SHOCK CINEMA
HOME PAGE
SUBSCRIPTIONS
AND BACK
ISSUES
FILM REVIEW
ARCHIVE
Hundreds of
Reviews from
Past Issues!
AD RATES
MAGAZINE
REVIEW INDEX

An A-Z List of
SC Print Reviews
SHOCK CINEMA
FACEBOOK
PAGE
SHOCK CINEMA
INSTAGRAM
PAGE
MISTER KEYES
At the Flicks
and Shit
SHOCK CINEMA
Film Favorites
SHOCKING
LINKS

Our Favorite Sites
'Chirashi'
MOVIE POSTERS

A Gallery of
Japanese
Film Posters

"Some of the 
best bizarre
film commentary
going... with sharp,
no-nonsense
verdicts."
Manohla Dargis,
The Village Voice
 
"One of the few 
review zines you
can actually read
and learn from...
You need this."
Joe Bob Briggs 
 
"Whenever you 
see a film critic,
pick up a brick and
throw it at him...
No great damage
can be done
to his head."
Jonas Mekas 

 

 Need more info?
 E-mail us at:

 shockcin@aol.com















THE APPLE (1980).

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.