MONKEY SHINES (1988) – this was George “Night of the Living Dead” Romero’s first studio film and it makes you wish there were more of them on his resume. Overstuffed and taking its time, almost like a Stephen King novel, Monkey Shines starts off like a disease-of-the-week movie, or maybe a shampoo commercial. Scientology whistle-blower Jason Beghe plays an athlete who gets hit by a car while training and winds up paralyzed from the neck down. Angry and depressed, he adjusts to his new life slowly until the arrival of Ella, a helper monkey, and her gorgeous trainer, Melanie. Life with Ella falls into a routine, Jason and Melanie start a romance, and there’s even a treatment that might cure his spinal cord injury. But then Ella gets jealous, and takes a straight razor, and starts to kill people. Almost an hour of the movie has gone by before this happens so you’re lulled into one of those relaxed states where you’re not expecting a shrieking monkey to leap up out of the dark and come at you with a knife. The last hour of the film is one long, unstoppable episode of monkey havoc, and the final few seconds literally left my jaw on the floor. That hasn’t happened in a long time, but this movie takes its time to let you live with its characters so that when the big, bloody finale erupts there are some actual stakes. Ignore the tacked-on, studio mandated happy ending. It feels as forgettable and artificial as it is. (Watch it!)
