‘The Apple’: the surreal musical about Adam and Eve
Whether you find the idea of actors bursting into song at any moment a delightful promise or a horrifying threat, at their core, musicals are a strange concept. Audiences are instructed to fully immerse themselves in a world where speaking is replaced by singing or musical numbers that begin after every significant event. We must suspend our disbelief, which is certainly easier for some viewers than others.
There are many iconic musicals out there that diehard fans adore. Then there are the less well-known ones – made straight for the big screen – which lack proper coherency. The Apple, a bizarre sci-fi musical, was released in 1980, and it’s, quite frankly, a pure fever dream of a film. Directed by Menahem Golan and based on a story written by Coby and Iris Recht, it’s one of those campy pieces of cinema that’s so bad it stretches into the realms of ‘so bad it’s good’.
The biblical tale of Adam and Eve has been used in cinema before, from The Private Lives of Adam and Eve to Mother!, but The Apple gives it a strange musical spin. At the start of the film, the first human is created by a God-like figure called Mr Topps (Joss Ackland), but he’s not called Adam – he is Alphie. He’s sent to Earth to meet Bibi, played by Catherine Mary Stewart, a young singer. Once they’re united, Aphie and Bibi compete in a Eurovision-style competition called Worldvision, where they lose out to an evil man named Mr Boogalow.
Soon enough, Bibi is swept up into the dark world of the music industry, which Alphie must try to save her from. Mr Boogalow was inspired by Eddie Barclay, who was the head of Barclay Records, which writer Coby Recht had been signed to a few years earlier. The movie is a strange sci-fi trip, with the pair ending up as hippies, temporarily earning safety before Mr Boogalow is back to his cunning ways. Then we get The Rapture, a saving grace for Alphie and Bibi but not, of course, for Boogalow.
The film is regarded as one of the worst of all time, with reviews absolutely condemning it for various offences. While some reviewers criticised it for more serious issues, such as perpetuating homophobia, the general consensus was that the movie was just irredeemably bad on all counts, including the direction, the acting, and the musical numbers. The sets and costumes are beyond extravagant, and while it’s clear that the dancers and singers give their all, the result is an attack on the senses.
The pre-production was fraught, which is perhaps why it turned out so bad. While Recht wanted the movie to be more dystopian, Golan rewrote it all. The pair argued during filming, their ideas clashing. Golan shot scenes that Recht didn’t approve of, hoping for something more commercial.
In the end, the movie was a disaster. If you’re into really bad films, then The Apple might be worth watching, purely so that you can laugh at it and revel in its utter failure. Mind you, there are much better movies to waste your time on.
