Monkey Shines (1988)

Genius Romero momentarily evolves into a primitive Hollywood monkey

Sorry George, I love ya, but what happened? Monkey Shines has an incredibly intelligent and unique premise. After a debilitating accident left him paralyzed, Allan Mann is introduced to Ella, a highly intelligent monkey. This animal has specialized training to help him adjust and cope with this drastic change in his lifestyle. It's a match made in heaven, Ella's skills and comprehensive abilities are extraordinary. But there is more to the story, of course. Ella has been injected with a special scientific formula, and the pair have unknowingly become part of an experiment. In the process they form an eerie bond, a possible telepathic link. Ella starts anticipating Allan's thoughts and acting out his subconscious desires. This soon turns violent, and the results are pretty frightening. The suspense builds steadily and provides some interesting subplots. Unfortunately though it gets a little too far-fetched and ridiculous. When this cute little monkey goes on a killing rampage, I couldn't help but shake my head. It made me wonder how a younger Romero might have handled the climax, possibly toned it down some. Maybe current audiences aren't much for subtlety, but I think this could have been one of the greats. Oh well, still not bad. 3.5 stars. November 15, 2008

Man's Best Friend Is A Dog; His Worst Enemy Is A Genetically Altered Monkey

Hard to believe that the man who directed zombie horror fests such as "Night of the Living Dead," "Dawn of the Dead," and "Day of the Dead" would bring us "Monkey Shines" - a tense, psychological horror masterpiece involving a genetically altered lab monkey that becomes psychotic. The real star of this gem is Boo who plays Ella. A nerdy researcher with delusions of grandeur keeps injecting poor Ella with memory cells from a human brain. He then gives her to his best friend who has recently become a quadriplegic. They become co-dependent to the max. Soon the two become psychically linked. As Ella becomes more intelligent, she also becomes more violent. Soon she becomes the arms and legs for her owner and carries out his desire for vengeance against those who have harmed him.

The acting is superb. Jason Beghe ("One Missed Call") gives an excellent performance as the handsome, athletic law student who become angry and bitter because of his crippling accident. Beautiful Kate McNeil ("The Last House on Sorority Row") is very convincing as the energetic, robust trainer of monkeys for the handicapped. Together, Beghe and McNeil are a cute couple; their love scene is very sensual, proving that the handicapped can do most anything. A young Stanley Tucci ("Maid in Manhattan" and "The Devil Wears Prada") is a despicable neurosurgeon; who would've believed how handsome (and muscular) he was when he had hair.

The gore is kept to a minimum. "Monkey Shines" relies heavily on character development and a suspenseful, clever plot in which science has created a literal monster. A quadriplegic becomes trapped within his home by a diabolical beast. "Monkey Shines" is intelligent, well crafted science fiction horror with strong elements of romance and the supernatural. The theme of anger becoming a physical manifestation is also prevalent in David Cronenberg's psychological masterpiece, "The Brood"; it stars Samantha Eggar whose anger is physically manifested into killer dwarfs.

I enjoyed "Monkey Shines" much more than George Romero's zombie films. If you enjoy films about pets turning against their owners, then you may also want to watch "Cujo" or "Man's Best Friend." There are many films involving genetically altered lower life forms such as bees, wasps, bats, etc., but none of them are as sophisticated or psychologically horrifying as "Monkey Shines." Boo really shines in her performance as the homicidal monkey, Ella.
November 15, 2008

0.25 STARS: Everybody needs a monkey like Ella...too bad the movie sucked though.

More of an off-beat sci-fi-thriller than a horror movie, "Monkey Shines" is about a man named Alan who is involved in a terrible accident and is consequently paralyzed. After seeing how distraught Alan is, his friend, Jeff, decided to give Alan one of his lab monkeys that he was using to test some kind of secret serum he invented.

The monkey, Ella, is very smart and takes a liking to Alan. However, something strange begins to happen and so the title of this movie begins to make some sense. After a while, Alan sees himself getting very angry and then bad things start happening. I wish I had a monkey like Ella. She's the best character in this movie, but that's not saying much.

Coming off his zombie movies and "Creepshow", George A. Romero attempted something a little bit different with "Monkey Shines", but was it effective? The short answer of course is no. About the only thing interesting to "Monkey Shines" is certainly not the story itself but rather the very convincing and effective acting by Ella, the monkey in this story and the best actor as well, although Beghe was adequate in his role. It's really amazing the things that they were able to make this little monkey do. I will give them that much. Ella deserved an oscar compared to the other uninspiring and insipid performances (aside from Beghe) given by the cast in this flick.

However, while the monkey was entertaining at first, that's certainly not enough to make a good movie, much less a good and effective horror movie which "Monkey Shines" clearly is not. While somewhat unique, "Monkey Shines" is very slow to develop, full of unnecessary scenes, and is rather unconvincing, uncompelling and uninteresting throughout the movie. Marketed as a horror movie, "Monkey Shines" is actually more of an offbeat and ineffective attempt at a scifi-thriller movie.

I was surprised by what I perceived to be a very lackluster, uninspiring and completely dysfunctional effort by Romero with "Monkey Shines". Simply put, "Monkey Shines" is long, boring and leaves you feeling rather cheated and disappointed in the end because of the way they went with this movie. I must admit that I had an idea of what this was going to be like going in, but I must admit that I expected more out of this than I actually got.

By the time things start happening, the viewer has already become quite bored with the charm of Ella and her monkey business if you will because the movie is way too long for the amount of action that actually happens in this movie. When things do begin to happen, not much is really shown. The talents of Tom Savini were really wasted in this film. Not sure why they even asked him to help.

Incidentally, I remember this movie being rather unsuccessful at the box office, and so I never watched it until now. I caught it on fearnet and I can certainly see why this movie has been unable to find much of a following, but I honestly cannot see why this movie found its way on to DVD. I guess it just goes to show you how some good movies still have not find their way on to DVD, but there is plenty of assorted DVD trash like "Monkey Shines" to go around.

"Monkey Shines" is a very poor excuse for a horror movie, and I would not recommend it to anyone, unless you just love monkeys of course and even then this movie will leave with the proverbial "bad taste in your mouth". Indeed, this movie basically sucks.

As an interesting comparison, I think one can see a parallel between this movie and "The Hand" from psychological and paranormal perspectives. However, I thought "The Hand" was a much more sinister and interesting look at the darkness of the unconscious mind. December 19, 2007

In the memory of a free festival

My recollection of this flick is hazy. I saw it late night in the London West End as part of the National Film Festival. There was no one on the door so I just sat down without paying. Niavely I assumed film festivals must be free. Good old fashioned British incompetence was the more likely culprit.

After a promising start it became apparent that George had decided to eschew his auteur style in favour of a strange hybrid of Hitchcock homage and Russ Meyer. That may make it sound more colourful than the laughable and undistinguished results. At one point during the interminable proceedings I recognised a borrowed speech from Doctor Logan in 'Day of the Dead' about civilization that seemed extraneous.

Romero is a talented director who is either 'on' or 'off' and when he's off, the results are invariably puzzling. Despite its appearence at the festival, no further Monkey Business was seen at the local multiplexes which was probably a blessing for the old boy. April 25, 2006

Good "Scary" Science Fiction with Human Drama

The story is not only scary but has both science fiction and human drama. I think the good acting helps the film not to appear silly as the idea of laboratory experiments on animals cause human to mentally connect to the experimental animals is silly.

Since murder and violence are part of the film, this is not something you can relax with or feel warm afterwards... I still think as a scary science fiction it is well made in terms of story telling, sound and photography effect, and acting.

I am not personally into scary movies because lots of unhappy people appear in them, but I am okay with this one. December 16, 2005

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