“Sam, you are so male!”

Justin’s rating: Shakma Shakma Shakma with that deviant behavior!

Justin’s review: Before now, I wasn’t fully aware that there was a spate of angry monkey movies in the late ’80s that included titles such as Link (1986), Monkey Shines (1988), and Primal Rage (1988). For a while there, I guess there were fat paychecks for Hollywood primates and all the bananas they could eat.

At the tail* end of this trend came the amazingly named Shakma, which starred a Hamadryas baboon named Typhoon who had a trainer that could only barely had control over this beast. Apparently, Typhoon was so intense as he destroyed the sets and was always on the verge of actually ripping faces off that everyone except the trainer was absolutely terrified of him. But this is the price of high cinematic art in an age before CGI, and it must be paid.

As the great Shakma legend goes, a med school — of the mad scientist variety — created a hyper-aggressive red-butted baboon, tried to euthanize it when things went too far, and accidentally injected it with the “revive and kill everyone” serum instead.

This couldn’t happen at a more inopportune time, as a group of med students are holding their weekly Dungeons & Dragons-type LARP game throughout the facility**. Everyone wears a tracker as they go through rooms and do geeky stuff, and I’m just impressed that this is part of the actual plot of a killer baboon movie.

Locked in the building with the baboon, the students start getting picked off one by one by a monkey with an attitude. Sure, on this side of the review you can chuckle at this, but if you’re in the movie, you’ll find it actually plausible when you see how crazy Shakma actually gets. And let me tell you, this baboon does not respect LARPers. “I cast a shield of monkey invincibiiiiiiarrgghhhh!!!” is a phrase you should get used to hearing in this film.

Because this is both a creature feature and a slasher film in structure, it helps to at least have one famous horror face in the mix. And there is none better for this role than A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Amanda Wyss, who joins the game as the girlfriend of one of the students.

I won’t lie — I’d actually wanted to see just the LARP storyline as the full plot without any killer baboon. These kids are all supremely dorky, and having them run around and cast imaginary firebolts or slay kobolds could’ve made for a better time. When Shakma goes haywire, the LARP grinds to a halt for the lesser game of hide-and-seek, which is cinematic poison.

But hey, if you like baboons banging on doors, boy is this the film for you! It’s occasionally interesting and even genuinely disturbing with some of its animal attacks. Unfortunately, it struggles with filling in the blank spaces with character development, plot, ideas, funny lines, or anything other than repeating certain scenes and the word “over.”

Cut out about 30 minutes or so, and Shakma might’ve done better with audiences. It’s a really fun curiosity in spots, but never rises to the watchable insanity of, say, Chopping Mall as I’d hoped.

*Heh

**Controlled by Roddy McDowall and an array of about nine walkie-talkies

Intermission!

• Typhoon the baboon also popped up in The Fly and Order of the Black Eagle, if you need some trivia to impress your friends.
• What friends?
• I know, I’m being polite for your ego’s sake.
• Thank you.
• You’re welcome.
• Sticking microchips on brains simply works, because computers!
• That is one nerdy D&D computer program
• Dang, that baboon attack right out the gate is one heck of a jump scare
• If you’re a med student who’s grinning about giving a lethal injection to a monkey, perhaps you shouldn’t be in the program
• “Oh great, I’m dating the goddess of vengeance.”
• Walkie-talkies had like 12-foot antennae in the ’80s
• How many times are we going to hear the word “over” in this film?
• If you see a room full of turned over cages, blood everywhere, and a very angry monkey, it’s time to depart, not stare with a dopey open mouth
• You don’t have to pretend to hold a door closed when this monkey can’t operate a knob
• Shakma doing a casual wall jump like it ain’t no thing
• Fake jump scare skeleton
• Kissing a dead girl isn’t weird at all, why do you ask
• This guy REALLY likes toting dead bodies around like he’s making a collection
• 911 loves it when you call them and never say anything
• Dang, I feel bad for the monkey now