I was flipping through channels and saw that Monkey Shines was on, which is a movie I have heard a lot about but never actually watched, so I figured why not check it out.
First of all, I had no idea it was directed by George Romero, but it’s really not surprising considering the content of the movie. It’s about a cute little monkey with some kind of telepathic connection to its disabled master that causes it to kill whenever the master is angry.
Given the absurdity of the concept, the movie is actually pretty creepy. You’d expect it to be sort of tongue in cheek but it takes itself pretty seriously.
The creepiest thing about the movie is how adorable the monkey is. Even when it’s killing people the animal doesn’t look the least bit menacing. I’m not really sure what kind of monkey it is, (spider monkey maybe?) but it’s really small and looks kind of like a huggable stuffed animal, sort of like those ones with the velcro paws you hang on things. Anyway, just imagine a snuggly Teddy bear wondering around killing people, pretty creepy right? That’s the vibe this movie has. The horror of the movie revolves around the idea that something that appears cute and harmless can commit terrible acts of evil. This idea is shown most effectively when the monkey gets a hold of a syringe and starts performing euthanasia on unsuspecting victims. No matter how innocent something appears, if you put a murderous weapon in its hand, it becomes pretty terrifying.
The acting is pretty decent for a horror movie. Jason Beghe, an actor I’ve never seen or heard of before, plays the quadriplegic man, and his performance is very believable. He often bursts into fits of anger, but it’s mostly the quiet kind of anger where he’s muttering curses under his breathe or telling people their pet birds deserve to die. I think this proved more effective than having him screaming or thrashing in rage, like so many actors in horror films tend to do.
It’s also a pretty well made movie, which I’m sure has a lot to do with Romero being behind the camera. There are quite a few monkey POV shots that are pretty interesting. There are also a number of scenes that juxtapose the master’s thoughts and actions with those of the monkey using very effective cross-cutting editing techniques. One such scene may be one of the strangest sex sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie.
The only real negative I have on this movie is that it’s pretty predictable. There’s really no huge plot twists or big surprises you won’t see coming. However, it’s still extremely entertaining and relatively scary. As you can imagine, watching a movie about a killer monkey is going to be pretty fun whether you see what’s coming next or not.
B
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