Monkey Shines (1988) Directed by George A. Romero
It is abundantly clear to me that the master of the living dead genre is a vastly superior director when working within the constraints of a parsimonious independent production budget than he is when working within the strict regiments of a high-budget studio production. Monkey Shines testifies to the limitations that George A. Romero’s filmmaking suffers when subjected to the rigid and turgid parameters of a studio motion picture. But the director of Monkey Shines has talent to spare, so even at its flimsiest, his trademark filmmaking style – whether implemented with plenty of dough or sparingly on the big screen – still looks insanely good.
Romero’s strangely heartwarming, unexpectedly bonkers, oddball killer-monkey flick is superbly over-the-top bizarre in the best sense of the word. Not only does it resurrect one of the fetishes of classic American b-movie fare – gorillas, monkeys, orangutans, any primate on the loose wreaking havoc – but it also brings back the romanticism of the King Kong mythology without compromising its own contribution to the primate genre, which is an obvious kitschy hyperbole of tragedy. The plot is pure tawdry entertainment – one with a lot of heart. Jason Beghe plays a handsome athlete who becomes paraplegic after a terrible car accident. His sleep-deprived friend Geoffrey Fisher (John Pankow), a research scientist who experiments on lab monkeys, with the help of Melanie (Kate McNeil), an expert trainer of monkey assistants, gives him a trained female capuchin monkey – injected with a serum to boost her intelligence to human level – to assist him in any way she can. But soon the cute monkey’s support turns lethal, as she develops a dangerous psychological dependence on her owner to the extent of a murderous obsession and a disturbing bestiality.
Romero’s attempt at a monkey slasher – based on the 1983 novel of the same name – is not as campy as the overacting suggests it is, nor is it as gory as the ill-fated events make it out to be, but it is heartbreaking even in its moments of utter narrative implausibility. In theory it’s a wacky drama about the unfathomable plight of being paralyzed and the subsequent inhibition your body and desires undergo because of your immovable condition, a bit of psychoanalysis here and there, and a very upfront anti animal cruelty and testing commentary, Romero’s film itself doesn’t claim to be a schlocky horror flick, it just employs the paraphernalia of the schlocky. And I must admit that the brutal monkey rage of Romero’s film happens to be compatible with all the poignant schmaltz of the drama, which is why it works so unexpectedly well, and in the end the visual flabbiness, the tame violence, and the unlikely conclusion, are passable flaws.
Monkey Shines feels atypical and out of place in George A. Romero’s oeuvre, but that doesn’t mean I’m not delighted that the anomaly is there. Shout out to Boo the monkey, for her formidable performance as the possessive and maniacal Ella, a veritable movie star!