By: Gregory Friedericks

I don’t know how to classify The Apple. It’s somewhere in between a musical and a modern-day remake of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, all set to a disco beat. With an interesting array of costumes that spanned from colorful spandex, feathered boas, glittering lipstick (on both men and women), and geometrically uncomfortable clothing, The Apple is perhaps one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen.

It was made in 1980, but set in the future—the not-so distant future of 1994, which is, of course, our past. So, in retrospect, it’s an odd movie in how people in 1980 interpreted the 1990s to be. In fact, 1994 looked something like an apocalyptic dystopia future where everyone danced to a horrible pop group. Perhaps it wasn’t that far off considering it was at this point that the Back Street Boys and Nsync and others started to rise in fame. But, nevertheless, The Apple is about a disco ensemble called BIM (Boogalow International Music) who’s Mephistophelean manager, named, of all things, Mr. Boogalow, practically rules the world with an iron fist of BIM-ness.

I think the oddest thing of the film was the fact that they were able to make it somewhat believable that people could be controlled by a pop-disco group at the hands of a character named Mr. Boogalow. It’s one of those things that when you think about it then it makes absolutely no sense, and in fact might sound completely nuts, and the creators of the film might very well have been committed afterwards, but somehow it worked. It was one of those films in which everything was bad—acting, costumes, lighting, cinematography, producing, just everything—and yet still, despite mathematical odds, they were able to make a fairly entertaining movie.

The Apple isn’t one of those movies that expounds on some sort of profound, moral truth, but rather dazzles the imagination with enough eye-candy that you don’t actually have to pay attention to the horrible dreck of a job all the performers, writers, and director were doing.

Again, it frames itself around the story of Adam and Eve, in which a boondocks town in Moose Jaw, Canada is somehow a renewed Paradise, and an unspecified metropolitan city somewhere in the world is this corrupt environment in which the people, especially Mr. Boogalow, are trying to corrupt the modern Adam and Eve. These two characters are a couple duet that sing mostly folk love songs and named Alphie and Bibi.

Long story short, Alphie and Bibi come to the big city to hit it big, as most folk duets do, and find a city steeped in the corruption and manipulation of Mr. Boogalow and disco (Damn you, Disco!). Bibi, as the modern version of Eve, is of course enticed by the shininess of it all and falls into Mr. Boogalow’s corrupt paws. Alphie, a principled chap, steadies his moral position of by joining a hippie commune, which is led by this somewhat prophet-Moses-like character who leads his people, the hippies, to safety.

Eventually, Bibi realizes Alphie was the only person that really loved her and runs back into his arms. This leads to the two worlds colliding. Disco versus hippies. And I was hoping that it would be a lot bloodier. But the hippies give in pretty fast. But right when you think all hope is lost and there’s no redemption, Mr. Topps, the deus ex machina of the plot, comes in and raptures the hippies into his floating, translucent Cadillac and speeds off to another world untainted by Mr. Boogalow’s and disco’s influence.

Sound absolutely ridiculous? Well, it is. That’s the point. That’s what makes The Apple an intriguing film worth watching. You’ll come out it wondering, ‘What the hell did I just watch?’ And part of the magic is that The Apple is just a truly bizarre and accidentally comical film.