31 Days of Fright, Day 7: Monkey Shines

Welcome to day 7 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Gabe devolves to the level of a child when he watches...

MONKEY SHINES
1988
Rated R

When I was a kid, cruising the horror section of Star Video (our local video store – remember those?) for a thrill on a Friday night while my parents tried to find something to rent that was both age-appropriate for me and wouldn’t bore them to death, the cover of Monkey Shines scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know the first thing about it. I didn’t know who George A. Romero was. I didn’t know it was about a quadriplegic former champion athlete who, all unknowing, gets a genetically enhanced monkey to aid him around the house and begins developing a psychic connection to it. I didn’t know it was a slow-build thriller that probably would have kept me on the edge of my seat, but wouldn’t have actually scared me if I had dared to watch it. All I knew was that demon monkey toys with straight razors were just about the scariest damn thing I could imagine.

Seriously. I had nightmares about it.

As you’ve probably already guessed from my not terribly well-veiled hints, this movie isn’t scary. It’s a decent science fiction (Or does the term science fantasy apply here?) thriller, ably written and directed by the Godfather of zombie horror, George A. Romero, but it's decidedly not scary. If you’re looking for a scare, look elsewhere.

Having said that, the movie isn't bad. The vulnerability of the main character creates solid tension throughout, even if his performance (at least at first glance) seems a bit uneven. But then, anybody who goes into a Romero movie expecting top-notch acting probably hasn't seen many Romero movies. The man is a legend because his ability to craft a tense scene and tell an interesting story is such that we can forgive him his choice in (or perhaps it’s his use of) performers.

The science fiction (again, I’m plagued by the suspicion that I’m using the wrong term here) element seems pretty far-fetched, but though it’s the device that facilitates the story, it isn’t what the story is about. The story is about Jason Beghe’s character, Allan, and the question, Is his psychic connection with Ella the monkey turning him into an animal, or is it simply bringing out the animal that was always there?

Uneven- and/or over-acting aside, the movie’s biggest problem is that – once he has established the conflict, ratcheted up the tension, and moved all the players into place – Romero doesn’t seem to realize that you can’t pull off a final confrontation in the conventional, fast-paced way when the key player can only move from the neck up. Scenes that should be real nail-biters become inadvertent comedy when approached this way.

EXAMPLE:

The soundtrack shrieks with tension as the antagonist stalks the shadows. The housekeeper doesn’t realize the monkey is not only dangerous, but filled with murderous intent, armed with a scalpel, and fully capable of using it to deadly efficiency! Allan must warn her! He’s running out of time! He leans his head forward, pushing the wheelchair’s joystick with his lips, and the wheelchair rolls ahead at a sedate 1.8mph.

Though I’ve deliberately seeded the above scenario with inaccuracies to protect the spoiler-sensitive, I think you can see how it would be nearly impossible to approach that setup in the traditional, the-killer-is-inside-the-house way. The final conflict needs to happen, not only to resolve the story, but also because it is refreshingly unconventional, in that it gives us a hero who is uniquely vulnerable and an antagonist who is uniquely dangerous. A situation so original demands an original approach, and this is where Romero fails. He shoots it traditionally, and it becomes largely absurd.

I will say that the final resolution (that's not the conflict, but the RE-SO-LU-TION) genuinely affected me, and I think it was excellently done, in that it not only tapped into the core questions of the story, but also left me feeling deeply conflicted. It didn’t pander to either my need for vindication or my love of irony - at least, not until the epilogue. But let’s not talk about that.

Monkey Shines is filled with flaws, but it’s also unique and genuinely affecting. It’s not scary, but that doesn’t mean it’s not horror. It’s horror of the truest kind - of the Romero kind - that asks us who we really are and what – having crossed the limit of our ability to cope – we are capable of becoming.

6/10

-GABE


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