BIM Stars

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.

This is one of the most delicious fruits I've tasted in a long time.

Yes, it's cheesy, but you can't beat a whole musical number of

seduction that ends with a literal orgasm, the chanteuse singing

"I'm coming, I'm coming...." Hysterical!

From a pop anthropologic perspective it's also an interesting

image of the transition from disco to early 80s wave and pop. You

can see the seeds of fashion later made popular by the likes of

Madonna, MC Hammer, and many other somewhat unfortunate

style makers. This is the missing link between two distinct genres.

One of the best parts about this movie is its prophetic vision of the

massive corporate take-over of the entertainment industry. While

we are not forced to where little plastic icons on our foreheads,

there is no denying the stifling and destructive power that major

conglomerates have on what we see, hear, and read. So, if not

other reason, I love this movie for how eerily true it rings today.

Probably made as a "please God, let what happened to ROCKY HORROR

happen to us!", project, THE APPLE is so audacious, so over the top, so

totally awful that it is simply wonderful. The songs are cheesy, the

acting horrendous, the costumes nightmarish, the concept bizarre etc.,

etc., but when all those negatives are put together, the result is a

positively guilty pleasure to top all guilty pleasures. Please, someone,

release a letterboxed DVD of this film so that all its rocky horrors

squeezed onto the small screen can be seen in all their garish terrible/wonderfulness.......

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...

Proudly taking its place next to "Can't Stop the Music", "Xanadu", "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and other breathtakingly bad musicals is this rapturously awful piece of celluloid punishment. This one tops all of the aforementioned flicks in the heinousness department because the others, at least, contain some modicum of memorable and, even good, music! Released in 1980, this film is set in the far-flung future of 1994. Music (and apparently most everything!) is controlled by a huge conglomerate called BIM. During a World Music Festival, Stewart and Gilmour, two young, folksy types, pit their sappy love ballad against the over-the-top, synthetic music of Kennedy and Love. They come close to winning the competition, but the evil head of BIM (Sheybal) rigs it so that they lose. Realizing their potential, however, he attempts to sign them to a record deal. Stewart foolishly gives in while Gilmour stands his ground. Once he sees what the money, drugs and sexual excesses are doing to her, he attempts to break her away from BIM. The rather basic plot line takes its cues from The Bible, but is souped up with Rocky Horror Show-style hair, make-up and costuming topped off with ludicrous production design and some of the most dreadful, ear-assaulting production numbers ever to be captured on film. The story is slight to begin with, but is barely allowed to play out in between the endless, increasingly-bad songs. The numbers include a trip into hell, a plethora of couples writhing and posing on beds, a thoroughly zany enforced-exercise sequence and several tacky onstage concert sequences. Fans seem to be split on which songs they like or hate more...the disco-esquire BIM songs or the love ballads cranked out by Gilmour. None of the songs in the film are particularly memorable though, even if one can't get the imagery that goes with them out of one's head! It is astonishing that Stewart could actually carve out some type of career after this. Her fresh face and amiable persona somehow won out. She actually enjoyed a fairly healthy TV and movie resume in the wake of this film. Gilmour dropped off the face of the earth entirely, apparently. His singing isn't all that bad and he had a sexy body (shown off to good advantage at several stages of the movie) but he could not act at all and occasionally resembles Will Farrell! Kennedy and Love were also virtually obliterated by this turkey. Love was quite awful, but Kennedy actually appeared to have a certain amount of talent and presence and it's a shame she was sunk before she even got started. Sheybal had a long career as a character actor and he always strikes a distinctive note, but his singing here is disastrous. Ackland pops up briefly near the end and also can't sing, but manages to provide a little presence in a dual role. The film makers believed that 1994 would bring huge gas-guzzling cars with pointy ends and lots of paraphernalia attached, but aerodynamics actually won the day. However, their insight into the way the music business has evolved isn't all that far off the mark! Useful as a party-enhancing laugh machine. Look high and low, far and wide, but it is unlikely that a more splendiferously hideous film will be found.