Every George A Romero Movie Ranked Worst To Best

Your enjoyment of Monkey Shines rests upon your ability to buy a premise about a quadriplegic being cared for by a trained monkey. You see, the monkey’s been injected with human brain tissue which makes it smarter but of course there are some unfortunate side effects.

Based on a novel by Michael Stewart (the drinking man’s Michael Crichton), Monkey Shines was Romero’s first foray into studio filmmaking, reflecting the grim realities that faced independents in the late 1980s. Rumors abound that the studio re-cut the picture against Romero’s wishes, so if Monkey Shines doesn’t feel at times like a movie from the guy that made Day Of The Dead and Creepshow a few years earlier, that’s why.

The film’s poster also sports this bit of poetry: “Once there was a man whose prison was a chair/ The man had a monkey, they made the strangest pair/ The monkey ruled the man it climbed inside his head/ And now as fate would have it one of them is dead.”