Runtime: 86 mesmerizing minutes
Directed by: Menahem Golan
Starring: Catherine Mary Stewart, George Gilmour, Grace Kennedy, Allan Love, Joss Ackland, Vladek Sheybal
From: Cannon!
This is a 1994 I’m crestfallen we never experienced!
Somehow, despite my esoteric tastes and the strong likelihood that I’d guffaw often at an infamous, inexplicable, bizarre musical from Golan-Globus which somehow becomes BIBLICAL-after all, the titular Apple is literally an Adam & Eve scenario-it wasn’t until last night that I finally watched this recording DVR’ed from TCM earlier in the year. There is plenty of lore attached to the film… purportedly at a screening, they handed out soundtrack records, only for them to be flung at the cinema screen, and there was to be an opening that made the biblical theme obvious, but the shoot went wrong and because Golan-Globus had little money then, they couldn’t do it over so it was excised instead…
From the opening, I was gobsmacked. In the far-flung future of 1994, Eurovision has evidently become a worldwide contest. We see that the world is full of Citroen vehicles that barely needed to be dressed up as Citroen back then made cars that always looked out of this world. We see funny clothing, amazing musical instruments, and a hilarious bombastic song sung by an act whose outfits I couldn’t even begin to succinctly describe. The lead heel is a sleazeball w/ a funny accent named MR. BOOGALOW. He runs a record company and well, in 1994 he effectively rules the world.
We follow two youths from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan—a fact the movie hammered home in the first 15 minutes. The lady in the pairing gets signed to a record deal but of course this is a cautionary tale… at least one apparently conceived by people high on drugs! Phantom of the Paradise is undoubtedly better in its parable about the sins of the music industry (so was Josie and the Pussycats, for that matter) but cripes was this ever stranger than the either of those. Most of the surprises I’d rather not spoil; even if I did, people would likely not believe my description of the finale and how it involves a Rolls-Royce Camargue, of all things. The production usually looked so cheap, how they got such a vehicle…
The entertainment I derived from the film did not come from the outlandish plot nor the acting-not even Catherine Mary Stewart shined in her role-but rather how boldly weird this was. While George S. Clinton is a fine film composer, the music here pales in comparison to what Paul Williams did in Phantom. That said, at least most of those tunes were at least catchy, and in the most overtly disco song, some of the lyrics had me howling w/ how unsubtle they were in lewdness. While I’m a heterosexual man, to my eyes the movie does not have gay undertones… they’re actually gay overtones.
No surprise this is one of the most polarizing movies you’ll find on Letterboxd. Subsequently it is one of the hardest to rate—technically it is pretty bad and misguided in its messages. I’ll rate it as 3 stars due to the music, how I laughed often, the extravagant outfits seen throughout, and how this is an example of a product (outlandish musicals) we haven’t been blessed with in ages… Cats doesn’t count.
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