Synopsis
Sex, Bugs and Rock 'n Roll.
A nice guy has just moved to New York and discovers that he must share his run-down apartment with a couple thousand singing, dancing cockroaches.
1996 Directed by John Payson
A nice guy has just moved to New York and discovers that he must share his run-down apartment with a couple thousand singing, dancing cockroaches.
Jerry O'Connell Megan Ward Billy West Reginald Hudlin Willi One Blood Tracy Vilar Pepa Robert Vaughn Shiek Mahmud-Bey Jon Spencer Paul Bartel Tommy Hollis Don Ho Jim Sterling David Huddleston Vincent Pastore Scott Bigelow Moby Dave Chappelle Godfrey Tim Blake Nelson BD Wong Lord Kayson Alex Molina Frank Bello Jim Turner Wayman Ezell
El cuchitril de Joe, Bienvenue chez Joe, L'appartement de Joe, Joes Apartment - Das große Krabbeln, Joe e as Baratas, Bogaras Joe, דירתו של ג'ו, 죠의 아파트, Квартирка Джо, Апартаментът на Джо, Karaluchy pod poduchy, A casa di Joe, Švábi, El departamento de Joe, Šváby, Апартаменти Джо, Džo butas
i just hit my 12-year NYC anniversary (whoa) and i’ve spent too much of that time hating on roaches when actually it turns out they are musically-talented anti-landlord prison abolitionists!!! we simply must stan.
That silly comedy you watched dozens of times as a kid grows up to be an overtly socialist screed by way of Busby Berkeley. Bitchin' songs, bitchin' politics.
anti-gentrification MTV grease-fingered two-stroked live action cartoon zaniness, boiled in a vat beside animal fat, old pants, bathroom scum, rent bills and shoe rubber. some kind of Gen-X gig-rat looney tunes that feels like it was made by people who exclusively set their alarms for 120 Minutes and smoked pen ink to drown out the landlords knocks at the door. somethin a bit COMMIE about these bugs hmmm? unifying to help better the community and creating art as equals HMMMM? good imo
basically completely the spiritual sequel to Freaked (one of my favourite films) and it even casts Megan Ward (from Freaked, one of my favourite films) (!!!!) so obviously i love it and obviously its embarrassing but fuck it.…
Is JOE'S APARTMENT the most 90s movie ever made?
If anything, only in the 90s would a first-time filmmaker be given free rein to adapt their short film, about a guy who lives with too-helpful roaches, into a 13 million-dollar feature without any studio interference (The director is the only credited writer!)
Like the short, it's a live-action cartoon, filled with an exhausting amount of zaniness (WIDE ANGLE LENSES!), a very funny (to me) sense of gross-out humour, and a distinct lack of pop culture references beyond cool stuff like LOVE & ROCKETS and Peter Bagge's HATE. If you hate roaches, then you should stay far away, but if you like wise-cracking horny characters voiced by Billy West, come on down!…
loved this when I was 12 because the roaches are horny, love this as an adult because the roaches are anti-landlord activists
“We know where you live. We LIVE where you live!”
-frantic camera movements
-juvenile humor
-90’s MTV aesthetic
-brisk runtime
-songs about garbage, sex, and redemption
Joe’s Apartment is one of a kind and there’s nothing like it. It fully commits to its ridiculousness and I love it. I want to get baptized by Ralph & Rodney while the gang sings “The healer touched my feeler.”
this desperately needs a blu release.
"The East Village Sucks!"
It still does.
Joe is a recent college graduate from Iowa who made the big trip to New York City to find a job and maybe even some love. Broke and with no prospects, he gets lucky and catches the keys from a dying woman to a rent controlled apartment in a rundown tenement building in the East Village. In fact he is the last tenant. He's also a slob who never cleans up and leaves old food everywhere so he becomes a big hit with the talking roaches who have lived there long before him. When the landlord sends his thugs to evict him with the hope of developing the property, the roaches know that…
“All over New York City, people are pissing on my name!”
One of my film teachers in high school had a poster of this film in their classroom all 4 years I attended their classes. It’s the only way I knew about this film’s existence at all actually. It’s kind of weirdly rare on DVD though, so I never got around to watching it until today, where I found it on VHS at a goodwill. And man, this shit is insane.
It’s like Freddy Got Fingered levels of nonsense, with cinematography that’s honestly way too good for something like this. Seriously, this shit’s camera work looks like Evil Dead at any given time, it’s nuts. On top of that, you have the…