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Leave it to the Italians to come up with one of the most engrossing, cheesiest and outrageously entertaining splatter flicks of the 80s! Umberto Lenzi, here under his favorite pseudonym Harry Kirkpatrick, wrote the fantastically bonkers script but offered the director's chair to his lesser known buddy Vittorio Rambaldi. "Primal Rage" is as eighties as it gets: the über-cheesy and misfit pop song "Say the Word" doesn't just feature once or twice but three times integrally, there are loads of beautiful girls with humongous hairdos and sexy aerobic outfits and even the obsessive evil scientist sports a ridiculous little mullet-ponytail! There were quite many horror movies with monkeys during the late 80s, but unlike you'd suspect from Lenzi, "Primal Rage" isn't a clone of "Monkey Shines", "Link" or "Shadow of Kilimanjaro". Dr. Ethridge is working at a Florida University campus and uses a baboon as guinea pig for his research involving brain diseases, but he accidentally saddled the poor animal up with a virus that invokes rage and rabies. When the rebellious campus reporter Frank Duffy breaks into Ethridge's laboratory, he releases the baboon but gets bitten and thus contaminated with the virus. Duffy passes forward the virus to a cute girl he met during a blind date and she, at her turn, contaminates a trio of vicious rapists. Each virus carrier goes on his/her own killing spree during the night of the annual campus Halloween party. "Primal Rage" is clichéd, derivative and predictable, but oh-so-entertaining! The film is fast-paced and features terrific make-up art as well as countless of gory highlights, including beheadings and impalements. Hunky 80s kid Patrick Lowe is rather annoying, but the rest of the cast is decent, with young and yummy actresses Cheryl Arutt, Sarah Buxton and Jennifer Hingel. Naturally, of course, it's Bo Svenson who steals the show as the fanatic scientist (with ponytail). Special kudos for the creative minds who thought up and designed all the dozens of great costumes that people are wearing during the Halloween party! I honestly never saw any cooler or creepier horror costumes in my life.

A professor at a university in Miami (Bo Svenson) is developing a serum that restores dead brain cells using a baboon for testing. When a student is inadvertently bitten, an infection spreads through the campus during a Halloween celebration. Horror thrills ensue.

"Primal Rage" (1988) takes the setting of "Pieces" (1982) and mixes in elements of the Kolchak episode "Primal Scream" (1975) and "Altered States" (1980). It's basically a reimagining of "Monster on the Campus" (1958) for the '80s.

Patrick Lowe makes for a quality male protagonist while Mitch Watson is effective as the edgy student-journalist, who's reminiscent of John Lennon. The flick's worth watching just for winsome Cheryl Arutt (Lauren). Sarah Buxton is also worth noting as Debbie. Meanwhile towering Doug Sloan stands out as the violent bastage on campus, Lovejoy.

The first act works quite well, but the last act devolves into shallow action thrills with a garnishment of horror. Still, the no-name 80's rock/metal soundtrack is kinetic and I always wondered what would happen if someone was under the bleachers when they rolled 'em back.

The film runs 1 hour, 31 minutes, and was shot in Miami, particularly Florida International University.

GRADE: B-

Remember "28 Days Later"? You know, that movie in which a viral outbreak is caused by a diseased primate and dumb environmentalists? Well, it seems like Italy got there first with the 1988 movie "Primal Rage."

Dr. Ethridge (Bo Svenson) has been working on a new experiment on baboons that's supposed to heal damaged brain tissue. There's a bit of a problem though-said baboons carry a deadly virus that can cause people to be the victim of uncontrollable, murderous rage. Well, idiot/self proclaimed "gonzo journalist" Duffy (Mitch Wilson aka unknown actor with a generic name # 2061) decides to investigate, only to get infected. And he's spreading said infection. Can dull hero Sam Ashe (Patrick Lowe) protect his new love interest Lauren (Cheryl Arutt)? Will all hell break loose? Will bad 80's fashion and hair prevail?

An Italian/North American co-production directed by Vittorio Rambaldi and written by exploitation jack of all trades Umberto Lenzi, "Primal Rage" (which has nothing to do with the video game I played religiously back in the day) is a cheap little movie made in the ass end days of Italian exploitation. At this point, only guys like Dario Argento and Michel Soavi were doing anything worthwhile. Lucio Fulci's best days were behind him, Lamberto Bava never managed to do a good follow up to his "Demons" films, Lenzi had been regulated to bad straight to video and television fair-the list goes on. So while "Primal Rage" is a bad movie (complete with bad acting, questionable direction and logic, and horrible pop songs that make it feel like one of those old TGIF sitcoms) that hasn't aged well at all, it's at least an entertaining bad movie.

The movie manages to be one of the more graphic Italian horror movies from this part of the decade, which manages to help quite a bit. The viewer gets to see a scalping, torn out throats, crushed heads, gouged out eyes and more, especially in the last 20 something minutes at a Halloween party. It's also never boring, and moves at a reasonable clip for a 91 minute movie thanks to the fact that those behind it know what it is-dumb exploitation-and for the most part delivers what the viewer wants out of it. Also, Claudio Simmnetti's score is a lot of fun, and at times reminded me of his work for Bava's "Demons", and the the climax itself offers most of what one expects from a movie like this.

It may not be a great (or good) movie, but "Primal Rage" is a nice hunk of Italian Cheese made for a Saturday night with friends and some beer.

Actually, make that 35 Years Ago, or SOOO VERY 80s.

The poster promised a werewolf-ish type movie and it was 80s so should be all practical (yea!!)...unfortunately, while it began as 28 Days Later, it ended up being The Beast Within meets Return of the Living Dead. And did I mention it was SOOO VERY 80s? You could show this in a history class for that decade. I wanna bet John Hughes did a rewrite or ghost-directed.

Ahhh, University life with buds, dormmates, parties and unintentionally evil experiments on baboons. The human equivalent of the primate gets bitten and while short beast-bursts happen, he loves to spread the "blessing."

Cannot believe this 1988 film didn't sue 28 Days Later. It's so incredibly stolen, down to the name of the disease made from the experiments is "Rage Virus" - the same name and M. O. in 28 Days Later in 2002. It worked when Parts: The Clonus Horror sued the plagiarized The Island. That was worse tho, since it was 100% scene-by-scene stolen.

Still, I liked it. The EXTREME campiness, the 100% 80s time capsule and surprisingly very effective gore. One scene in particular, "Hey, nice costume!!" to be precise, really freaked me out - and that's not easy after the 10,000 horror movies I've seen.

If you like virus-infected, 80s romps, this is perfect for you. I seriously can't believe I've never heard about this movie in the 35 years it's been out until tonight. I do love finding some gems randomly.

***

Final Thoughts: That all said, there are numerous flaws and unintentionally hilarious scenes. The two full-length song scenes (montages?) had me rolling with the fact the went the entire 4-5-minute song length. Like, "We bought the rights, we're dang gonna use it all." TWICE.

Primal Rage isn't anything special, some people would consider it really bad but it isn't all that bad. the acting isn't bad but the movie is a bit predictable, the story line is not very original but the movie is entertaining. If you see it in the video store and you can't really find anything else you want to watch Primal Rage is a good substatute. The last half and hour of the movie makes it all very worth while. I gave Primal Rage 7/10.