Monkey Shines

This is not your run-of-the-mill slasher film. This is a well developed, well-paced suspense-type horror. If what you like it lots of blood and cheap scares punctuated by incidental music, then you should skip this film. If you like a horror involving a few good characters, and a really talented monkey, then take a look. The tension builds slowly. There are a lot of interesting characters, who are neither "good guys" nor "bad guys" (this includes the killer). The acting is not all that great, but the script is solid. That the monkey may be the best performer in the b=cast says more about the monkey than the human castmembers!

Well, I really can't understand why some people talk so bad about MONKEY SHINES - that's a real good one from Romero! Not only is the idea (the "evil" part of the human soul and behavior is the suppressed animal instinct that sometimes breaks through)in general fascinating - but it is also very well brought on the screen! Romero is often blamed for his unspectacular kind of filming, for his "low aesthetics" (especially his films of the 80ies) etc. but if you look a little deeper, you'll see how much sense his special kind of filming makes, for example as a means to show and develop characters. By the way: the beginning sequence is so great - in a way it shows the "poetry of a car accident" (does this sound perverted?). I appreciate the way of handling the topic of being handicapped - MONKEY SHINES is THE SEA IN ME (2004, directed by A. Amenabar) as a horror movie! The film not only works on a philosophical level but is also - of course it has to because it's a horror movie - very thrilling, even though Tom Savini doesn't go as far with his FX as in his splatter flicks. The only thing I didn't like was that the effect of the serum wasn't explained in a scientific way - this makes the story look like some old-fashioned mad-scientist-story from the early decades of the 20th century... And of course: you'll also find the characteristic Romero-sense for dark humor in this one, too.

This film has been described as a "horror film for people who don't like horror films." That's an apt description for this underrated psychological/supernatural thriller from Pittsburgh's master horror director, George A. Romero. To date, this is Romero's only studio film, and he had to make numerous compromises to the finished product. (The originally intended ending would have been a killer.) That said, the film still comes off as smart and sharp, with some very good casting. (John Pankow, recognizable from "Mad About You," is really excellent here, and there are nice early performances from Stephen Root, Stanley Tucci, and Janine Turner.) And check out the amazingly good editing in the last 10 minutes. Overall, while this is not first-tier Romero, it's a terrific little horror film.

Offbeat horror film has a paraplegic being given a capuchin monkey named Ella as a companion. Only problem: the cute little monkey has been subjected to genetic experimentation, and has a mind of its its own. Pretty soon, the monkey is up to no good, and the paraplegic is becoming telepathically linked to the increasingly evil simian. George Rnmero made this little gem. The cast is largely unknown, although watch for a young Stanley Tucci as one of the paraplegic's surgeons and John Pankow as the paraplegic's buddy (and mad scientist). A weird little tale that takes its time to get to the nasty stuff, which is just fine with me as the killings are pretty routine.

This movie's not going to have a fan base larger than Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, but it is another example of Romero's uniqueness as s film maker. An original story with an original cast, Romero adds to the horror genre by going somewhere where no other film maker has gone before. Monkey Shines cast includes Christine Forrest who shows her finest performance as the nurse. Worth checking out, so check it out.