Monkey Shines (1988)

Allan Mann (Jason Beghe) becomes paralyzed from the neck down after a car hits him. He falls into a deep depression until a scientist friend (John Pankow) gets him a trained monkey named Ella (Boo) to help him. Allan also begins to fall in love with Ella's trainer (Kate McNeil)...but Ella begins to get very attached to Allan--TOO attached.

This was supposed to be director/writer George Romero's comeback film. He said the studio loved it and was going to put a big promotional push behind it. But, for whatever reason, when this came out in the summer of 1988 the studio just dumped it. There was next to no ads for it or coming attractions. Romero remains bitter about it to this day. It's too bad this film was just ignored. It's no masterpiece but it isn't bad.

The movie does have problems--it's far too long (almost two hours), the ending goes on forever and some of the plot is really hard to believe (I thought the psychic link between Allan and Ella was really stupid). Also the POV by the monkey was annoying and overused and there's a REAL embarrassing sex scene between Beghe and McNeil. Still I do like this movie.

As I said it's too long but I was never really bored. Beghe is excellent in a very difficult role; Pankow nicely underplays the scientist and McNeil is fresh and appealing. Also Boo (who plays Ella) is a good "actor". I realize she was just trained for her role but the expressions on her face and body movement was incredible. The plot is also quite interesting--until the end when it just strains credibility.

So not a bad film or a good one but worth catching. I give it a 7.

Fmovies: If you're looking for body count, blood, or bogeymen, this film is not for you. It is more of a psychological thriller than a horror film, though it was billed as horror, likely because of the pseudo-science gimmick that provides the basis for the conflict in the plot.

While the film tends to wander a bit (i.e. a sub-plot involving the research head that gets dropped 3/4 of the way through) it stays fairly well focused on the main character and his problems. Aside from the lead, the most effective acting was done by the monkey(s), but the "real" actors do a pretty good job of carrying their own. It gives you a little insight into what it's like to be quadriplegic. For a late 80's movie, the style of filming was well done, there is very little cheese, and the special effects didn't overreach.

The premise seems a bit farfetched to our currently more sophisticated and informed sense of what's possible on the genetic engineering front. After all, this movie was made 15 years ago. If Romero had gone with either a supernatural cause or a plain animal jealousy angle, it might be less dated, but then again it might have been a little less believable to begin with.

Not very horrific, not startling or scary, but worth seeing if you don't mind a slightly slow-paced thriller. I gave it a higher than average score (6 out of 10) just because it didn't make me say "oh, please!" too many times unlike other movies from that time--particularly horror films--are prone to do. For example, the pivotal moment is fully supported by plausible input earlier in the film, it's not one of those miraculous developments pulled out of nowhere in the last few seconds before the climax.

It seems that every once and a while, a neat little horror film comes along that eschews genre conventions and is able to tap into a new vein to provide its scares. Writer-director George A. Romero, of "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) and "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) infamy, brings forth "Monkey Shines," an adaptation of the novel by Michael Stewart.

Romero has always been a director who goes for the throat in delivering the shocks in his horror pictures. But in the savage gore and mayhem, he has never lost sight of the human characters, their drama, and their plight. In "Monkey Shines," Romero seems to have been domesticated somewhat - dare I say, "tamed" - in that characters and drama are most essential to the core of the film, and that horror is really the last thing on his mind.

"Monkey Shines" begins with the Good Day Gone Bad, Really Bad: Allan Mann (Jason Beghe), is a highly physical law student who goes for a jog early one morning after spending the night with his girlfriend Linda (Janine Turner). To avoid a dog on the sidewalk, he unknowingly runs into the path of an oncoming truck. He wakes up several weeks later in the hospital, now a quadriplegic, paralyzed, unable to use his body anywhere below the neck.

Confined to a wheelchair he moves around by working a lever with his mouth and having to rely on live-in nurse Maryanne (Christine Forrest), his doting, overbearing mother Dorothy (Joyce Van Patten) and having to deal with his pompous surgeon Dr. Wiseman (Stanley Tucci) who begins having an affair with Linda, Allan gives up and tries to commit suicide. Luckily, Allan's mad-scientist friend Geoffrey (John Pankow) may have a solution: Ella, an extremely intelligent capuchin monkey who is being trained by animal specialist Melanie Parker (Kate McNiel) to be a sort of help-primate for paraplegics and quadriplegics, much like a seeing-eye dog is used for blind people.

At first, a great weight seems lifted off Allan's shoulders; Ella's the perfect helper - she can answer the phone, play cassette tapes in the radio, and even help Allan turn the pages of his books when he reads. She even raises her hand in class for her turn to be called on. A deep bond develops between the two that's right out of any made-for-TV movie about hope and determination to beat the odds. Of course, and this is where the horror elements begin to kick in, what Allan doesn't know is that Ella is really Geoffrey's guinea pig in an experiment to create super-intelligent primates: he's been secretly injecting her with human brain tissue, which explains her super-intelligence in helping to make Allan's life a little bit easier. Even more horrifically, Allan has been having incredibly realistic nightmares in which he has acquired a monkey's-eye view of the world, and Ella is subconsciously acting out his deeply-suppressed anger, frustration, hatred, and rage for those around him. And it soon begins a battle of wits to see who is really controlling who, which also sees if Charles Darwin was really right all those years ago.

"Monkey Shines" develops so nicely during its first hour that it's easy to forget that first and foremost, it's a horror film and not just any horror film, a George A. Romero-directed horror film. Romero shows remarkable restraint in combining both the human story with the horror story, that both elements are given enough screen time to thoroughly develop and not seem so tacked-on to eac

Monkey Shines fmovies. While this will likely never be considered one of filmmaker George Romero's best, it still represents a commendable effort in one of his rare forays into studio productions (in this case Orion). Scripted by Romero based on a novel by Michael Stewart, it tells the story of Allan Mann (handsome Jason Beghe), a law student who gets into a horrible accident that renders him a quadriplegic. He soon becomes despondent enough to attempt suicide, but soon he receives some temporary salvation in the form of Ella (Boo), a capuchin monkey who is trained to see to his needs. What he doesn't know is that his friend Geoffrey (John Pankow) has been playing mad scientist and injecting the cute lil' thing with human brain cells. Soon the bond between patient and helper becomes so strong that a mental connection is made, and Ella is physically acting out Allan's worst impulses. So what is he going to do about this little homicidal primate? Romero does a good job here at telling a fairly interesting story, although some viewers might be turned off at the lack of sympathetic characters. Most of them are flawed to some degree or another - creepy dean Burbage (Stephen Root), smarmy, incompetent doctor Wiseman (Stanley Tucci), fair-weather girlfriend Linda (Janine Turner), bitchy nurse Maryanne (Christine Forrest, a.k.a. Mrs. Romero) - and even a guy like Geoffrey, who initially just wants to help, has his problems as he's obsessed with his work. At least Allan has an appealing love interest played by Kate McNeil, whom horror fans will recognize as the lead in the slasher "The House on Sorority Row". The cast is pretty good overall; Joyce Van Patten plays the stereotypically smothering mother to good effect, and it's a treat to see character actors Root and Tucci near the beginnings of their careers, but the one performer the audience is likely to remember is Boo, who's adorable and very well trained; the animal action is first rate throughout (there's also a rather annoying bird on hand). The evolving relationship between Allan and Ella makes for a compelling hook, and it makes one appreciate the real-life efforts that people put into training service animals, and the animals themselves. The film is light on horror - most of the violence is implied - as Romero tends to go for a more psychological approach, and refrains from going for the gore. Overall, this is a decent flick, worth a look for genre fans who are interested in checking out Romero's non-zombie films. Seven out of 10.

Offbeat horror film has a paraplegic being given a capuchin monkey named Ella as a companion. Only problem: the cute little monkey has been subjected to genetic experimentation, and has a mind of its its own. Pretty soon, the monkey is up to no good, and the paraplegic is becoming telepathically linked to the increasingly evil simian. George Rnmero made this little gem. The cast is largely unknown, although watch for a young Stanley Tucci as one of the paraplegic's surgeons and John Pankow as the paraplegic's buddy (and mad scientist). A weird little tale that takes its time to get to the nasty stuff, which is just fine with me as the killings are pretty routine.

This is not your run-of-the-mill slasher film. This is a well developed, well-paced suspense-type horror. If what you like it lots of blood and cheap scares punctuated by incidental music, then you should skip this film. If you like a horror involving a few good characters, and a really talented monkey, then take a look. The tension builds slowly. There are a lot of interesting characters, who are neither "good guys" nor "bad guys" (this includes the killer). The acting is not all that great, but the script is solid. That the monkey may be the best performer in the b=cast says more about the monkey than the human castmembers!