Monkey Shines (1988)
What's It About?
Allan Mann (Jason Beghe) is a runner who suffers a spinal injury and is left paralyzed below the neck. Allan's friend Geoffrey is running medical tests on Capuchin monkeys to make them more intelligent and takes his most promising subject to Allan to use as a helper monkey. The monkey, Ella, becomes fixated on Allan and the two begin to develop a 2-way psychic connection, the monkey feeds of Allan's anger, murdering those who wrong Allan and causing him to be prone to fits of anger.
Is It Any Good?
Monkey Shines is generally regarded as the worst of George A. Romero's non-zombie movies. That's not true, of course, his worst movie is 2000's Bruiser. So maybe this isn't the worst Romero movie but how bad is it, really? Honestly, not that bad at all.
The concept of a killer Capuchin is fairly silly and to the film's credit it doesn't try to work around the fact that Capuchins are adorable. The idea of the monkey falling in love with a human being is dumb but it kind of works in a schlocky Alfred Hitchcock Presents sort of way. What's more ridiculous is the telekinetic link between the two that develops under logic that really doesn't make any sense.
I can sort of understand why this is such an oft-maligned movie in the Romero canon, it seems like every whim he had regarding the movie was indulged to the fullest extent. Every five to ten minutes is a line or a look or a moment of absolute absurdity capped off by the way that Allan deals with the monkey at the film's climax, which makes logical sense but ellicits nothing but raucous laughter.
The film features a great performance from the titular Capuchin, Boo and there's a few great character actors rounding out the cast with Joyce Van Patten, Stephen Root, and Stanley Tucci. Ultimately the movie's about 20 minutes too long, has a few too many side plots, and occasionally indulges in madness, but it's an otherwise solid thriller-style horror movie.
Watch, Toss, or Buy?
Watch it.