Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Lee Eisenberg George Romero burst onto the scene with "Night of the Living Dead", which used the image of reanimated corpses terrorizing people to address the breakdown of the nuclear family (among other issues). He continued addressing political issues in later movies, included "Monkey Shines". This one uses the story of a monkey that gets too attached to its human to address the issue of animal welfare (look how they treat the animals in the lab).It's not Romero's greatest movie but I still enjoyed it. Particularly neat were the POV scenes from the monkey whenever it's about to carry out one of the human's rage-induced wishes. A creepy movie, but one that I recommend.Watch for a young Stanley Tucci as the doctor.

gwnightscream Jason Beghe, John Pankow, Kate McNeil and Joyce Van Patten star in George Romero's 1988 sci-fi/horror film based on the novel. This focuses on former athlete, Allan (Beghe) who gets paralyzed in an auto accident. Soon, his scientist friend, Geoffrey (Pankow) decides to give him an experimental monkey, Ella to help him recover. Allan and Ella bond immediately, but Allan starts having a telepathic link with her causing behavioral changes and Ella becomes dangerous. McNeil (The House on Sorority Row) plays Melanie, an animal specialist who finds romance with Allan and Van Patten plays Allan's overbearing mother, Dorothy. This is a pretty good 80's sci-fi/horror flick with a decent cast and great make-up effects by Tom Savini as usual. I recommend this.

dee.reid It seems that every once and a while, a neat little horror film comes along that eschews genre conventions and is able to tap into a new vein to provide its scares. Writer-director George A. Romero, of "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) and "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) infamy, brings forth "Monkey Shines," an adaptation of the novel by Michael Stewart.Romero has always been a director who goes for the throat in delivering the shocks in his horror pictures. But in the savage gore and mayhem, he has never lost sight of the human characters, their drama, and their plight. In "Monkey Shines," Romero seems to have been domesticated somewhat - dare I say, "tamed" - in that characters and drama are most essential to the core of the film, and that horror is really the last thing on his mind."Monkey Shines" begins with the Good Day Gone Bad, Really Bad: Allan Mann (Jason Beghe), is a highly physical law student who goes for a jog early one morning after spending the night with his girlfriend Linda (Janine Turner). To avoid a dog on the sidewalk, he unknowingly runs into the path of an oncoming truck. He wakes up several weeks later in the hospital, now a quadriplegic, paralyzed, unable to use his body anywhere below the neck.Confined to a wheelchair he moves around by working a lever with his mouth and having to rely on live-in nurse Maryanne (Christine Forrest), his doting, overbearing mother Dorothy (Joyce Van Patten) and having to deal with his pompous surgeon Dr. Wiseman (Stanley Tucci) who begins having an affair with Linda, Allan gives up and tries to commit suicide. Luckily, Allan's mad-scientist friend Geoffrey (John Pankow) may have a solution: Ella, an extremely intelligent capuchin monkey who is being trained by animal specialist Melanie Parker (Kate McNiel) to be a sort of help-primate for paraplegics and quadriplegics, much like a seeing-eye dog is used for blind people.At first, a great weight seems lifted off Allan's shoulders; Ella's the perfect helper - she can answer the phone, play cassette tapes in the radio, and even help Allan turn the pages of his books when he reads. She even raises her hand in class for her turn to be called on. A deep bond develops between the two that's right out of any made-for-TV movie about hope and determination to beat the odds. Of course, and this is where the horror elements begin to kick in, what Allan doesn't know is that Ella is really Geoffrey's guinea pig in an experiment to create super-intelligent primates: he's been secretly injecting her with human brain tissue, which explains her super-intelligence in helping to make Allan's life a little bit easier. Even more horrifically, Allan has been having incredibly realistic nightmares in which he has acquired a monkey's-eye view of the world, and Ella is subconsciously acting out his deeply-suppressed anger, frustration, hatred, and rage for those around him. And it soon begins a battle of wits to see who is really controlling who, which also sees if Charles Darwin was really right all those years ago."Monkey Shines" develops so nicely during its first hour that it's easy to forget that first and foremost, it's a horror film and not just any horror film, a George A. Romero-directed horror film. Romero shows remarkable restraint in combining both the human story with the horror story, that both elements are given enough screen time to thoroughly develop and not seem so tacked-on to each other. That atmosphere and tension of the film's horror-themed second half is pretty intense, even if things can be forgiven for the haunted house-style climax.This is easily the best-acted film Romero has ever directed, though obviously it's not his best; that honor goes to "Dawn of the Dead." All of the characters turn in fine and realistic performances, including John Pankow as Allan's drug-addled mad-scientist friend who truly has his friend's best interests at heart, even if they're morally gray in the end. But there is one performer who is highly deserving of much praise, and that is Jason Beghe. Jason Beghe delivers a strong, controlled central performance that in my opinion, was criminally overlooked by a great many awards organizations. His performance is one of the most convincing and sympathetic portrayals of a physically handicapped protagonist I've ever seen in the movies. Essentially a prisoner in his own body, he hits every emotive note perfectly, and we believe and can see where and why his anger and rage at his condition is one of the most believable performances in the history of Romero's long and distinguished career as a filmmaker."Monkey Shines" is an overlooked career highlight from a highly distinguished director, George A. Romero. Even more so, Jason Beghe's criminally underrated performance makes the film even more worthy of more significant praise.This is one horror film that isn't monkeying around in the end. It is really scary.8/10

famelovingboy68 This film is not from my generation, I was not even 2 yet, but I'm a TV/movie nostalgia nerd and kind of live in the past. Anyway, The film starts out with 20 something Law student, Allan (Jason Beghe) waking up after presumably sleeping with his "georgeous fiancée" and we see he's a top athlete and goes running, but gets hit by a truck, and goes to the hospital where his fiancée leaves him for the doctor (Stanley Tucci). He comes back from the hospital, a quadriplegic, and he movies in with his mom, seeming to take it rather well. his mad scientist friend(John Pankov) has helper monkeys in his lab and sends one (Ella) to Allan and he gets acquainted and comes around pleasantly, and another AID, this one a faithful and true girlfriend. He goes to school and the monkey goes everywhere with him. But things soon fall apart.he has an overbearing nurse and Allan slowly comes to anger, and being unable to move and having an extremely intelligent monkey with human brain sells the monkey vanquishes the annoying Nurse's bird. the story is more a very intense drama and thriller, than a horror film. It's complex but still believable. it's no different than Project X gone R-rated. With the people Allan sinfully wishes to avenge living nearby, in his reality dreams, she runs through the night and causes a fire at the ex fiancés, killing her and the doctor. No one believes Allan and he soon succumbs to verbal ferocity, speaking and shouting f-bombs of hate (the reason for the R-rating)his domineering mother tries to rule his life and he knows his relationship will work, and that he will be cured. The next couple deaths are non gory. Then Allan knows he must put an end to the maniacal creature and after he thinks it got his girlfriend he is overcome by rage that empowers his upper limbs and he and in the only gruesome sequence, becomes the hero . Then he is able to walk and he and his girlfriend go fishing together, and live happily.