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Monkey Shines
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Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780792899129
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
ISBN: 0792899121
Label: Orion
Manufacturer: Orion
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Orion
Release Date: October 06, 1998
Running Time: 108 minutes
Studio: Orion
Theatrical Release Date: July 29, 1988
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Editorial Review:
George A. Romero monkeys with nature in this gripping and fearful tale based on the novel by Michael Stewart. Allan Mann (John Beghe) is a law student who's hit by a truck while jogging, leaving him a quadriplegic. Luckily, his scientist friend Geoffrey (John Pankow) is experimenting with capuchin monkeys, making them smarter with injections of human genetic material. Geoffrey arranges with Melanie (Kate McNeil)--who's working on an experimental program that matches monkeys with paraplegics to perform guide-dog functions--to train his prize subject, Ella (Boo), to act as Allan's helper. Allan is paralyzed from the neck down, confined to a wheelchair he moves by working a lever with his mouth. He's really vulnerable. Ella can fetch things and do errands, and a real emotional bond develops between Mann and monkey. Too strong a bond, it turns out, as Allan begins to experience dreams from the monkey's-eye view (capuchin-cam), Ella's boosted intelligence giving her the residual benefit of a telepathic ability in which the monkey begins to act out Allan's subconscious rage. Allan's nurse, former girlfriend, doctor, even his mother are terrorized by the creepy capuchin, leading to a showdown between Ella and Allan himself. With Allan trapped in a house, alone with a super-intelligent and malevolent monkey, there is plenty of suspense to make you rip holes in your upholstery. But perhaps even more tension could have been wrung out of this story if Ella had been more sympathetic (being as she was the victim of a scientific experiment gone bad), her wicked antics the acts of a kind of exterminating angel. Performances are brilliant by both Ella and Jason Beghe, who turns in one of cinema's most accurate and intelligent depictions of a high-level quadriplegic character. --Jim Gay
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - 0.25 STARS: Everybody needs a monkey like Ella...too bad the movie sucked though.
More of an off-beat sci-fi-thriller than a horror movie, "Monkey Shines" is about a man named Alan who is involved in a terrible accident and is consequently paralyzed. After seeing how distraught Alan is, his friend, Jeff, decided to give Alan one of his lab monkeys that he was using to test some kind of secret serum he invented.
The monkey, Ella, is very smart and takes a liking to Alan. However, something strange begins to happen and so the title of this movie begins to make some ... Read More
Rating: - In the memory of a free festival
My recollection of this flick is hazy. I saw it late night in the London West End as part of the National Film Festival. There was no one on the door so I just sat down without paying. Niavely I assumed film festivals must be free. Good old fashioned British incompetence was the more likely culprit.
After a promising start it became apparent that George had decided to eschew his auteur style in favour of a strange hybrid of Hitchcock homage and Russ Meyer. That may make it sound more colourful ... Read More
Rating:  - Good "Scary" Science Fiction with Human Drama
The story is not only scary but has both science fiction and human drama. I think the good acting helps the film not to appear silly as the idea of laboratory experiments on animals cause human to mentally connect to the experimental animals is silly.
Since murder and violence are part of the film, this is not something you can relax with or feel warm afterwards... I still think as a scary science fiction it is well made in terms of story telling, sound and photography effect, and acting.
Read More
Rating:  - No Monkey's Uncle
George Romero has a knack for creating suspenseful horror movies using very little in the way of anything. His movies rely on atmosphere with a dash of special effects. In this case, the horror comes from a (not so) innocent little monkey. Well, the monkey is innocent, but the monkey's master is not.
We start the movie off with a little bedroom action, which is really just a teaser to get you into the movie. We see a little bit of skin as we meet Allan Mann (Jason Beghe) and Linda Aikman (Janine ... Read More
Rating: - Deadtime for Bonzo...
For some reason every time I see anything having to do with monkeys I think of that episode of The Simpson's where actor Troy McClure (you may remember me from such films as...) marries Homer's sister-in-law Selma in a sham wedding and then appears in a musical play titled `Stop the Planet of the Apes I want to get off!', singing the following lines...
Troy: [singing] 'I hate every ape I see,
From chimpan-a to chimpan-zee,
No, you'll never make a monkey out of me'
But I digress...Monkey ... Read More
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