‘Insects are human too’
Meet the Applegates is a 1990 sci-fi dark comedy horror film about a colony of huge insects that move from South America to the United States. The shapeshifting bugs themselves after an idyllic cookie-cutter suburban 1950s family. Their mission is to cause a nuclear holocaust and human extinction. It was also released as The Applegates.
The movie was directed by Michael Lehmann (Scream Queens series; Dexter series; Hudson Hawk; Heathers) from a screenplay co-written with Redbeard Simmons. It was produced by Denise di Novi.
The Cinemarque Entertainment-New World Pictures co-production stars Stockard Channing, Ed Begley Jr (Eating Raoul), Dabney Coleman, Cami Cooper, Bobby Jacoby, Lee Garlington and Glenn Shaddix.
Plot synopsis:
The newest residents of South Meridean, Ohio, are killer South American insects disguised as the all-American family. As mantises living in the South American rainforest, the species reacts aggressively to deforestation by giant corporations.
Discovering basic English-reading primers and literature left by fleeing NGOs, the bugs have decided to send their vanguard north, mutated into the shape of a typical American family. There is bland nuclear power-planet executive Dick (Ed Begley Jr), his wholesome wife Jane (Stockard Channing), son Johnny (Bobby Jacoby) and daughter Sally (Cami Cooper). The insectoid Applegates settle into the suburbs and plan an apocalypse whilst learning the strange ways of humans…
Our review:
I was having a talk with a young man the other day about the tragedy of filmmakers who start out with a noteworthy hit, maybe a critical smash, maybe just a “cult” classic, then can never seem to follow it up. Yes, Donnie Darko figured prominently in the discourse, or did you guess?
A strong case could also be made for Michael Lehmann’s Heathers, the bracing 1989 black comedy about murder among American high-school students. Director Lehmann (abetted by screenwriter Daniel Waters) never seemed to quite capture that sinister sparkle again and ended up .
Meet the Applegates had the ignominious fate of going straight to the home video marketplace after languishing on shelves for a few years, back when such a thing was the kiss of death. The biting satire of US values, curiously, trades on the same narrative thrust behind the David Bowie/Nicholas Roeg landmark The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976). In both, a non-human element with mighty ambitions successfully infiltrates modern (American in particular) society, only to have the grand scheme go completely to pieces under pressure from the corrosive, vulgar and degrading values in which the masquerader is engulfed.
In Meet the Applegates, Jane becomes addicted to consumerist spending and runs up massive credit card debt. Dick is outraged, and his resentment at his mate’s poor home economics – plus his executive privilege – tempts him into office adultery with his horny secretary. Sally, at school, similarly devolves into the class sexpot, becoming accidentally pregnant via a star athlete and dropping out to date a butch motorbike-riding lesbian. Johnny hangs around with a couple of seedy marijuana-addled dopes and is soon an addict and peddler.
In the meantime, remember, they are giant mantis-like insects, the pre-CGI fancy puppet costumes by Kevin Yagher (key contributor to the Child’s Play and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises); in moments of emotional extremes, their monstrous sides manifest and they paralyse and cocoon their victims in the manner of huge wasps (it is a surprise, not in a very satisfactory way, to ultimately learn these supposed corpses are merely in suspended animation and completely unhurt). As citizens disappear, bodies are hidden all over the Applegate house.
Lehmann’s iconoclastic, acid wit and, more regrettably, ’80s nerdiness, come up now and then, as the caricatured small-town Ohioans exhibit Christian-religious mania (blaming all the disappearances on Satanists), lynch-mob mentalities, and essentially just giving viewers ample reason to cheer on the conspiracy to explode the neighbourhood nuclear plant. On that note, a parallel plot line shows a separate squad of mantises in human form clumsily making their way from South America to Ohio to finalise the mission. The “queen” for some reason has the form of a domineering, moustached male (Dabney Coleman), in female drag. Unfortunately, these scenes feel like they came in from another movie, and not a very amusing one.
Although this sounds like Meet the Applegates is unwatchably horrible it has a few good moments here and there, if you are in the mood for broad satire in a panto manner. But expect little in the way of a hidden treasure, unjustly exiled to VHS limbo. At least post-big-screen, Lemann did go on to do some interesting TV work.
Charles Cassady Jr, MOVIES & MANIA
Free to watch online on YouTube:
Choice dialogue:
“Keep it in your pants, Sampson”
“In order to kill bugs, you gotta think like a bug. They know if you catch ’em they’ll end up on the bottom of your shoe. All crushed. So what do they do? They try to blend into the furniture.”
“I could sniff out a bug through a cloud of French perfume. To me it’s not just a job, it’s like religion or great sex.”
“Parents are pigs.”
“I suppose a fading flower is still a flower.”
“Waddya think about putting down that brochure and doing a little mating.”
“Put a lid on it slut. This is a nuclear power plant not a cathouse.”
Notes:
Meet the Applegates was filmed during 1988-89, but was not released in the United States until 1991 due to the financial difficulties surrounding New World Pictures, the film’s production company. It was filmed in Oshkosh, Appleton and Neenah, Wisconsin.
For the full plot please visit page 2
