Meet The Applegates (1989)

Director Michael Lehman’s follow-up to Heathers is a devastating and funny look at how modem life in America can ruin and devolve even the closest family, disguised as a science-fiction comedy.

Richard P. Applegate (Ed Begley Jr), Jane Applegate (Stockard Channing) and their family of giant, garbage-eating Brazilian shapeshifting cockroaches arrive near Akron, Ohio, on an important mission and disguise themselves as a “typical” American family.

Almost immediately, they are seduced by TV, drugs, heavy metal music, sex, and alcohol.

The daughter Sally (Camille Cooper) becomes a bitter, pregnant lesbian (after being date-raped by an obnoxious jock neighbour), son Johnny (Bobby Jacoby) turns into a burned-out pothead, and mother Jane becomes a credit-card junkie and shoplifter. They forget their mission and all secretly spin cocoons around tasty humans.

Meet The Applegates is a clever, bizarre movie, and the human-cockroach makeup and special effects are excellent.

Co-stars Dabney Coleman in drag (a bad idea).

Richard P. Applegate
Ed Begley Jr.
Jane Applegate
Stockard Channing
Johnny Applegate
Bobby Jacoby
Sally Applegate
Camille Cooper
Aunt Bea
Dabney Coleman
Greg Samson
Glenn Shadix
Opal Withers
Susan Barnes
Vince Sampson
Adam Biesk
Dottie
Savannah Smith Boucher
Sheriff Heidegger
Roger Aaron Brown
Nita Samson
Lee Garlington
Kevin
Philip Arthur Ross
Kenny
Steven Robert Ross
Rich Block
Mark Bringelson
Clem Shepherd
Chuck Lafont

Director
Michael Lehmann