YMMV / The Apple

• Anvilicious: The film is an extremely unsubtle morality play depicting a very trippy version of the Book of Revelation.
• Awesome Music: As campy as the film is, a lot of the music just works. A particular standout is "Speed", the number Bibi performs as her solo career takes off, which practically (and appropriately enough) vibrates with energy.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The film really bends over backward to present the BIM lifestyle as deadly, debauched, and a one-way ticket to Hell... with the help of a blazing, energetic funk/rock/disco soundtrack. At the same time, it doesn't make a very compelling case for the alternative other than "you won't be damned for eternity", and relies on rather saccharine folk songs for Alphie and Bibi. The movie's own existence is arguably the greatest indictment of the excesses of disco culture.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Many a laugh was had at the expense of Pandi's "Coming for You", namely that the song isn't subtle at all about what kind of "coming" it is referring to. However, one's enjoyment of the song can become a little awkward when one discovers that Grace Kennedy, the actress playing Pandi, caught the innuendo immediately and asked the filmmakers to change it to no avail, and was left in tears after performing it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Mr. Boogalow's name predates Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, one of Cannon Group's best-remembered films.
  • Derek Deadman plays a man with tusks. This came out a year before Time Bandits, in which he plays another man with a pair of tusks. Maybe the tusks were Deadman's idea?
  • Boogalow is a villain who speaks four languages to show his cunning: English, French, German and Italian. This is decades before Christoph Waltz earned critical acclaim by playing a villain in Inglourious Basterds who displays his cunning through the same four languages.
• Inferred Holocaust: All the people who've managed to resist Boogalow's control are raptured away by Topps to a new world, leaving no-one left on Earth to oppose him and he still is the dictator of a fascist state. Then again, considering that Topps and Boogalow are allegories to God and the Devil, Boogalow is less than pleased.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Miriam Margolyes has a brief role as Alphie's landlady. She was somewhat well-known in the UK prior to appearing in the film, but would go on to achieve much greater fame on both sides of the Atlantic in the subsequent decades.
  • This was probably the highest-profile screen role that Allan Love ever had... and he's still probably best known for his later appearance on the UK version of Kitchen Nightmares.
  • It was the film debut of Finola Hughes, a British actress who would go on to the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive, star in the soap opera General Hospital, and play the mother of the protagonists in Charmed.
  • This is the only film credit of Nigel Lythgoe. He is more famous for being a judge and executive producer of So You Think You Can Dance and American Idol. He considers it an Old Shame, probably due to the fact it was shot in a WW2 gas factory and most of the dancers were on drugs.
• So Bad, It's Good: Between the utterly insane plot and the actually quite decent music, it can actually prove very entertaining if watched with the right mindset.
  Nathan Rabin: The line for The Apple cult officially starts here. I humbly propose this as the ultimate midnight movie.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The medley for "Coming" bears an uncanny resemblance to Donna Summer's "Wasted", which predates The Apple by four years.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: The Apple is a cracked out Phantom of the Paradise, which is pretty much on crack already.
• Values Dissonance:
  • As one modern critic noted, the film comes off as homophobic as Alphie tries to save Bibi from the "sinners", consisting mostly of the LGBTQ+ community, including a Camp Gay, crossdressers and transgender people.
  • Also, Pandi rapes Alphie yet is the only sinner to get redeemed. At no point does she actually get punished for committing the rape, and the main sign of regret she shows is encouraging Bibi to go back to Alphie and helping the other woman escape the BIM compound.

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