Watch Caged Terror (Golden Apples of the Sun) For Free

As Good As It Gets

A Major Disappointment

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is a film of many parts. Unfortunately, most of those parts don't seem to fit together very well, and some of them are distinctly out of place. Written, produced, and directed by Barrie McLean and Kristen Weingartner, Golden Apples of the Sun (or, as it is more commonly known, Caged Terror) plays like a piece of improvisational theatre shot in the backwoods of Quebec. Elizabeth Suzuki and Peter Harkness star as Jan and Richard, a pair of big city kids who decide to get back to nature by going for a hike in the woods. Here they encounter some impressive nature photography courtesy Roger Moride, best known for shooting that Neil Sedaka slasher flick, Playgirl Killer. The countryside looks beautiful, but Suzuki and Harkness are strictly amateur hour, and things really get a bit awkward when Galt McDermott's jazzy score kicks in (as performed by Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie and his band). It's a fine score, but makes no sense in this setting. Meanwhile, loners Jarvis and The Troubadour (Derek Lamb and Leon Morenzie) are also wandering the woods with their guitars and ponchos, but our four protagonists don't meet up until long after Suzuki and Harkness engage in a little softcore saturnalia and then discover an abandoned house deep in the woods. In fact, the first hour of the film is terribly, terribly earnest, with all sorts of cod philosophy offered as deep thoughts by Jan and Richard. Things then take a turn for the exploitative after Richard decides to take a crap, at which point Jarvis and The Troubadour show up and start flashing back to their time in 'Nam. After an unfortunate misunderstanding involving a gun, the film reaches its climax with violence-prone Richard being locked inside a big bird cage, though not the kind Roger Corman was familiar with. This baffling film defies categorization and criticism: I could just as easily give it a 2 as an 8, so I'm going to take the coward's way out and give it a 5. I can safely claim that there's no other film quite like Golden Apples of the Sun, but the closest I can get is Garson Kanin's extremely underrated post-Vietnam War drama The Visitors.

When I watched this film the first time, it was a taped copy and the title was/is Caged Terror. I still own the tape, and I confess, I've watched it more than once from beginning to end! The film is extremely low budget and the dialogue is often unintentionally amusing! I have gotten a few of my friends to watch this and we've had some great laughs from the terrible script. The film concerns a couple, (remember this is like early 70's so they are just too hip man!) who go on a week-end camping trip in what I believe was supposed to be upstate NY. They have some hilarious dialogue after catching and eating a fish and the girl bemoans the death of the fish and that they ate it! The guy comes back with something goofy about how they ate the fish and now it was a part of them, and he goes; "And that's beautiful man!" Heavy man, really heavy! LOL! Anyway, along come a couple of Vietnam vets, one of who plays the flute, I believe. (At any rate they are musical fellows!) The guys are clearly attracted to the girl and when the couple prove unfriendly, they end up terrorizing them during the night. The guy ends up caged in a chicken coop, and has to watch his girl friend being ravished by the two guys. Actually, by the end of the night, she seems to be pretty into it, and when morning comes, the guys leave and the girl and guy are free to leave. Supposedly the guy has learned a lesson about how to treat people, and the girl has a smile on her face! :) Anyway, I would recommend this film highly to anyone looking for a damn good laugh! It never fails to amuse me anyway! If I could find this on DVD and replace my old tape copy, I'd actually buy it again, it's classic camp! You gotta love this stuff!

I saw this movie a couple years back. I could'nt sleep and there was nothing on. So I peeped it. What really gets me is it makes no sense and thats why its disturbing. Richard gets tied up in chicken wire and Jarvis starts making out with Richard's girl while she's unconscious. Then Jarvis's buddy Troubador is playing some stupid song on his guitar. By the next morning it shows Richard's girl talking to Jarvis and Trouby and then she walks back to Richard and looks at him while he's still tied up. Then they play some happy music and the movie is finished. I mean what happened? Did they brake up? And what was she saying to those 2 guys(Trouby and Jarvis)? Its to puzzling and to poor to. I can't stand movies that are disturbing and don't make sense. This was the worst film i've ever seen since the 90's version of Lord of the Flies.

I used to review videos for Joe Bob Briggs' legendary "We Are The Weird" newsletter. I saw a lot of stinkers, but this by far was the worst, and the years have not been kind - it remains the most indecent crime against cinema I have ever witnessed. Don't get me wrong - CAGED TERROR is nominally more technically competent than, say, MONSTER-A-GO-GO or THE GUY FROM HARLEM or something of that ilk. What solidifies its claim as Worst Movie Of All Time for me is its unique blend of bare proficiency with crippling pretension. Is it a Vietnam commentary? An ecological protest? An incitement to race riot? A study of man's inhumanity to man? A novel exercise in padding nature footage out to (nearly) feature length? In short: a hep young urban professional (possibly the most loathesome screen character ever) somehow seduces a nubile Asian-American associate into camping in the woods with him. After brow-beating her with quasi-philosophical clap for the better part of an hour, they run across two wandering veterans, the unforgettable Jarvis (a righteous brother) and the Troubadour (guitar-toting Manson Family reject). Hey, a plot twist! Tension! Action! Suspense! Well, no, just a climactic getting-locked-in-a-makeshift-wire-chicken-coop-and-lightly-belittled scene. The victim in question stares listlessly at the captors and mutters, "No... no... please... don't..." Meanwhile, Jarvis addresses the Troubadour as "Trouby" once every two minutes, bringing to mind nothing so much as the alien star of Juan Picquer's POD PEOPLE. That's about all that happens in CAGED TERROR, and such a synopsis perhaps makes it seem almost tolerable. But trust me, I've seen thousands of movies in my life, and this one has remained, for the past eight years since I first saw it, the absolute worst. (I pop it in the old VCR once every two years or so just to reassure myself, and reassure myself I certainly do.) I think the element which makes CAGED TERROR so particularly hateful is this: very little happens, and although what little does happen happens quite poorly and quite slowly, what truly makes it compulsively unwatchable is the suffocating sense that the filmmakers REALLY, REALLY WANT to shove some kind of message down your throat. But because CAGED TERROR is so incompetent and ineffectual, what was intended as a civics lesson becomes a crash course in intense viewing discomfort. This film is 75 minutes long and feels like three and a half hours. It's terrible, truly truly terrible. Folks, trust me, I saw GHOSTS THAT STILL WALK and this one is worse. Go see it! You'll thank me. And curse me. Just for the record, my favorite line: (In CAGED TERROR but perhaps EVER) "Yeah, well, you probably think the Song of Solomon was an allegory for Christ's love for the church...!" (NOTE: Must be delivered in a tone of concerted condecension.)