Monkey Shines (1988)
Directed by George Romero
Starring Jason Beghe, John Pankow, Kate McNeil, and Joyce Van Patten
I hope the logline for this movie was, “Monkey see, Monkey kill”. It perfectly captures the story of a man in need and his murderous fuzzy friend. A cross between Fatal Attraction and Misery with a monkey, Monkey Shines takes the concept of a killer helper monkey seriously. And for the most part, it succeeds.
The hero of the film, Allan, is introduced as a happy and active young man. During a morning run, our protagonist is hit by a truck. The accident makes him a quadriplegic and Allan cannot cope with his new condition. What follows is the continuous downward spiral of Allan’s life. Allan’s girlfriend is having an affair with his surgeon. His mother intends to stay and take care of him. He needs help to perform the simplest of daily activities. It looks like Allan will never live the life he wanted for himself.
Jeff, a scientist conducting experiments on capuchin monkeys, is Allan’s old friend and roommate. In his lab at the university they both attend, Jeff creates a brain boosting serum made from human memory cells. Harassed by the Dean to show some progress in his project, Jeff injects one monkey with an unsafe amount of the smart serum. He wants to help Allan while continuing his dangerous drug testing, so Jeff decides his subject monkey shall be trained as a helper.
Allan is gifted with Jeff’s brainy monkey, Ella. With the help of a monkey trainer, Melanie, they teach Ella to assist Allan with everyday tasks. Allan and Ella become very attached to each other, with their relationship forming the main focus of the story. Their connection is so strong that Ella begins to know what Allan is thinking. As Jeff continues the injections, Ella’s mental bond with Allan grows stronger. She begins to influence him, letting his animalistic side come out. Allan’s anger becomes Ella’s anger, as she starts to carry out revenge killings for Allan. When he realizes what Ella is capable of, Allan is already too late to stop her rampage against the people in his life.
The film overall is very well done. Tension builds as everyday routines are punctuated with disturbing developments in the relationship. At first Ella dotes on Allan, then she starts fighting his battles, then there is an interspecies kiss, and finally a break up that does not go well. Romero constructs their relationship to feed into a final confrontation worthy of Hitchcock, but in this case Norman Bates is adorable and furry. There is a feeling of real danger because the protagonist is physically incapable of escaping this situation. Even though she’s only a monkey, Ella is in a position to destroy Allan’s life.
While the movie did a lot right, it could not maintain its tone forever. There is a love scene between Allan and Melanie that delves briefly into camp. The two decide to get busy in the barn Melanie uses to house her trained monkeys. It is fairly standard except for the addition of loud monkey screams in the background. These screams continue to get loader as the scene goes on. Go ahead and make your own joke about them going at it like animals, someone being quite the animal, etc. The final scare really does not fit with the rest of the movie. Two hours of creating a psychological menace and ruthless murder out of a monkey, and the last fright is ripped straight from a well known horror film of a higher caliber. In case you were wondering, the movie rhymes with shmalien. While it creates a shocking image, the scene is very out of place with the tense thriller that came before it. Also, the film just drags after the accident. Allan adjusting to his new life makes for a pretty slow start. If twenty minutes got cut from the beginning, it could make for a tighter story.
Monkey Shines made an adorable capuchin into a terrifying, unrelenting avatar for a broken man’s fury. But it also dropped the ball from time to time and forgot what message it wanted to send. It is good, but it does not do enough to be great.
7 out of 10
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