The moment you see THE APPLE title it is on! Voices in chorus shout, "B!" I! M!" You don't know what it means, but according to the movie, the kids of the future love it. Well, Canadian kids at least. It is mayhem on mayhem as the youth of tomorrow try to contain themselves. Hundreds of Extras are running around, most looking into the camera, and screaming "DO THE BIM!" and you will be doing it too. Pandi And Dandi (BIM'S newest singing sensation) nail their performance at the World Vision singing contest and OWN the audience! 150 heartbeats!! The highest ever! Don't ask. This Donna Summer/Rod Stewart combination fear no one and have no problem showing a little (or a lot) of skin if the occasion rises. Just as they are about to rejoice in their accolades and marketing tie ins (BIM SHIRTS!), a frumpy boy/girl duo from MooseJaw enter stage left. PROBLEM!
Alphie, played by dreamy George Glimour in his only role, sounds like a can a soup being opened, but the real star is Bibi. Catherine Mary Stewart is BEAUTIFUL. She sings with a gusto of a million Carly Simons. Their power ballad "Love the Universal Melody" is a hard sell to the disenfranchised teens of the future. Well futurist Canadian kids, that is. But, one by one they zap 'em. Alphie and Bibi stick with the oldest marketing plan in the world. Get the gays! Alphie sports the BIGGEST bull hoof in the history of Canadian musicals. Get the girls! The song makes girls cry. GET EVERYONE! The straight boys get to put their arm around their dates and cop a feel! HEARTBEATS rising! 151....154....The mastermind that runs BIM will not stand for this and sabotages their act. The crowd actually starts booing! I love a good booing crowd scene. Poor Alphie and Bibi. They chance at stardom is over, but someone is always watching....AND we are only five minutes into the movie!! PRAISE THE APPLE!
The Apple moves as such lightening SPEEEEED, that you must pay careful attention to every detail. When the vanilla couple is invited to a house party thrown by the head of BIM industries, we get slapped with a supporting character named Ashley. He does it all. He came up with the brilliant idea to do concert tee-shirts, but was shrugged off. So he puts his marketing skills to full use when he creates the BIM mark! It is a little holographic sticker that you can place anywhere! Everyone at the party loves the idea and while Alphie is turning down drinks, Bebe is popping unidentifiable pills and swooning with fake Rod Stewart on the rooftop. They launch into a real pretty mid-tempo pop ballad and the entire party erupts into a choreographed dance number. Ashley gets LOTS of face time during this number. Ashley on the sofa. Ashley on the phone. Ashley in swivel chair smoking cigars and with a different lady on his lap with each turn! He even gets an old hippy dude in his lap. Ashley knows how to party and ain't scared of busting out a little soft shoe if the need arises, which it does! The crowd BOOS Alphie out of the party and Bibi is left with the wolves of the music industry.
The next day, they both arrive to sign contracts at BIM ( for future reference don't EVER ask Ballet 2000 to start performing) and are transported into hell. What follows is for the history books. Hell has been run over by various aged dancers in costume. The musical number centered around taking a bite from an apple. Get it?! Bibi happily takes it and is introduced to an Actual Vampire, Granny Grumps and a whole host of monsters wanting a piece of her. She commits the ultimate trust fall while Alphie, in a loincloth, goes running!
The movie really gets moving with the big production number of "SPEED". Bibi is on a tour of America's finest high school gyms and she gives it her all. The "Speed" song is nothing short of inspiring. I swear I lost ten pounds jogging to this song. Once you have witnessed the sequence your life is forever altered and there is no going back. I have seen viewers of The Apple bust into Speed moves in bars, at parties, on the beach, on an airplane and even the QFC on Broadway. Once it is in the fabric of your being, you cannot control your limbs. It is three minutes and some change of pure joy. You will want to rewind it immediately for a more in depth study.
While Bibi's star is rising, Alphie is in the gutter. BUT he does have a new song! He tries to cut a demo, but everyone hates "Where has it gone". He sings it while walking around. He sings it on the monorail! FUTURE!! He has turned into a drunk and has a loudmouth landlady which turns out to be his Yoda. Little does he know that "Do The Bim" has been picked up by the national fitness program and at four o clock, everyday, all citizens are forced to stop what they are doing and DANCE! People pull over on the highway, nuns dances and even a surgery is stopped to do the BIM. And in what is many of the brilliant moments of The Apple, the guy being operating on starts dancing, but then dies of a heart attack! FUTURE!! Alphie can't weasel his way into the Bibi show and gets beat up after trying to get to close. He wanders around in the rain, bleeding to death, while singing "Cry For Me" and suddenly, Bebe is longing for Alf and starts singing it too! It brings a tear to my eye.
In a last ditch effort to rescue Bibi from becoming a BIM monster, Alphie bust into a party, but gets sidelined by fake Donna Summer. She seduces him through a song called "I'm Cumming For You". It's as dirty as it sounds. I think I know where all the Solid Gold dancers came from! Escaping with his bull hoof still virtuous, he takes to the streets where a hobo family finds him and brings him to a bunch of hippies. Bibi decides to go find him and she and fake Donna Summer sing a "No More Tears" rip off together. DIVAS! She is told to go look under a bridge. What she finds there is left up to your own interpations. God? More Hippies? LSD? It's a headscratcher for sure, but once the final credits roll, you want more SPEEEEEEEEEED!!!!
Released in 1980, just when America was turning it's back on Disco, The Apple failed to find an audience. But thanks to old videos stores across this great nation of ours, that don't get rid of anything, the people that were suppose to find The Apple did. Forced to deal with bad VHS copies and horrible pan and scan, the followers discovered an entirely new movie when it was released on DVD in beautiful widescreen. More dancers, more ashley and more SPPPEEEEDDDD!!!!
One of the best parts is Catherine Mary Stewart. Now, CMS, takes it to town! You get Night of The Comet AND The Apple? Plus The Last Starfighter (she is trailer park trash in it!!!) and a couple of wanna-be rock musicals like Scenes From The Goldmine. It is The Apple that allows us to know just what a triple threat CMS is. Watch yourself!
No comments:
Post a Comment