Title: Monkey ShinesKiller Monkey: Ella
What the heck?: Law school student and rising track star, Alan Mann--who looks like Ryan O'Neal but is played by actor and former Scientologist Jason Beghe--is run over by a truck and rendered a quadriplegic. After discovering Alan midway through a suicide attempt, Geoffrey, Alan's scientist buddy, offers up the services of a capuchin monkey, named Ella, that he's been conducting weird brain experiments on. Enter Melanie, a helper monkey trainer and Alan's new love interest. Things are looking up for Alan upon Ella's arrival, except for the fact that, you know, the two of them seem to feed off of each other's negative energy--Alan is enraged at the former friends who have betrayed him and Ella's is pissed off about being poked with needles all the time--and as things seem to go in movies like this, parakeets wind up dead. Oh, and people. People are also killed. Like, lots of them. Alan figures out pretty quickly that Ella is carrying out vicious crimes on his behalf and he demands that Geoffrey take her away. But Ella isn't ready to separate herself from Alan and this leads to totes more bloodshed of the people variety.
What's to like: Ella can be super cute one minute and intensely scary the next; the supporting cast is a veritable who's who of almost famous people (Stanley Tucci as the doctor who saves/ruins Alan's life; Stephen Root as Geoffrey's sadistic boss); Alan and Ella's final battle is legendary:
What's to not like: the explanation of why Ella and Alan are connected is needlessly complicated; a quad on normie round of cunnilingus sends a cage full of helper monkeys into hysterics; none of the other characters listen to Alan when he insists that Ella is evil and this grows tiresome; I don't know what the movie's poster has to do with the film I watched, but I remember this image was also on the VHS box at my local video store when I was a kid, and it scared the shit out of me.
The truth: This is actually the second time I've watch Monkey Shines in my life. I like it. I like it a lot. The performances, by both monkey and man, are great and the film's climatic showdown is pretty intense. Sorry to say, Link, but I don't know if you're going to run away with this victory as easily as predicted.
Next time: Just how mighty is this Mighty Peking Man anyway???
What's to like: Ella can be super cute one minute and intensely scary the next; the supporting cast is a veritable who's who of almost famous people (Stanley Tucci as the doctor who saves/ruins Alan's life; Stephen Root as Geoffrey's sadistic boss); Alan and Ella's final battle is legendary:
What's to not like: the explanation of why Ella and Alan are connected is needlessly complicated; a quad on normie round of cunnilingus sends a cage full of helper monkeys into hysterics; none of the other characters listen to Alan when he insists that Ella is evil and this grows tiresome; I don't know what the movie's poster has to do with the film I watched, but I remember this image was also on the VHS box at my local video store when I was a kid, and it scared the shit out of me.
The truth: This is actually the second time I've watch Monkey Shines in my life. I like it. I like it a lot. The performances, by both monkey and man, are great and the film's climatic showdown is pretty intense. Sorry to say, Link, but I don't know if you're going to run away with this victory as easily as predicted.Next time: Just how mighty is this Mighty Peking Man anyway???
