Monkey Shines (1988) Review

Monkey Shines (1988) Review

 

The VHS cover for Monkey Shines scared me more than any other at the video store when I was a kid, but I never saw the actual film until many years later. Did it scare me? Well, not really, but it’s still a pretty unique tale of simian suspense.

Allan Mann, an athletic law student, goes out for a morning run, and bam! He gets hit by a truck and becomes a quadriplegic, totally changing his life. His girlfriend leaves him, his overbearing mother hires him a bitchy nurse, his house becomes outfitted with voice command assistance, and, naturally, he becomes depressed. His life changes again when his friend Geoffrey gets him a service monkey, which is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a capuchin named “Ella” that helps him out around the house. But, there’s a catch. This particular capuchin has been injected by Geoffrey with an experimental substance containing human brain tissue, and it has made Ella a little too smart. Allan and Ella develop a strong relationship, and not only does Ella start doing malicious things to try and help Allan, they also start developing a strange psychic connection, which leads to bigger problems. As the little rhyme says on the poster: “There once was a man whose prison was a chair; The man had a monkey, they made the strangest pair; The monkey ruled the man, it climbed inside his head; And now as fate would have it, one of them is dead.”

Monkey Shines was written and directed by George A. Romero—most famous for Night of the Living Dead and the many sequels that followed—and while it isn’t one of his best movies, it’s been cited by many as a curiosity in his filmography, but in a good way. It wasn’t successful at the box office and didn’t resonate much with critics, but many of his films have been appreciated more later on than they were at the time. It has some interesting ideas, and goes more for psychological suspense than full-on gory horror, but a major problem is trying to make a cute little creature like a capuchin monkey scary (Shakma from 1990 featured a more apt species, an evil baboon, but to less interesting results), and it seems like Romero struggled to make his monkey scary, but it’s still entertaining at least.

The acting all around is pretty good, though the cast is kind of odd. Jason Beghe makes for a pretty great lead, and if it weren’t for him, I think the overall quality of the film would have been much lower. There’s Stanley Tucci as Allan’s doctor, Stephen Root as Geoffrey’s boss, and the monkey who plays Ella, credited as Boo, who is amazingly well trained. Some of the biggest highlights are lines of dialogue, with some clever retorts, interesting banter, and memorable bursts of insults. There are also some really entertaining little details, like how the door on Geoffrey’s car just never closes all the way. These little moments add charm to the film.

The first two acts are solid, but the third act loses momentum. Once Ella starts exhibiting increasingly dangerous behaviour, it becomes a more tedious than necessary progression to the finish, but there are two big moments in the third act that really stand out: when Allan verbally assaults Ella, and the final confrontation when he (spoiler) kills Ella pretty much the only way he could. There’s also an amazing jump scare right at the end that’s one of the more underrated “final scares” of horror movie endings, reminding me of the greats like the original Carrie and original Friday the 13^th.

Monkey Shines is “an experiment in fear” as the subtitle reads, and while the experiment's results may vary for some, it’s still one of the best killer monkey movies ever made, thanks mainly to the interesting premise. It hasn’t aged extremely well, but should definitely be watched by all George Romero fans.