El eslabón sangriento

A movie called Bloodmonkey (or Blood Monkey as it is written on my dvd copy) sounds like a schlocky, terrible, but ultimately entertaining attempt at creature feature. Throw in F. Murray Abraham trying his hardest to look like Fidel Castro, the guy who played Constantine on TV, and some terrible special effects, and you have the perfect Best of the Worst type of film.

Instead, we get an hour and 20 minutes of almost nothing, followed by 6 minutes of something, and 5 seconds of the actual 'Blood Monkey', which looks like a 5th grader used an online animation program to make King Kong, and believe it or not, those 5 seconds are the only moments we actually see the titular creature.

A couple of laughs were had, I will admit. This is filled with some terrible dialogue and editing choices, including a scene that I think they just forgot to record sound effects for, some dropped audio, and even a couple of blank frames. I spent a dollar on this since the title was funny and the cast was interesting, and if you can sit through terrible characters and sub-amateur filmmaking, you might enjoy this. If not, you'll likely end up like me; disappointed.

I don't think I can say enough words about how bad this movie is. I don't usually rate bad movies because I feel bad for the crew. But this movie is a exception. It's like they didn't even care. Bad graphics, bad acting, bad story, bad screenplay, and just felt so fake. Worst movie I have ever seen!

It is a poor film, but it can be watched - more either while away the time, or as an example of how not to do things. Mr F is the only watchable actor, but his efforts are barely worth the film that it is in. Who puts good wine into a mug??? The film lacks tension - and as such it is not a 'whole film' - the lighting, music, atmosphere, do not co-conspire to create a tense environment - there is no 'mood' to the film which keeps the viewers locked in.

I also felt it quite blatantly stole from other films - 'Blair witch' and 'The Descent' in particular - most clearly toward the end, when the film decides it is obviously bored of its current direction and wishes to go off elsewhere following the lead of other, better films.

The young student actors are all pretty - (which is somewhat surprising since they are supposed to be anthropology student...) and none really leave a lasting impression aside from their good looks.

This was clearly a low budget film, with the monsters staying out of eye-sight until the end of the film (which could well have been a good move considering the paltry CGI employed).

This film is directed by the Hammer Horror and British television veteran director Robert Young, not the actor, so the facts are right if you check thoroughly enough. As such, poor film or not, I say that we should be glad that those who provided top class efforts in their youth (and ours) are still working, albeit not in the classy productions that they might wish. I'd sooner Robert Young directed this than not direct at all. I have happy memories of 'Vampire Circus' and 'Charlie Boy' from the dear old Hammer House and I have plenty of good things to say about the TV shows the guy directed, including Minder, GBH and Jeeves and Wooster. Okay, so this is typical exploitation crap, but it is an item of interest through its director's heritage.

A group of students is summoned to assist a professor in exploring jungle regions never before touched by the human hand. But soon they learn about a whole new primate species that just might still be alive. After one of the students disappears, suspicions turn against the professor and the blood monkey begins his prowl.

Did you ever have a movie you just knew was going to be bad without giving it five minutes of a chance? This was one of those -- with a name like "Blood Monkey" and the fact it seems to be from the Sci-Fi Network, I had little hopes. Even the fact it's a "creature feature" is unfortunate, because those are so hard to make decent (I'm still recovering from "Prey"). And the selling point? It stars Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham as Professor Hamilton.

Highlighting Abraham was a good idea, as he's really the only one in this film who has a real chance at another movie appearance. I'm just sad he had to sink this low to pay his rent. The only other character I really liked was student Sydney Maas (Laura Aikman), but this was more for her questionable attractiveness than any special talent.

As my title says, this film suffers from one big lack: the monkey. Every so often you'll get some blood and at one point there's an arm. But the monkeys are always in the distance, in the shadows and blurry, so they could be boars or lions or anything else. Even, perhaps, Dennis Franz. I really don't know. But have students get attacked by a creature, but never showing the creature attack, gets really old.

I don't know who would enjoy this film. I will say they paced the suspense out, so I never wanted to shut it off (which is more than I can say about a lot of movies). But others might not be so patient. With minimal action, minimal gore, no nudity... this is not the ideal horror film. Sometimes you can remedy that with solid writing ("The Beast Must Die!") but this film is a one sentence idea stretched to 90 minutes. You're better off watching reruns of "Murder, She Wrote".