No Bananas For You, 5 Bad Monkey Horror Films

With apologies to a certain Simian Forum member, I now present the latest in my bad animal film series and it’s 5 Bad Monkeys in horror Films. I am only including the real animal not the old films where the creature was a man in a gorilla suit or in monkey make up ( i.e the planet of the apes series). So with no further ado here we go in reverse order:

5. In The Shadow Of Kilimanjaro (1986). This film was supposedly inspired by a real incident and tells of a long drought in Kenya that causes the Baboon population to turn violent and start attacking and killing people and animals in the area.

In the film a group of people are trapped and menaced by an army of vicious baboons. I haven’t seen this film for ages, and I remember a lot of it being quite slow and boring but there were some gory moments and real baboons were used as well as some mechanical ones for more ” spectacular scenes”.

4. Monkey Shines (1988) As you are proberly aware If you read many of my rambling posts, this is one of my favourite films from the zombie master George A Romero and proves he has a lot more talent than just zombie films.

An Athletic man is run over by a truck and paralysed from the neck down, and struggles with life, he is given help in the form of a capuchin monkey to help in everyday things, but the monkey is part of an experiment where he has been given a portion of a dead woman’s brain and the monkey starts taking on human emotions like love, jealously and my favourite… murder.  A great little film and the monkey is used very well, it has you feeling sorry for the cute little fur ball.

3. Shakma ( 1990) This is a rarely seen film but I was so impressed by it I have seen this film twice. It concerns a baboon which escapes its confines in a experimental laboratory and has a hatred for people and starts killing off members of a student group who are playing a dungeons and dragons type game in the facility.

Sounds silly, and I suppose it is but it is suspenseful and again the baboon is used very well. Shakma is vicious and has a sense of menace about it with a fair amount of gore. The cast also includes Roddy Mcdowell who knew a few things about vicious monkeys.

2. A Cold Night’s Death ( 1973) This was actually a made for TV movie and was a virtually two character film starring Robert Culp and Eli Wallach as two research workers in the Antarctic where chimps are being experimented on for use in space travel.

They are sent when the two previous workers are found dead and strange things start happening to the two isolated men and they begin to doubt their sanity. You can work out what is happening quite easily but this film was ahead of its time with elements of “The Thing” and “The Shining” the chimps are as chilling as they are seemingly normal with a final scene that punches a real chill ( no pun intended )

1. Link (1986) This is an entertaining and often overlooked little film about an attractive female student who gets a job as an assistant to a rather eccentric scientist working with chimps and a very intelligent orangutan called ‘Link’ who is a master of fire and is very human like. The attractive woman’s presence starts a chain of events, the scientist goes missing and the student finds herself in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a psychotic orangutan who has taken a fancy to the lady and who will kill to get what he wants.

This is basically a ” Stalk and slash” film with a killer monkey that is used with great effectiveness and is highly disturbing with a ‘Psycho’ style shower scene that will make your skin crawl. LINK  was directed by Richard Franklyn who helmed ” Psycho 2″. It starred Elizabeth Shue and Terence Stamp. Link is quite suspenseful, if you have the chance to see this, check it out.