Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film was nominated for Worst Picture. According to Stinkers founder Mike Lancaster, The Apple was technically the worst movie of the year—and the worst he had ever seen—but its profile was too low to really warrant winning the award. Instead, Worst Picture went to Popeye. The ballot was revised and re-released in 2006, where the Worst Picture results remained the same. In addition, the film received six more nominations, two of which were wins: Worst Director (Golan) and Least “Special” Special Effects. Its other four nominations were for Worst Screenplay, Worst Song (both “B.I.M.” and “Universal Melody”), and Most Intrusive Musical Score. From retrospective reviews, Eric Henderson of Slant magazine gave The Apple one star out of four and said "every song in the goddamned movie sucks" and added that the film's "relentless bad taste is sure to appeal to the same audience that won't even realize they're being slapped in the face". TV Guide stated "The Apple was clearly designed to duplicate the success of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and failed dismally, in large part because the music is so stupendously banal... The lesson: Making a cult hit is harder than it looks." Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly gave the film a scathing review: "The Apple isn't just the worst disco musical ever made; it could very well be the worst movie ever made, period." Bill Gibron of DVD Verdict described The Apple as "a gamy glitterdome of outrageous kitsch passing itself off as a futuristic fable." Gibron strongly criticised the film's music, saying "Lines fail to rhyme, emotions are so spelled out that inbred invertebrates can figure out the meaning, and everything feels like it was produced by Georgio Moroder's insane brother...The Apple should be a celebration of all that is camp. Instead, it's just seriously disturbed." However, articles about the film's 2017 Blu-ray release were much more favorable towards The Apple. Austin Trunick honored it as "the perfect sort of cult film – unintentionally campy, with an insane premise, great production value, and memorable songs – that most people, once they've seen it, spend the rest of their movie-loving lives trying to get it in front of as many other people as possible." Rizzo praised it as an example of "a filmmaker trying to do too much and attempting to punch above their weight, rather than doing the lazy,