While George A. Romero was most famous for reinventing the living dead as we know them today, becoming famous as the king of the zombies proved to be something of a double-edged blade for the Pittsburgh native. While his politically themed gut-munchers earned him his rightful place in the hearts of horror fans for generations to come, it often meant that his non-zombie movies were often overlooked which was a shame, because when big George flew solo without a single animated corpse to lean on, his filmography proved to be every bit as diverse as any of his peers.
Take Martin, a tragic vampire movie that doesn’t actually feature a vampire; or his duality obsessed Stephen King adaptation, The Dark Half; or his damning thriller The Crazies, which saw the American military brought low by it’s own incompetence while struggling to contain a killer virus. However, possibly the most interesting of his zombie-free escapades is Monkey Shines; director’s typically off-beat and utterly weird swing at a killer animal movie.
Allan Mann is one of those guys who seems to have it all. With his whole life spread out before him, it truly seems that the world is his oyster as he not only is a promising law student, but he’s a bona fide athlete too to the point that he lead’s up his backpack with bricks every morning and goes for a run. However, Allan’s charmed existence comes to a crashing halt when he’s struck by a truck while out jogging and is promptly rendered a quadriplegic after lifesaving surgery. While his domineering mother over compensates by buying him with all the state of the art tech a paralyzed man could possibly need, the fact that he may never move again (plus the fact that his girlfriend leaves him for the surgeon who operated on him) leaves him in a position where he attempts to take his own life.
It’s here where his eccentric, research scientist buddy, Geoffrey, steps in. To catch you up, Geoffrey has been experimenting on Capuchin monkeys in an attempt to raise their intelligence, but after seeing the emotional dire straits his buddy is in, he donates one of his subjects to Allan off the books in the hope that she can act as a helper for his friend.
The change is almost immediate as the intelligent “Ella” and Allan hit it off almost immediately, and it also helps that romance may be on the cards with monkey trainer Melanie, who also builds a strong bond with with the chairbound hunk. However, the more experimental shit Geoffrey injects Ella with in secret, the stronger her bond with Allan becomes and soon the two are feeding off each other with a mental link that borders of telepathic. But while Ella gets smarter, her feral, animal nature feeds back into Allan who feels his aggressive tendencies start to swell and then transmits them back to Ella who feels the need to act out his more enraged impulses. Before you know it, Ella has killed, but she doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon, not when Allan needs her so much.
While Monkey Shines would be a weird film by anyone’s standards, it’s made all the more stranger that such an odd film was to be the fiercely independent Romero’s first movie for a major studio and possibly the most striking thing about the film is how straight laced all the eccentricity is. I mean, let’s be clear here, this is a movie where a monkey goes psycho due to Frankenstein-like experiments that allows her to merge with the frustrated brain of a quadriplegic – I mean, I won’t go as far to say its Fatal Attraction with a little cuddly simian playing Glen Close, but I wouldn’t exactly be wrong either.
Romero films the first third like a Hallmark movie of the week which is only exacerbated by a score that sounds like a lesser-known, live action Disney flick from the 70s as we watch the hapless Allen discover exactly why sticking bricks in a knapsack is such a monumentally bad idea. However Romero manages to stave off any mawkishness by not only delivering some squeam inducing back surgery courtesy of Tom Savini (not to mention a surprise early role for Stanley Tucci as a douchey surgeon) but he seems to be utterly dedicated to spelling out exactly how a well off quadriplegic lived in 1988. His near macro-level intrest is catching and you can tell that, for this aspect of the script at least, realism is key.
The other thing that holds Romero’s intrest is, unsurprisingly, Ella herself who proves herself to oddly be the most watchable actor in the entire film. That’s not to say that the human cast is chopped liver – although their performances do tend range from understandably restrained (Jason Beghe), to sleep deprived mad professor (John Pankow) – but compared to every little brow twitch and look of understanding on the capuchin stunningly expressive face, the monkey wins out by a country mile. This presents it’s own problems, however, because even though Ella becomes a malevolent, straight razor waving extension to Allan’s raging id, she’s simply way too fucking adorable to hate which tends to torpedo some of the tension. However, it’s a testament to Romero’s powers that Ella plays as such a sizable threat as she does despite blatantly looking as cute as a bowl full of bunnies and moments where the little psycho drops a hair drying into someone’s bath, or jabs at them with a poisonous hypodermic, you do genuinely believe that this huggable little darling could cause some damage.
It’s obvious that Romero intended the movie to be a restrained and sensible study in tension and building dread, yet the very nature of the plot feels too Deep Blue Sea-ish to be treated so seriously, but whenever the director finally lets the movie off the chain it usually proves to be the most memorable moments. I mean, the fake-out, nightmare sequence that sees Ella burst out of Allan’s back surgery like a fucking chestburster may be a cheap scare that doesn’t fit the rest of the movie at all, but you’ll definitely remember it – as will you the moment when Allan manages to brutally outwit his monkey nemesis (animal lovers need not apply), but it’s also weird noting that Romero actually gifts Allan a sex scene that actually may be the most important aspect of the film as it takes time out from all the monkey madness to show that the physically challenged have desires too – which is pretty forward thinking for an 80s horror film.
While not a wholly successful attempt to try something utterly different, Monkey Shines is still an intriguing addition to Romeo’s filmography even if it’s more straight laced elements collide rather clumsily with it more animalistic instincts.
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