSPELL-influenced fashion sense save the day. Not to mention, God himself (future C.B.E. recipient Joss Ackland) showing up in a heavenly limo (I kid you not!)... This horseshit is packed with horrendous music by George S. Clinton, costumes so godawful gaudy that it makes Deee-Lite look like chartered accountants, and more money spent on eye make-up than on a script. The choreography (by future-AMERICAN IDOL producer Nigel Lythgoe!) is reminiscent of brain tumor seizures, the sets look like a third-world shopping mall, and the entire project has that undeniable stench of chintzy, foreign-lensed tripe. On the (barely) plus side, the wide-eyed Ms. Stewart is the only highlight, playing the head dish everyone wants a piece of. Plus, I sorta appreciated the flick's anti-American corporation sentiment. On the whole though, everything here is fake, puddle-deep and flaccid. The ROCKY WHORER of the Gaza Strip, which was (thank god) barely released on this side of the Atlantic.

© 1993 by Steven Puchalski.