#33 - Monkey Shines (1988)
I remember seeing the VHS of this one in the horror section of our local video store when I was a kid, and that monkey on the cover freaked me out so much that I never even wanted to pick up the tape, much less watch it. With a poster like that, and with names like George A. Romero and Tom Savini attached, I expected this to be, well, more of a horror movie.
Instead, the first 45 minutes or so are closer to a Lifetime inspirational drama. Allan is a college student and athlete who is paralyzed in a tragic accident. The first part of the movie is simply him adjusting to his new life in a wheelchair, and bonding with his new helper monkey Ella, who just happened to come from an animal testing lab where she was injected with human brain matter. Whoops! Once things get going, this isn't a bad horror movie, but it takes so long to get there and has so many unnecessary subplots going on that it's hard to care what happens.
It redeems itself by the end, even if it does get a little silly (some suspension of disbelief is required for the scenes where a 10 pound monkey overpowers full grown adults). It's a frustrating movie, because it could have been a genuinely good horror flick if they could have cut out some of the nonsense and gotten right into the good parts. As it is though, it's a flawed but probably still worthwhile film.
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