Christian Laspada
Bugs and insects appear frequently in movies, often serving as a source of horror, comedy, or metaphor. Most movies centering on bugs are horror or monster movies where creepy crawlers sneak onto the big screen to create unease. Movies today still use bugs in a major way, with films like Dune (2021) using them as a focal point. Although bugs most commonly play major roles in horror movies, one film flips this idea by swapping out monstrous or deadly bugs for comedic critters with a penchant for song and dance. That film was the 1996 campy cult classic Joe’s Apartment.
What is Joe’s Apartment (1996)?
Joe’s Apartment is a 1996 musical comedy movie written and directed by John Payson. The movie was created as a short film in 1992, which aired on MTV in between commercial breaks. Billed as MTV’s first feature film, the movie follows the titular Joe as he moves from Iowa to New York in search of a job and an apartment. Joe soon learns that his new apartment comes with thirty to forty thousand roommates: singing, dancing, comical cockroaches. Smitten with Joe’s filthy bachelor lifestyle, the roaches defend him from shady landlords and serve as wingmen (no pun intended) as Joe falls for a flower-loving girl aptly named Lily. The movie’s gross-out factor increases as the story progresses, including a sequence of Joe collecting feces around the city and getting a job collecting used urinal cakes. The film is a disgusting comedy with a lot of heart, filth, and singing roaches!
The Bugs That Came Before
Joe’s Apartment is a fun and comedic example of using bugs to create a gross-out entertaining experience. However, this wasn’t the first movie to feature bugs in a major role. The 1913 stop-motion feature, The Insects’ Christmas, is the earliest known cinema to include insects as a focal point. Since then, several insects have been featured in movies as a form of symbolism, a metaphor, or just to creep viewers out.
The 1950s are heralded as the zenith of bug-related movies, with many giant monster films produced back-to-back. In the 50s, insects were mutated into giant monsters, an allegory that reflected the societal fear of radiation and the atomic bomb. Films at this time used bugs as a metaphor for evolving science and gave way to enormous spiders, ants, wasps, and leeches.
Them! (1954) & the First Big Bugs
Them! is a 1954 black-and-white science fiction monster film. Noted as the first “big bug” film, the story follows Sergeant Ben Peterson and his partner, Ed Blackburn, as they discover a little girl in a catatonic state in a New Mexico desert. They soon learn that giant mutated ants, mutated by the first atomic bomb test, caused her state and are nearby wreaking havoc. The film is regarded as one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s and is a prevailing example of the use of insects in movies to portray real-world fears.
Beginning of the End (1957) & Locusts
The 1957 science fiction movie Beginning of the End chronicles an agricultural scientist working for the US Department of Agriculture using radiation to grow gigantic fruits and vegetables to end world hunger. However, the locusts that have been feeding on these crops become mutated by the radiation and grow to monstrous size, leading to them feasting on human flesh. The film is best known for its laughable special effects and goofy premise but still made way for insects in movies.
Black Scorpion (1957) & Scorpions
Another 1950s monster insect film, Black Scorpion, tells the story of a volcanic eruption that released giant prehistoric scorpions that threatened Mexico City. Although the movie is a routine 1950s insect horror movie, it has a unique charm with stunning visuals of Mexico and campy acting. The film is notorious for its special effects, with stop-motion animation being done by Willis O’Brien, the special effects supervisor for the original King Kong.
As the 1950s came to a close, monster bug movies slowly dwindled, ending the greatest decade of insects in movies. However, insects saw a resurgence in cinema in the 1970s, as a number of eco-horror blockbusters like Jaws (1975) were released. Insect movies in the 1970s reflected the fears that Mother Nature would retaliate for mankind’s actions.
Phase IV (1974) & Ants
Illustrating the fear of nature’s revenge, Phase IV follows a group of desert ants that form a group of intelligence and wage war on humans. Unlike the bug movies of the 1950s, this 1974 insect movie kept the ants at their normal size, instead giving them more human characteristics. It demonstrated the way nature can be evenly matched with humans. This changed the way films centered insects in their movies, latching onto societal fear of the unknown about nature.
The Swarm (1978) & Bees
Another fear in the 1970s was the fear of the arrival of the Africanized honeybee, a crossbreed developed in the 1950s known as the killer bee. This led to many bee-focused eco-horror movies in the 70s, such as the 1978 cult classic The Swarm. The movie follows a massive swarm of deadly African bees that spread terror across America. The movie used real bees, totaling between 15-22 million with 800,000 bees having their stinger removed for cast safety. The movie received poor reception, but still captured the prevailing fear of deadly bug species of the time.
What Makes Joe’s Apartment Great?
While bug films of the 1950s and 70s used insects for horror and monsters, Joe’s Apartment uses insects for comedy and narration. The movie completely subverts the way movies about bugs have been written. Having the bugs be musical comedians brings a fun new perspective to the movie genre and it came right before the release of A Bug’s Life (1998) and Antz (1998) which did a similar thing. What makes this effective is the way that the storyline follows the general stereotypes about roaches. Roaches are generally associated with filth, and the movie progressively gets grosser. This is even highlighted in Joe’s physical appearance as he becomes dirtier and dirtier throughout the movie. Like Beginning of the End, Joe’s Apartment takes an insect and develops a premise around the label of the bug, the former using locusts to bring about the apocalypse.
Joe’s Apartment has also become an underrated campy cult classic because of its great use of special effects. Like the great bug movies before it, Joe’s Apartment beautifully blends live-action and puppetry with stop-motion animation. However, with the advancement of filmmaking in the 90s, the movie also used computer animation to create thousands of roaches. Blue Sky Studios was responsible for bringing the roaches to life, using CGI to reproduce the anatomy of a cockroach. The result is a set of icky squishy comical critters. The movie unfortunately received a poor reception, likely from the unpleasant nature of the plot. However, the film revolutionized the way insects were included in movies while still making an enjoyable viewing experience for viewers and has a cult following to this day.