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

A major disappointment for me for details that didn't really concern the plot. Jason Beghe was disappointing as the paraplegic former athlete who gets a cappuchin monkey as an aide and companion and turns it into a tool of terror as certain people begin to get on his nerves. The monkey somehow gets human brain tissue injected into it. This started off promising but there were characters from the beginning that I didn't like, particularly his nurse (Christine Forrest) who brings around a bird he hates and his ridiculously aggressive mother (Joyce Van Patten),an absolute harpy of a character. Kate McNeil is his girlfriend and John Pankow a scientist whose experiments starts the monkey on the trail of terror. The only really interesting character was his college professor played by soap legend Tudi Wiggins in a rather minor part.

The only scene that stood out to me as interesting (in a campy way) was the confrontation between Beghe and Van Patton where he tells her off. Looking much like a combination of Constance Ford and Elaine Strutch, Van Patton started slapping him over and over, reminding me of Ford slapping Sandra Dee into a Christmas tree in "A Summer Place", giving this film the kind of mood that wasn't there before. It's a very bizarre set up for the monkey and the bathing Van Patton that had me laughing where I should have been horrified. This isn't really physical horror that the 80's were famous for, but a psychological confusing mess that seems to think it's more intelligent than it is. As I'm not a connoisseur of George Romero films, it just left me shaking my head. The monkey after a while ceases being cute and becomes a ridiculous excuse for a horror film monster.

This is quite the interesting movie. As a Romero fan I have to admit it took me long enough to get around to watch this. But it is worth it and the effects and the animals in here are still holding up. Tom Savini was doing the effects, which is showing (positively).

The story may be a bit predictable, but the overall theme is quite engaging. And since this is based on something that really goes on, it is even more chilling. Also based on a novel, though apparently the ending has been changed. Twice, because the original ending (on the disc I watched),was different than the one used. I think the original one that was cut has a bit over the top performance, but hearing that shooting the new ending made Romero lose out on Pet Semetary makes me a bit sad ... but that's life, isn't it? Sometimes winning, sometimes losing.

Just like what happens in the movie at certain points. How will this end and what are the lessons to be learned? There is always social commentary when Romero was at the helm, one of the things I always liked, including the thrill and suspense he also added of course