When Willy and Lacey were kids, they watched their mom and her boyfriend, who wore her stockings on his face, make out. Their mother was so upset that she sent Lacey to her room and tied Willy to his bed. It didn’t work, though. Willy would get out and stab the guy to death with a giant knife in front of a mirror. And that’s only the first few minutes of this one!

Now we’re in the present, and Lacey (Suzanna Love, who was married to the film’s director, Ulli Lommel, and appears in all the sequels) is married with a young son, living with her aunt, uncle, and Willy (Nicholas Love, Suzanna’s real-life brother) on a farm. Willy’s never gotten over killing a man, so he doesn’t talk and often steals knives.

Over dinner, Lacey announces that their mother wants to see them one last time before she dies. Willy burns their letter, and this starts off a series of dreams where she is tied to a bed and nearly stabbed, which makes her husband send her to a shrink.

And that shrink? Skinny Dracula himself, John Carradine, who shot everything in one day. He tells them that they must face their fears and return to their childhood home. As they look at the house, we see the dead boyfriend reflected in the mirror he died in front of. Lacey goes shithouse and smashes it, which is totally not what you should do. Nor should you take those pieces and try and fix the mirror. Mirrors are cheap. Go to Wal-Mart. Buy a new and uncursed mirror.

The pieces left behind start to glow red and kill everyone in the house after Lacey and Jake leave. Speaking of mirrors, Willy hates them. One of them made him strangle a girl, so he paints them all black.

The shards of glass start doing evil things, like levitating pitchforks, ripping off Lacey’s shirt and impaling young lovers with a screwdriver. I was cool with the shards of glass until then. You’ve taken it too far, shards of glass! I guess we can blame them for the aunt and uncle dying, too, right? In 1980, Jake decides to bring in a priest to fix everything. This causes Lacey to get possessed by a mirror shard and attack everyone. She kills the priest, too, but not before he removes the mirror’s control over her.

That’s when the best solution comes up — let’s just throw the mirror in a well. This releases all of the souls, with Lacey, Willy and her son exiting a graveyard. Oh, no — a piece of the mirror is on her son’s shoe!

I was wondering where many of the plot points of this movie would go, and they often get lost, as if this were a foreign film. But it isn’t!  So, I did some research on the director, Ulli Lommel.

Lommel had one crazy career, starting with appearing in Russ Meyer’s Fanny Hill, then acting in Fassbinder’s surreal western film Whitey (as well as several other of the director’s films). Moving to the U.S. in 1977, Lommel became connected to Andy Warhol, who was involved in his films, including Cocaine Cowboys and Blank Generation, a movie that starred Richard Hell and was filmed at CBGB.

Seriously — a movie that rips off Halloween, The Amityville Horror and Argento lighting while feeling like more than two movies mashed up into one that also features a girl cutting her own throat with scissors, a child getting his neck broken, and a priest getting his face melted? The acting is horrible — but are you here for that? Nope. You want to get freaked out when people’s eyes get replaced with a piece of a mirror.

Part of me wants to make fun of this movie. But another part of me wants to protect it from mean people who say things like it lacks attention to detail. Or the fact that none of its characters appear to be actual human beings. And the camera angles are more reminiscent of Dad not knowing how to use the video camera than art. But yet, I love this. I want to love it more, but I love what it can be more than what it is.

The Boogeyman was followed by two sequels that utilize footage — a lot of footage — from the original.

Architect Larry Andrews and his new wife, Barbara (horror movie super couple John Saxon and Linda Day George; if these two ever had a child, it would either be a demon or a gleaming golden angel), have moved to a small island off the coast of the Philippines. Del (former minor league baseball player Michael Dante; he’s also in The Farmer and was introduced to acting by John Wayne), Larry’s business partner, had promised them a brand new condo. Instead, they’re moving into Casa Fortuna, the haunted former home of Esteban and Alma Martín (Janice Lynde), who died after a fight started by Alma’s obsession with the occult.

Within what seems like minutes, next door neighbors and psychic surgery experts Dr. Solomon (David Opatoshu) and his wife Leia (Anna Marisse) warn Larry that Alma wants his young bride’s body for her own. At the same time, Barbara is luring Del into the home with promises of sex and then shoving him off the balcony.

You know what this movie needs? An exorcism. Well, it gets it.

Herb Freed is kind of a forgotten king. I mean, the dude made Haunts, Graduation Day and Tomboy, which are three other movies I watch all the time. He wrote the script with producer David Baughn and Paul Ross.

You can watch this on Tubi or order it from Vinegar Syndrome.

The first time I saw The Apple, I was in the throes of losing my job, starting a new company and feeling lost. This movie not only made me feel like I could go on but also inspired me to start writing more about films and why they mattered to me.

You know how everyone thinks Cannon put out some completely crazy movies? If you haven’t seen The Apple (also known as Star Rock), you haven’t seen their full power. Directed by Menahem Golan, this slice of sheer madness is a movie I use to test the resolve of anyone brave enough to watch movies with me.

The genesis of this film begins in 1975. Israeli rock producer Coby Recht was signed to Barclay Records and began to feel distrustful of show business. He worked this into a story with his wife, Iris Yotvat, and brought it to the attention of his longtime friend Menahem. After hearing the demos for the song, the producer/director instructed Recht to go to Los Angeles immediately. They were making the movie.

Yotvat said, “That was marvelous. That was just fantastic to think that it was going to be a movie all of a sudden. It was just amazing.”

It wasn’t going to stay that way.

Recht and Yotvat lived in a villa that Menahem provided, writing six screenplay drafts in three weeks. As those drafts progressed, the story became more comical and less Orwellian. Soon, things were getting corny, out of touch and out of date. If you’ve seen any of the movies that Golan was involved in, you can see how that might be true.

After auditioning thousands of hopefuls, Recht settled on Catherine Marie Stoutdatedhe lead role of Bibi. Who is a singer. Not a dancer, like Stewart. He figured she could learn, but the producers decided to have her voice dubbed.

Tensions only got worse once filming began, as what started as a $4 million movie turned into $10 million and then more. Editor Alain Jakubowicz claimed that Golan shot around a million feet of footage, with six cameras covering every dance number, up to a four-hour rough cut.

The movie got way bigger than its scriptwriters intended. Shooting in West Berlin lasted forever, with a five-day covering opening number, the song “Speed” being filmed at the Metropol nightclub (which held the world record for the biggest indoor laser show), and some scenes were actually shot inside a gas chamber that had killed people during World War II.

Nigel Lythgoe, who later was a big part of American Idol, choreographed the film, saying that some days were “really, really depressing” and others “very, very stressful.” The cast and crew hated the script, but here they were, making the film.

Menahem and Recht’s battles soon got worse. The writer felt he should be in London mixing the songs (the sessions had more than 200 artists involved), but Menahem demanded that he show up at the shoot. The first day he was there, he witnessed the uncut version “Paradise Day” which featured fifteen dinosaurs and a tiger that broke free and escaped. This scene also contained elephants getting their trunks stuck in the set, actors collapsing while wearing a t,oo hot brontosaurus costume and a set that made it near impossible for people to dance on and cameras to move around. Removing this scene makes the Biblical end of the movie come out of nowhere. That’s right. None of this is in the film.

nearlyerine Marie Stewart has stated that nonfor e of this rattled Menahem. In fact, he was convinced that The Apple was going to be embraced: “Menahem was very passionate about what he was doing. He had very lofty ideas about the project. He thought this was going to break him into the American film industry. It had, you know, all the elements that he thought were necessary at that time. It was the early eighties and there were a lot of musicals. And Menahe,m thought that was his ticket into the American film industry.”

So what happened?

The plot is basically Adam and Eve meets Faust. Bibi (Stewart) and Alphie (Georgmeetmour) are contestants in the 1994 Worldvision Song Festival. They’re talented but easily defeated by the machinations of Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal, Kronsteen in From Russian With Love) and BIM (Boogalow International Music).

The evil leader soon signs the duo but they soon fall victim to the darkness of show business. Bibi is caught up in the drugs and sex and glamour, while Alphie is beaten by cops and nearly dies to save her. He also lives with a woman who is either his mother, lover, or landlady, and no one ever explains to us.

Eventually, they escape and live as hippies, having a child. Mr. Boogalow finds them and claims that Bibi owes him $10 million, but soon God, known here as Mr. Topps (Joss Ackland, The House That Dripped Blood, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey), takes them away in his Rolls-Royce and the Rapture occurs.

There are numerous scenes where people put stickers, called BIM Marks, all over their faces. Everyone has camel toe. And the movie is nearly 100% disco.

The movie premiered at the 1980 Montreal World Film Festival. To say it did not go well is an understatement.

Attendees hated the film so much that they launched giveaway records of the soundtrack at the screen. Menahem was so devastated that he almost jumped off his hotel balcony before being saved by his business partner, Yoram Globus. A similar scene happened at the film’s second premiere at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood.

The director said, “It’s impossible that I’m so wrong about it. I cannot be that wrong about the movie. They just don’t understand what I was trying to do.”

I get it, Menahem. You were just trying to get people to understand the power of love and music and being hippies a full decade after any of that mattered. You didn’t care if anyone else got it. You had a vision. And we’re not talking about any of those critics today. No, we’re talking about you. We’re talking about The Apple.

This is a movie that wears its heart messily all over its spandex crotch. The songs are ridiculous. The dancing is, at times, poor. The story makes no sense at all. You’re lucky to sit and witness it. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve watched it!

BONUS! You can hear Becca and me talk all about The Apple on our podcast.