The Apple [1980]

The Rocky Horror Picture show was a pretty influential movie, but not really as a movie or a musical. It was influential in how it kind of gave a space for weirdos and queers. It's not like people were rushing out to make dupes of it. But apparently someone did. And it's a rough ride.

This musical started being written in 1975, the same year RHPS came out and it was apparently originally in Hebrew. It would be easy to claim lost in translation when you think about how terrible the song lyrics are, but that's probably not the whole story. The plot is so thin I can explain it in one sentence: an evil record executive who runs a company called BIM that is slowly taking over the world signs a woman from a folk duo while her partner tries to get her back. In between there are songs that are almost entirely performances or character description songs without advancing the plot. The universe is supposed to be like 1984, but it's just generically dystopian with the terms of the world never defined outside of the fact that everyone has to wear a holographic triangle BIM sticker or get fined. Oh, and everyone is dressed like it's a particularly tacky drag show from the 80s. The costumes and sets were clearly where most of the ten million dollar budget went.

So what's with the title? Well, the whole film has a very on-the-nose Bible allegory going on. There's a whole sequence where the executive is dressed as the devil and the main character is given a giant apple that she is told to eat by one of the two main minions. This idea retreats for a while but then the film ends with God coming down from his Rolls Royce in the sky and rapturing a bunch of people: a literal Deus Ex Machina. 

 Is it worth it? We were kind of on the fence. It only started to feel long towards the end as we spent the first half trying to figure out what the heck was going on, and there's a good about of what. We couldn't decide. It's up to you.

Spoon Rating: 4

D War [2007]

D War aka Dragon Wars is a movie that doesn't quite know what it wants to be. It's part fantasy, part action, part martial arts, part urban fantasy, part Lord of the Rings inspired, and all mess. 

The film stars with a news reporter finding something significant to him that causes him to flashback to a discovery in an antique shop in his childhood. The guy owning the shop flashes back to Korea in 1507 to try to explain the film's lore. After over 20 minutes of explanation, we still weren't totally sure what was going on but here's what we got: every 500 years a girl is born with a birthmark tattoo that indicates that she will need to be fed to a dragon on her 20th birthday. If the bad dragon gets her, it destroys the world. If the good dragon gets her, he saves it. In modern LA this girl is Sarah, a 19-year-old who somehow can drink in bars and can't emote to save her life. The reporter finds her and tries to help her as the dragons attack. Around half the run time is dragon attacks with an evil army of creatures and seemingly immortal guys trying to get Sarah. They eventually do and take her to some kind of CGI nightmare to sacrifice her but the good guys win and the good dragons gets her spirit . . . which he apparently can just return to her after. She's fine. The stakes were even lower than we thought.

This film was pretty amusing, particularly with the lame fight scenes and very cheap-looking but probably expensive effects. We've seen better, but we haven't seen many movies with this good a scene of a guy getting hit by a car.

Spoon Rating: 4