Meet the Applegates

Meet the Applegates
Directed by	Michael Lehmann
Produced by	Denise Di Novi
Written by	Michael Lehmann
Starring	Ed Begley, Jr. Stockard Channing Dabney Coleman
Music by	David Newman
Distributed by	New World Pictures
Release date(s)	February 1, 1991
Running time	90 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$5 million
Box office	$485,772

Meet the Applegates is a 1990 American black comedy film directed by Michael Lehmann. It was filmed in 1989, but not released until 1991. The movie takes a dark, satirical look at the end of the world, nuclear holocausts, alienism and terrorism. Meet the Applegates was filmed in Oshkosh and Neenah, Wisconsin. The movie has gained a cult following.

Plot

The movie starts off in a forest with a family being attacked by a family of huge Brazilian Cocorada. It then moves to a typical-looking family moving into a well-off suburban Ohio neighborhood. The family are the insects that were seen earlier in the film, after they took on human form and met every "normality" standard from the magazine Family Bazaar. They moved to the suburbs after the husband Dick got a job at a nuclear power plant; he works there to one day cause an explosion that would rid the world of humans and let bugs be. But after a while the family drifts from its normalities — the son, a straight-laced A student, begins listening to heavy metal and becomes a junkie; the husband and wife drift away from each other, the husband having an affair at work and the wife becoming attached to her credit card; lastly the pretty, smart and nice daughter becomes a pregnant lesbian after being raped by a jock from the high school.

They each show their true bug form at least once in the film—the son does while smoking marijuana with his metalhead buddies, the daughter while being raped by the jock, the husband at the very last battle and the wife. As they drift away from normality (and nearly been found out by the neighbors) their aunt is sent to help. She becomes a nuisance and they decide she should be taken care of. The husband (Dick) decides to not blow up the plant, and kills the aunt instead. At the end of the movie they return to their lives in Brazil, and are visited by the townspeople that grew to love them, although the plant did not blow, enough radiation was released to remove the hair from much of the population of the town.

Availability

Sometime after its theatrical run, the movie was released on videocassette by Media Home Entertainment and CBS/Fox TV in the United States and in Canada by Nova Home Video. The movie has never been released on DVD.

Cast

• Ed Begley, Jr. as Richard P. Applegate
• Stockard Channing as Jane Applegate
• Dabney Coleman as Aunt Bea
• Robert Jayne as Johnny Applegate
• Camille Cooper as Sally Applegate
• Glenn Shadix as Greg Samson
• Susan Barnes as Opal Withers
• Roger Aaron Brown as Sheriff Heidegger
• Lee Garlington as Nita Samson

Release dates

•  Australia - November 8, 1990
•  United States - February 1, 1991
•  United Kingdom - February 22, 1991
•  Japan - August 1, 1992

External links

• Meet the Applegates at the Internet Movie Database
• Meet the Applegates at AllRovi