Monkey Shines (film)

''Monkey Shines'' (also known as ''Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear'') is a 1988 American psychological horror film written and directed by George A. Romero and starring Jason Beghe, Kate McNeil, John Pankow, and Joyce Van Patten. Its plot follows a young athlete who becomes a paralyzed quadriplegic, and develops a bond with an intelligent service monkey named "Ella" who becomes homicidal after she is injected with an experimental serum of human brain tissue. It is based on the 1983 British novel of the same title by Michael Stewart.

Producers Peter Grunwald and Charles Evans of Orion Pictures acquired the rights to Stewart's novel in 1985, and began production two years later, with Romero assigned to direct. The film marked Romero's first major studio feature, and was his second-most expensive film at that time, with a budget of $7 million. The setting was changed from Oxford, England, where the novel was set, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a city in which Romero had long resided and often set his films. Principal photography of ''Monkey Shines'' took place in Pittsburgh in the late summer and early fall of 1987. It had a protracted post-production and editing process, as Romero shot more film than he had on any of his previous projects, particularly due to the use of live monkeys.

''Monkey Shines'' was released theatrically by Orion Pictures in July 1988, receiving mixed reviews and a lackluster box-office reception, grossing $5.3 million against its $7 million budget. In the intervening years, the film has been noted by critics as an offbeat entry in Romero's filmography, and has earned status as a minor cult film.

Plot

Law student and athlete Allan Mann is struck by a truck and rendered quadriplegic following surgery. As his overbearing mother and strict nurse try helping him, Allan, now in a SNP-equipped wheelchair, struggles to adjust. His friend, Geoffrey Fisher, suggests he get a Capuchin monkey as a service animal to lift his spirits and help around the house. Geoffrey has an ulterior motive: he is a research scientist under pressure to produce results. Geoffrey has dosed a monkey in his lab with a serum to boost its intelligence, and believes the serum's effects will be amplified if the monkey is around humans.

Geoffrey enlists Melanie Parker, a specialist in training helper monkeys. Geoffrey provides the Capuchin he has been experimenting on, claiming it is normal. Allan names the monkey Ella, and he and Melanie work closely training her. Initially, Ella is a huge help to Allan. Allan grows very close to Melanie.

Allan grows short-tempered and resentful. Ella, too, becomes aggressive. Allan dreams of running through the grass at night, and believes he has a telepathic link with Ella, whom he suspects can escape the house. Geoffrey finds evidence confirming this but, pleased with Ella's intelligence, does not tell Allan and Melanie. After the pet bird of Allan's nurse pesters him, Allan wishes it was dead - that night, Ella kills the bird and leaves it in the nurse's slipper; causing the nurse to quit.

Allan gets a second opinion about his paralysis and discovers he may have been misdiagnosed; another surgery may enable him to walk again. Before attempting the risky surgery, the doctor needs Allan to demonstrate some ability to move an appendage. Rather than feeling happy at this news, Allan is angry with his original surgeon, who may have purposely misdiagnosed him and is now dating Allan's former girlfriend. He fantasizes about burning the man's cabin down, and that night, Ella kills the surgeon and his girlfriend by burning down the cabin with a pack of stolen matches.

After seeing the fire in a vision and having it confirmed by his mother, the horrified Allan believes that Ella is carrying out his dark impulses. He also realizes that when he is around Ella, he becomes easily enraged. Allan demands that Geoffrey take Ella away. With Ella gone, Allan becomes more relaxed; he spends the weekend at Melanie's house and the two have sex.

Allan returns home and tries to mend bridges with his mother, but feels a burst of rage at her disapproval of Melanie. Allan realizes that Ella must be nearby. Allan's mother ignores his desperate warnings that she leave, and instead takes a bath. Ella kills her by dropping a hairdryer into the tub, electrocuting her. Allan briefly answers a call from Melanie before Ella disables the phone; concerned, Melanie departs for Allan's house.

Geoffrey arrives and confesses that Ella was an experimental subject. The enraged Allan demands Geoffrey leave, upset at being used for an experiment yet concerned for his safety with Ella around. Instead, Geoffrey pursues Ella around the house; intending to put her down with one of the syringes of sodium pentobarbitone he has brought. Ella gets hold of one of the syringes and injects it into Geoffrey, killing him.

Ella returns to Allan, who is filled with self loathing because he believes that Ella is acting out his own impulses. He screams at Ella, but the monkey responds by urinating on him. Melanie arrives and Ella attacks her. This convinces Allan that Ella is not simply carrying out his desires. Melanie falls and is knocked unconscious. As Allan rages at Ella, she ignores him and prepares to inject Melanie with one of Geoffrey's syringes. Allan calms himself and moves his right arm to engage his tape deck. As peaceful music plays he lovingly summons Ella to cuddle close to him, and she complies. When Ella comes near enough, Allan bites her on the neck and slams her body against the back of his wheelchair, killing her.

Allan undergoes successful spinal surgery. Melanie arrives at the hospital to pick him up, and Allan stands up from his wheelchair and gets into the van with her.

Cast

Analysis

Film scholar Tony Williams interprets ''Monkey Shines'' as a "complex film dealing with the ambiguous nature of human motivations," and humans' inability to deal with the consequences of their own desires.

Journalist Michael Wilmington notes that the film's thematic weight rests in the presentation of the antagonistic monkey, Ella: "The audience that rejects her as a little toy-terror--or the movie as a piece of icy misanthropy which perversely trashes women, animals and quadraplegics--misses the point. Watching this movie, one loves Ella, bleeds for her, wishes desperately to preserve her from harm. But hell and humanity carry their own demands."

Production

Development

United Artists had originally optioned Michael Stewart's novel, ''Monkey Shines'' (1983), for a film adaptation in 1984, having purchased the rights for $20,000. The option included film rights to another novel by Stewart, ''Far Cry'' (1984). However, seven months later, in 1985, the option expired, after which producer Charles Evans purchased the rights to the novel.

Executive producer Gerald Paonessa commented that he had wanted George A. Romero to direct, as he felt he "had a wonderful, dark sense of humor." Romero was convinced to direct after being shown script treatments of the project.

Filming

''Monkey Shines'' marked Romero's second feature film produced with a major studio, after 1982's ''Creepshow'', as well as the second most-expensive. The production budget was approximately $7 million. The film was shot in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with principal photography beginning on July 31, 1987. Romero, a longtime resident of Pittsburgh who set most of his prior films there, chose the location. Additional filming occurred at the Mellon Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a private barn in Murrysville, which was converted into the monkey training center which Melanie operates. Interiors of Allan's house were constructed by set designer Cletus Anderson, a longtime collaborator of Romero's.

The film's shooting schedule was extensive, consisting of twelve-hour days. Romero's wife and assistant, Christine (who also appears in the film) commented that it was the "toughest shoot we've ever had." For filming Boo, the capuchin monkey portraying Ella, Romero required multiple monkey doubles. Additionally, four puppets of the monkey were designed by Tom Savini, one of which was remote-controlled, each adorned with yak fur. Helping Hands, a service animal program from Boston, assisted with the monkeys featured in the film. Filming concluded in October 1987.

Post-production

At the time of filming, Romero commented that "Post-production on this will be very heavy. I hope to be finished by the end of March. It's a huge edit. I'm shooting more film than I ever have because of the monkeys...  As our budgets grow, everything takes longer." The film's distributor, Orion Pictures, was desperate for a hit, as it was in financial difficulty. First, the studio forced Romero to add a happy ending to the picture, a plot device which the director had long avoided in favor of more ambiguous endings; originally, Romero had intended to conclude the film in the same manner as its source novel, in which Allan does not recover from his accident. Second, after poor previews, the studio recut the film without Romero's knowledge to add a "shock" ending.

Another issue was the film's overall length, as Romero had completed a very long and involved shooting script that numbered over 240 pages. This resulted in a first cut of which 40 to 50% of the shot footage met the cutting room floor in the need to get the film reduced to a practical length. Upset with the way his project had been handled, Romero returned to independent films.

;Alternate ending
The original intended ending of the film was unreleased until 2014, when it was included as a bonus feature on its debut Blu-ray release. In the original ending, prior to Dorothy and Geoffrey's deaths, Geoffrey's boss Dean Harold Burbage (Stephen Root) steals the remaining brain tissue serum and injects it into all of Geoffrey's remaining test monkeys. After Allan regains his ability to move on his own, Burbage is assaulted by animal rights protesters who had earlier attacked Geoffrey for experimenting on monkeys. Burbage insults them then returns to the lab where it's discovered that all of the remaining monkeys have completely taken control of his mind.

Release

Box office

''Monkey Shines'' was released theatrically in the United States on July 29, 1988, opening in 1,181 theaters. It grossed $1.9 million during its opening weekend. It eventually went on to gross a total of $5.3 million in the United States over its 22-week theatrical run.

Critical response

Several critics praised ''Monkey Shines'' for its portrayal of its philosophical themes: David Kehr of the ''Chicago Tribune'' heralded it as Romero's "most complex and challenging creations...  omero'sis a style of philosophical fiction that seems hardly to belong to the 20th Century at all, but rather to the 18th Century school of Swift, Diderot and Voltaire. Like those authors, he uses satire as one of his principal tools and principal weapons," concluding that, "''Monkey Shines'' is an extremely thoughtful, provocative film; it's also a damn good horror movie."

Other critics, such as the ''Los Angeles Times''s Michael Wilmington, commented on the film's characterization of Ella, and the relationship between her and Allan; comparing Ella to King Kong, Wilmington noted: "The story’s dark pivot is the symbiosis between Allan and Ella: a match made in hell. Ella, preternaturally sensitive to all her master’s desires, becomes infected with his hatreds--just as, in the lab, she’s been made addicted to a serum containing human brain tissue. It’s not a matter of the beast emerging against the human--but of humans perverting the beast." Richard Harrington of ''The Washington Post'' made similar observations about the character dynamic: "Alternating between comfort and revenge, llaseems the ultimate victim, an unwitting pawn. Her scenes with Beghe are at once tender and terrifying as they battle it out to see who's the boss. Some closeups make Ella seem as ferocious as King Kong, but at other times she looks as if she's just been kicked out of the Garden of Eden."

Roger Ebert was less enthusiastic about the film, awarding it two and a half out of a possible four stars; the film's main flaw, wrote Ebert, was its being overlong with too many subplots: "Romero loses momentum in the closing passages because he has too many loose ends to keep track of. Somewhere within this movie's two hours or so is hidden an absolutely spellbinding 90-minute thriller." Caryn James of ''The New York Times'' panned the film, writing that the screenplay "wraps up more loose ends than anyone cares about, yet leaves some nagging bits of illogic," also criticizing the film for its "calm, and tedious, exposition."

The film was met with criticism from some disability rights organizations such as ADAPT and Adapting Society, due to a depiction of a toy monkey in a wheelchair in initial promotional materials. Members of ADAPT formed a picket line in wheelchairs at the Hollywood Pacific Theater the Saturday of the film's opening weekend. Bill Bolte, a member of Adapt California, commented: "The idea of a monkey attendant turning into a monster is appalling." On August 10, Orion Pictures issued a public apology, removing the content from media advertisements for the film, promising to consult disability experts for promotional materials of upcoming projects.

''Monkey Shines'' holds a 56% approval rating on the internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 32 critic reviews, with its consensus reading: "While not one of horror legend George Romero's more evolved efforts, ''Monkey Shines'' delivers enough primal fear to satisfy more forgiving genre enthusiasts." The film possesses a score of 71 on Metacritic based on 14 reviews. Contemporary film scholar John Kenneth Muir deemed ''Monkey Shines'' a "harrowing and fascinating film," and praised its realistic depiction of the monkey, Ella.

Several parodies exist, some notable examples are:
* The ''Malcolm in the Middle'' episode "Monkey"
* ''The Simpsons'' episode "Girly Edition"

Home media

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment released the film on DVD on September 28, 1999. Scream Factory released the film on Blu-ray for the first time in November 2014. In November 2019, Scream Factory announced this Blu-ray would be going out of print in 2020.

Trailer poem

One of the trailers showed a toy monkey banging its cymbals while sitting in a wheel chair. This trailer is known for its poem.

:''Once there was a man whose prison was a chair. The man had a monkey; they made the strangest pair.''

:''The man was the prisoner; the monkey held the key. No matter how he tried, the man couldn't flee.''

:''Locked in his prison, terrified and frail; The monkey wielding power, keeping him in jail.''

:''The man tried to keep the monkey from his brain, but every move he made, became the monkeys game.''

:''The monkey ruled the man, it climbed inside his head. And now as fate would have it... One of them was dead!''

References

Sources

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External links

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{{George A. Romero

1988 films
1988 horror films
1980s psychological thriller films
American natural horror films
1980s English-language films
Films about monkeys
Films about paraplegics or quadriplegics
Films based on British novels
Films based on horror novels
Films directed by George A. Romero
Films scored by David Shire
Films set in Pittsburgh
Films shot in Pittsburgh
Orion Pictures films
1980s American films