George A. Romero created a furry little monster with this lovably daft 1988 chamber horror. No longer tied to his long-time production partners due to their wish to put out more diverse, family-friendly product, the man who lit a fire under the zombie genre went solo and threw all his eggs in the basket marked ‘crazed monkey madness’. You never know unless you try.
Jason Beghe (a sort of Poundland Ryan O’Neill) plays Allan Man, an athlete who ends up in a wheelchair after a truck hits him while he’s out jogging. Now paralysed from the neck down, he’s stuck both with a wheelchair and the worst fake beard in cinema history. Things begin to look up when his boffin pal from the local monkey experiment lab (we’ve all got one of those, right?) brings joy to his life in the form of Ella, a lovable – if you like monkeys – little helper. What our hero doesn’t realise is that Ella has received human brain tissue injections and is liable to go seriously ape. Sure enough, she’s soon inhabiting Allan’s feverish mind and going on a murder spree at his unwitting behest – or rather some highly convincing Tom Savini fake SFX monkeys are (many were constructed for the shoot).
A box office dud back in 1988, the passage of time has been kind to Romero’s arch script, self-adapted from Michael Stewart’s novel. The absurdity is played up, the dark laughs are plentiful and some very-repeatable lines of dialogue suggest Romero may have been midway through a John Waters marathon at the time. Joyce Van Patten as Beghe’s mollycoddling mother and Christine Forrest as his Nurse Ratchet-alike carer get the lion’s share of the hammy zingers, the cherry being Forrest’s boggle-eyed response to finding out Ella has murdered her pet bird: “YOU KILLED MY BOGIE!!!” Only Kate O’Neill’s super-sensible monkey trainer isn’t playing to the bleachers, but she does have to negotiate Allan’s full-body paralysis to perform one of mainstream cinema’s most ingenious sexual favours. You’ll definitely learn something new when you see it.
For the above reasons, and despite being lensed and lit like an episode of Columbo, Monkey Shines is well worth a look, especially with a few beers and some audience participation. The extras on this release include a commentary from the late director, a very decent retrospective and lots of making-of footage that reveals the surprising degree of on-screen monkey business that was really the work of Savini’s crew. Also included is an alternate ending that Romero preferred but is no great shakes compared to the one we finally get. You can’t go wrong with a monkey exploding out of a human being.
And yes, the real monkeys didn’t give a toss and would shit down the actors’ backs at every opportunity.
Extras / special features: Limited edition slipcase, feature length audio commentary by Travis Crawford, audio commentary with director George A. Romero, An Experiment in Fear – The Making of “Monkey Shines”, Alternate Ending and Deleted Scenes, Behind-the-scenes footage, original EPK featurette, vintage interviews and news reports, Trailers and TV spots, limited edition collector’s booklet
MONKEY SHINES / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: GEORGE A. ROMERO / SCREENPLAY: GEORGE A. ROMERO / STARRING: JASON BEGHE, KATE MCNEIL, JOHN PANKOW, JOYCE VAN PATTEN / RELEASE DATE: 8TH OCTOBER
