Humans can be pests.
People can be real pests.
With The Applegates (1990), Michael Lehmann deconstructs the overly nuclear family in his entomological follow-up to Heathers – and the result is a superbly pitch-black suburban sitcom meltdown that lives just down the street from John Waters, Lloyd Kaufman, Tim Burton, and Joe Dante.
For the uninitiated: Ed Begley Jr. plays a family man-tis heading a brood of shapeshifting mutant insects from the Brazilian rainforest. Their mission? Blend into early-90s Midwestern suburbia, infiltrate a nuclear power plant, and wipe out humanity. Easy. Stockard Channing plays the mom, Robert Jayne is the heavy metal and pot addicted son, and Camilla Cooper plays the daughter. But Dabney Coleman steals the show as “Aunt Bea”, the enforcer who keeps the mission on track – by any means necessary.
You can tell this was made around the same time as Gremlins 2, Total Recall, and RoboCop 2, films that knew how to fan the flames of ’80s burnout. But Applegates goes for full-tilt cringe. It never fully leans into its inherent cartoonish absurdity, which makes the grotesque bits feel even harsher. There are some pretty serious and dark subplots here, and like all good dark comedies, you have to assume there’s a tongue hiding somewhere in that cheek.
It’s not outrageous in the ha-ha fun way. It’s just sortof casually repellent.
That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
I’m not sure you’re really meant to enjoy Meet the Applegates in the traditional sense. The movie’s got a persistent mean streak and it insists on rubbing your face in it. But I’m that nihilistic weirdo who’s into that dark “Oh No You Didn’t” blunt-force satire. The message is clear: suburbia is a shell game, and the average American family is trapped in a zero-sum self-destructive cycle. Feels about right.
It’s anything but subtle, it just grabs the electric racket and keeps swatting because the the joke is in the repetition.
It’s worth checking in, so check it out. If you can find it.
I couldn’t figure a way to insert the words “nuclear ho-locust” somewhere so, um, there it is.
-Pop
Wuxtry: The Applegates (aka Meet the Applegates) wrapped in ’89, but didn’t see a US release until ’91 thanks to New World Pictures imploding financially. They ended up offloading Marvel Comics to Ronald Perelman, which led directly to some of the most infamous crash-and-burn years in comics publishing. (No seriously, read Comic Wars by Dan Raviv, it’s fascinating. If you’re into that sort of thing.)