Monkey Boy (1991) — Triskaidekafiles

MONKEY BOY

WRITER: Stephen Gallagher

DIRECTOR: Lawrence Gordon Clark

STARRING: Starring: John Lynch as Peter Carson

Christine Kavanagh as Alison

Emer Gillespie as Tracy Pickford

George Costigan as Schaffer

David Calder as Dr. Jenner

Sebastian Shaw as Dr. Liawski

Pip Torrens as Windeler

Gary Mavers as Forester

Kenneth Cranaham as Hennessey

QUICK CUT: A child escapes from a horrible situation, and an entire town comes together to try and find him.

MONKEY BOY

WRITER: Stephen Gallagher

DIRECTOR: Lawrence Gordon Clark

STARRING: Starring: John Lynch as Peter Carson

Christine Kavanagh as Alison

Emer Gillespie as Tracy Pickford

George Costigan as Schaffer

David Calder as Dr. Jenner

Sebastian Shaw as Dr. Liawski

Pip Torrens as Windeler

Gary Mavers as Forester

Kenneth Cranaham as Hennessey

QUICK CUT: A child escapes from a horrible situation, and an entire town comes together to try and find him.

THE MORGUE

Peter - A journalist who stumbles backwards into a conspiracy at a fertility clinic. He’s determined, loyal, and once he has a story to solve, he won’t give up.

Alison - A scientist at the Jenner Clinic who swings between helpful and obfuscating.

Schaffer - A detective on the case of the Jenner incident, who is sidelined for much of the movie to sit and watch. He is put upon and pushed around for much of the time, and generally grumbles

Hennessey - The head of the government cover up, whom we never really get a handle on, largely as he keeps things close to the chest.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! As has become tradition around here, the late January review has become either something I have a special love for as a treat, or something absolutely, bafflingly, terrible…that I have a special love for. This year is fortunately the former, and it's a movie called Monkey Boy.

The story of how I found this movie is worth sharing. I was showing some friends the fanTAStic documentary, Rewind This! about VHS culture, and I noticed a tape in the background of one guy they were interviewing. I squinted, I leaned in, and saw it was called "Monkey Boy". On a lark, since it was such an intriguing name, I looked it up, the concept sounded perfectly odd, and as I dug around, well...I had acquired a copy of the VHS, since it is not on DVD, off of eBay, in about two days.

So the movie came, I dusted off the old VCR, and watched it. And even though I have avoided VHS only movies, due to the difficulty of getting caps, I knew I had to share it with everyone here. Because despite various factors, the sheer level of obscurity makes it worth showing off. So let's get to it!

We open up with Tracy, who works and lives at the Jenner Clinic, as she hears a commotion out in the courtyard. She rushes to the window to see what was the matter. A van rushes in, and something or someone or something is hurried back into he labs.

Apparently, a test subject escaped, and they were lucky to have retrieved him before he ran into anyone out there. Tracy becomes concerned and phones up her journalist friend Peter.

Since Peter isn't home, Tracy heads down to the labs, and has a chat with the orderly or whatever, as he's slicing up food for the subjects. She is clearly trying to get info from him, and he is gloriously oblivious, as she leaves and he heads in for the nightly feeding.

An unseen figure, once again not in their cage, slices open his throat, and this leads to them doing much the same to everyone else in the facility.

Tracy later finds the body, and things quickly spiral as fire alarms go off, another doctor discovers the dead body of Dr. Jenner, and soon gets flung out the window.

Our would be heroine finds bodies strewn about the courtyard, and is so distracted she misses the knife coming at her, until it's too late.

Peter, having received his friend's messages, heads to the clinic after he has no luck calling her back. A detective pulls him over and escorts him in, what with all the murder and fire.

They stuff Peter in a room, not telling him anything and leaving him to get all wound up, as the cops try to figure out themselves what happened.

But they do finally get him to ID Tracy's body, and so much for our would be heroine.

Detective Schaffer talks to the chief, and we learn that all the staff are dead, except one of the dead bodies is actually a patient, so SOMEone out there is still alive.

So we cut from that revelation immediately to Alison as she's driving along, and hmm, I wonder who she might be!

A rock takes out her windshield, and she drives off the road. The detective is along shortly to get her a car, and ask her a few questions.

Meanwhile, someone higher up the food chain, Hennessey, arrives, to take control of the situation, and boot all the local cops out.

Schaffer is out scouring local farms, trying to find suspects, or if the locals saw anything, when they all get called back in after Big Government takes over.

Back at the fertility clinic, Peter runs into Alison, and she tells him it was just a fire, thanks to a propane tank going up. Sounds legit!

At this point, everyone is sure it's a coverup going on, and make various attempts to figure it out. Peter knows Alison worked there, and he doesn't seem particularly interested in seeing what she knows. And Schaffer has stuck around because the local authorities want to keep an eye on what's happening

The following day, Peter does finally realise he has an employee of the clinic sleeping on his couch, and tries to pick her brain. Alison insists she knows nothing, and suuure.

Meanwhile, at the nearby farm, the wife of the farmer is feeding the critters and whatnot, when she hears something in the barn. She gets taken out in short order, and her husband comes rushing at the screams.

He finds broken plates, and his wife soon tossed down from above. And the unseen assailant leaps out, swats away the shotgun, and stabs the farmer too.

HEY BART WANNA CHECK OUT MY NEW KNIFE AND MONKEY MASK??

Back at the clinic, the feds are tracking something running, but it's conveniently in a spot with too many trees to track for long. They rush out on the hunt, and Schaffer, watching from the hills, spies someone break out a FREAKING FLAMETHROWER, so he has NO idea what to make of all this.

Meanwhile, Alison calls Hennessey to inform him that she tried to warn Peter off, and she does not expect him to continue his investigation. Snort. Yeah, not with half a movie left.

Peter digs around with his contacts, and Dave hits a roadblock with Hennessey being a fed. But he knows some guys who know some guys, and they dig deeper

These trees will never trouble anyone ever again.

Forester shows up at Peter's apartment, also demanding answers, and wanting them to team up for great justice.

Dave gets back in contact with information, that leads the plot to a Dr. Liawski who seems to be in an assisted care home, and out of it.

Back at the farm, the kids are buying lots of fruit to feed their new friend living in the barn, as thanks for murdering their parents. And we finally get to see what the creature looks like, right at the halfway point!

Yep. That is indeed what I could call a Monkey Boy.

We enter the 'information gathering' portion of our movie, as Carson digs around the clinic, and the hackers do their digging. Poking into Hennessey though brings the might of the government down on them however, leading to David falling off the top of a building. Shockingly, an accident.

This leads them to Liawski, the other scientist who used to work with Jenner, and while everyone thinks his mind is gone, he's been actually staying quiet to protect himself. Not a bad idea, after what happened to Dave!

So we get some backstory and learn that Jenner found a way to create a hybrid of two different species, which wow, sure sounds like simple stuff today, but yeah, back when this was made? MAJOR science fiction. There's a line about how far off some of this stuff was, an actual thing the writer was told, and we moved very VERY quickly, to the point that the movie was almost obsolete before it came out.

And at this point, the scientist that is helping Carson on his quest goes on and on about how much this would be worth, how it skirts around moral issues, and "I'm not for or against it, I'm a scientist". I know Gallagher regrets his making this so anti science, but OOF it still hurts to see these days.

Peter pulls a Rorschach and mails his evidence to various publications, in a plotline that ultimately goes nowhere, but is nice to know it's out there.

Back at the farm, the kids and Monkey Boy are playing cards, but he doesn't quite know the rules, and has a fit when he doesn't get his way.

The movie flashes back to before the movie, and how the project is close to making a more viable chimera, that isn't all messed up like Monkey Boy. And since this is a fertility clinic, we learn the mother who was going to carry the monkey child and have it swapped out at the last minute, is Forrester's wife, so that ties in.

Plans are also made to dispose of Monkey Boy once they have their perfected version, and we get to see Allison sign with Monkey Kong, and know that he understands their plans.

So she leaves his cage open, and gives him the choice to stay or save himself by trying to run. OH and she also calls him by his real name; Chad. MONKEY BOY IS A CHAD. This delights me.

Peter picks up Alison's car after the windshield is repaired, and on his way to the clinic, the car is AGAIN assaulted by a rock. Peter, fortunately, stops the car before it needs ANOTHER new windshield.

But he gets dragged back in to the clinic in his usual fashion, Hennessey wonders what to do with him, and Pete meets back up with Alison.

The pair realise their shared incidents both happened near the farm, and put two and two together FINALLY and know where they must go.

So the two make their escape, shutting down power to the facility, and while everyone scrambles to fix the outage, drive to the farm.

Once out there, they find the place pretty trashed. And short of finding poo flung against the walls, it is exactly what I'd expect from some home harbouring a Monkey Boy.

They make their way out to the barn, find the dead bodies of the farmer and his wife, and the kids are still alive at least. Chad is threatening to chuck the girl unless he gets his way, but fortunately they get her away.

Chad and Peter tussle, Pete begging Monkey Boy to fight him, and the experiment ends up running off instead. Schaffer stumbles in during this, and is comPLETEly confused, because he had no idea what movie he was in.

They pass the kids off to Schaffer to get to safety, and the dynamic duo keep chasing after Chad.

Chad crawls off to a corner of the barn's loft, and he really is just a poor, confused boy. He's a teenager at best, with developmental difficulties, a science experiment gone wrong, barely taught beyond being an animal and test subject, and just...I feel SO SO SORRY for him, in all this. Not to excuse his murders, but I definitely *understand* them. And in a way, he *doesn't*.

Chad asks if he can just go home, and they get him to the car, but around that time, Hennessey's men get their systems back up, and are closing in.

In town, Schaffer gets the kids to safety, and runs into Forester on the way. Forester sees the detective's shotgun, and things spiral towards the goon squad stopping the car in the middle of town, Forester approaching with a gun, and Carson announcing loudly to the town that Chad is the one responsible for everything, in hopes of getting the word out.

But when Forester hears that, still angry over his wife's murder, he rushes up and shoots Chad point blank, and...I am genuinely gutted by this. The movie did so much to make you empathise with this creature, and have him go out like this...truly, twas Forester who killed the beast.

YES I TURNED MY PAIN INTO A JOKE.

The only saving grace is that Forrester is immediately gunned down as well. And that's mostly where everything ends, the government confident they can cover this up now and continue making monkey boys, Carson's mailings reaching the newspapers, and dun dun DUN! a whole flock of monkey boys and girls being raised in secrecy for all their nefarious immoral purposes.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: A movie genuinely watched on VHS, and I gotta say, for hat, and something from the UK, which at that time had a particular look to it, it actually looks decent enough, and better than I expected.

Audio: It all sounds fine.

Body Count: A shockingly high number, even if much of it comes in the opening minutes of the movie.

1 - Seven minutes in and Monkey Boy slices a doctor's throat!

2 - Doctor Jenner found down as the clinic burns

3 - Monkey Boy defenestrates another doctor

4 through 10 - A bunch of dead scientists found

11 - Monkey Boy stabs Tracy to death

12 - Farmer's wife gets mauled

13 - Farmer gets jumped and stabbed.

14 - Flamethrower dude gets jumped in the woods.

15 - David falls off a roof.

16 - Monkey Boy gets shot

17 - And then his assailant is taken down

Best Corpse: The movie doesn’t really give much to go on, but flamethrower dude’s deathsplosion amuses me, so there’s our winner.

Blood Type - D: Being a made for tv thing, the blood is sparse, but there’s a few okay splats, and even though the Monkey Boy mask is silly today, it is still striking.

Drink Up! Every time Hennessey reappears.

Movie Review: Okay, first up, this isn’t a proper movie. It was originally a miniseries for the BBC called Chimera, of four episodes roughly 50 minutes apiece. So for a movie around an hour forty, a LOT gets cut out. And while you can feel it, and the plot does indeed jump around to things just happening, I do remain very impressed with whomever trimmed it down, because it is FAR more coherent and flows way better than I would have expected, considering nearly half the movie is missing.. It wasn’t until my final watch for this review to really pay attention and write my notes, that I noticed some of the stitching around the seams. The acting is solid, I love the scifi thriller, its always been a fave of mine, and while it is very dated, I enjoyed this a heck of a lot more than I ever expected, or in a different way that I thought I would. Four out of five buckets of chopped pineapples.

Entertainment Value: Now, when you hear the title “Monkey Boy”, and the trailer looks like some freaky monster movie, and you are expecting a cheesy bit of late 80s VHS trash, but get a remarkably thoughtful, well written, and crafted science fiction thriller…well… The movie is slower than I expected, even trimmed down almost by half, which is appropriate for what it is. It’s ideas are ahead of its time, ahead of what the BBC was doing, and the production values against the quality of SF would put this right at home next to Doctor Who, which may have had people running around quarries and wobbly cardboard caves, but often had some cracking scifi stories. I…absolutely ADORE this movie. I may have been let down by this seemingly looking like it could be trash (which I love) and instead got a good bit of scifi thriller mystery, so I am still happy. I am genuinely wanting to track down Gallagher’s original novel, and even want to find the miniseries, to see the story as it was originally intended, and with the whole story. It may not be ridiculously cheesy, but it has its moments, and if you like a more thoughtful exploration of science and morality, with a bit of monsters and killing thrown in, I genuinely give this a recommendation. Three out of five card tables.