Opiniones de usuarios

Where is the love for Shakma? This is an entertaining, mindless cheesy Horror flick that came in the decline of a genre.

The movie is about a killer baboon. How could someone not like it? It's cheesy as hell and unintentionally funny but still it delivers expectations. I'm glad I rented this on VHS because I had a great moment. I laughed, cringed, and applauded for Shakma! The lead characters had great chemistry between each other. Wyss on her hottest form, Atkins, and the always fantastic Roddy McDowall were great on their roles. But keep in mind that Shakma is the real star of the movie. Our killer baboon made the entire movie watchable.

Rent this not so bad piece of 80's Horror trash and have a good time. Remember to keep your brain out of this. You won't need it.

A group of medical students are planning to play live role game in the shape of "Dungeon and Dragons" in the medical campus building after hours. They'll be locked in and accompanied by Professor Sorenson, who'll be The Gamester that looks over the contest. While searching for clues, to eventually save the princess. They didn't expect a real nemesis would try to stop them, as now a furious, drugged up lab baboon is on the loose and tearing apart the gamers.

I'm stuck here, because I thought there were good moments within, but also equally bad aspects to this shonky, overwrought and mildly fun monkey on the rampage b-grade clunker. The disappointing thing is the premise pulls you right in, but what we get never lives up to it and its frustratingly vapid script with little success stretches the one-idea concept out. You could only do so much. It does seem to hold your interest in patches though, after a somewhat meandering set-up to begin with. Actually I got to hand it to screenwriter Roger Engle, as even though there was too much dead air and repetition, it still has guts and never took the easy option. The serious approach the material is going for is totally thrown off balance due to how silly going it gets and the lack of menace dripping off the "I have no respect for doors!" baboon. Some people might find the baboon terrifying, but on the other hand for me it came off pretty risible. Although that's me watching it, and not being in the same room with it, as if so Im sure it would be a different story. The baboon's obviously method performance was nothing but brilliant! Watching it bouncing about, dawdling around on its hind legs, shrieking in anger and the facial activity gave me a good laugh, but at least the attack scenes struck a nerve as they were brutally viscous and relentless in detail. Some took place off-screen, but were well done and the few we saw were unpleasantly aggressive. Decent gore FX was on show, but this was more so the aftermath and blood was spilled very often. Directors' Tom Logan and Hugh Parks do a mechanical job, in which case they could've done with much tighter editing. However because of the minimal production, it's stringent quality generates some well-mounted anxiety and claustrophobic passages. It's all about the jolts, and since we know that, we see them pretty much coming and in an all too quickly, cramp fashion. David C. Williams' brooding musical score is well placed throughout. The performances by the young cast including the likes of Christopher Atkins, Amanda Wyss and Ari Meyers is by the numbers. Roddy McDowall is reliably fine, in an all to familiar role.

Overly drawn out, but reasonably fun fodder.

...ok, maybe not the $$$$ at the box office. Let's face it Christopher Atkins and D & D was not a box office grabber in 1990 either. Shakma is a lot like drinking stout or maybe even scotch. It get's better after each viewing (or maybe it gets better after drinking scotch). OK, this film is really bad in many ways. But because I have fond memories of getting loaded with my old buddies while watching a crazed baboon beat against various objects it goes down as one of my top bad movies. Come on, just the name alone should put a grin on your face. Say it...SHAKMA. Keep on saying Shakma over and over. There is nothing that makes me happier then walking into a room, saying "Shakma" and having everyone laugh in agreement. Pass this on and maybe one day everyone will know what Shakma really means...

A bunch of college students play a live-action fantasy role-playing game like Dungeon & Dragons in an (apparently) locked building with caged primates, with their professor acting as Dungeonmaster. They wander alone from room to room, communicating with the professor by walkie-talkie. There's some supposedly unbeatable villain in the game named Nemesis, but I don't know who he was. They're supposed to figure out some sort of word puzzle from things written on blackboards, which I guess is a code word to give to the heroine, who is the only one who bothered to dress up in a costume for the game.

The game is deadly boring, and they really should have made it more interesting and involving, or else contrived some other reason for the students to be in the building. I'd have to guess this movie is actually older than 1990, due to the poor picture quality and the terribly simplistic computer graphics on the computers that appear in the movie (although that may be the fault of the budget and not the age).

In between boring unsuspenseful scenes of people wandering around, a baboon attacks. The attacks are fairly violent, and if the movie's editing had been tighter, this might have been a better movie. There is a good scene of the baboon running down a hallway, and also towards the end a student has a plan to beat the baboon when we think he has given up that is also a good scene.

However, on the whole, the movie is too long, and has too many scenes that drag without serving a purpose. The characters are not really fleshed out, and looking at the list of actors and their characters' names, I can't tell who was who.

Professor Sorenson (Roddy McDowall) and his assistant, Sam (Christopher Atkins) are working on an experimental brain serum to reduce aggression. Upon injecting it into a baboon named SHAKMA, it goes berserk in the lab, causing Sorenson to order Sam to put the creature down. Inexplicably, Sam decides against the idea, and SHAKMA escapes, slaughtering all of the other research animals in the process.

Now, with the hyper-energized creature on the loose, no one is safe. This is made far worse, due to the fact that Sorenson's students have been locked in the building for a treasure hunt game! Everyone is in for a long, bloody night.

This isn't a bad horror movie, though it's fairly obvious where it's headed from the beginning. Personally, I find baboons to be scary as hell anyway, so, this works for me!

Co-stars Amanda Wyss as Tracy...

I'm unsure why there's so much praise for this film because Shakma is really quite boring throughout. The whole storyline about "the game" is very dull and the only thing I was hoping would make it interesting was the killer baboon himself. There's a few decent scenes scattered about, but not nearly enough to call this a cult classic or even close to a cult classic. The scene where the woman gets killed in the toilet seemed very well shot at first, until she gets back up and reaches for the ventilation grill. Yeah, as if Shakma is gonna suddenly stop attacking her.

Overall, Shakma is not the worst horror film out there, but is nowhere near as good as others on here would have you believe.

If you have never seen the unrestrained, unreasoning fury of an enraged baboon, brace yourself.

Watching Shakma, I started out thinking, "Well, he's just a little monkey, it's not like he's a tiger or a snake or something," but after seeing Typhoon throw himself (quite literally) into the role of Shakma, I reconsidered the destructive capabilities of the primate chassis.

Shakma is a many-armed frenzy of horror and doom, and this movie is absolutely worthwhile if only for that awe-inspiring display.

The acting's a little thin, and there are a few scenes that'll really make you roll your eyes, but if you get a chance to see this movie for under $5, take it. You won't be sorry.

Not as bad as you might expect. The main problems I had were with the extremely cheap set, which could have been much more creative (there were only two or three exterior shots in the whole film), and with the embarrassingly banal Dungeons & Dragons game that the characters play, which was ridiculous and seems like part of another movie altogether. Other than that, the actors were fine, the deaths were pleasingly bloody, and poor Shakma really needed to wear some pants. The movie is well-paced, but plays all of its cards too early, so you realize how thin the story actually is. Shakma would be good for an undemanding video double feature, perhaps with the similiarly baboon themed In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro, which is a much better movie. I give Shakma 5/10.

P.S. I missed the part that told me why the characters couldn't just leave the building?

In a flagrant breach of health and safety regulations (and flying in the face of common sense), professor Sorenson (Roddy McDowall, not playing an ape for a change) locks the external doors to the college, trapping himself and a handful of his students inside the building while they play a real-life fantasy role-playing game (with the use of a hilariously crap computer, tracking devices and walkie-talkies). Their fun is interrupted by a crazed lab baboon called Shakma, whose brain has been fried by an experimental serum.

Who knew that a baboon - not much bigger than an average sized dog - could be so butt-clenchingly scary? Shakma, directed by Hugh Parks and Tom Logan, starts off on shaky ground, the nerds playing their silly game proving rather boring, but once the angry ape shows up to spoil the evening, the film proves surprisingly terrifying thanks to a standout performance from Typhoon the baboon. Crazier than Nic Cage on cocaine, the hairy horror gives his all, screeching loudly, crashing wildly against doors, leaping onto victim's faces, and generally being one incredibly fearsome furry fellow.

With a willingness to bump off any character, no matter how likeable, a smattering of gore (the baboon goes mad with jaws and claws and likes to eat his victims), and an unpredictable ending, Shakma is a solidly entertaining B-movie - so much so that it's easy to forgive the clichéd cat scare (and rat scare).

Truly awful. A bunch of medical researchers secure the use of a large building for a long night of LARPing. Unfortunately, the baboon they were experimenting on earlier has gone totally nuts and escapes. Named Shakma, the baboon weeds out the LARPers one by one. When I first heard about this movie (earlier the same day I watched it), I said to myself, "Killer baboon? I'm in!" Obviously, I didn't expect it to be good, but I thought it might be worth a laugh. It isn't. It's totally freakin' boring. The film is in desperate need of an editor, first of all. It just drags and drags. But, really, the biggest problem is the baboon is not really that threatening. I'm sure he could hurt you, but I'm pretty sure I could take him. Starring Christopher Atkins, Amanda Wyss, Ari Meyers and Roddy MacDowell.

People here are being way too hard on this movie. It's a B horror film and a pretty good one at that. The scenes with the baboon attacking the doors are scary. If you know how agressive and powerful a full grown male baboon can be you would have a little more respect for this film.

Shakma is worse than I expected it to be. Much, much worse. It's cheesier than a triple-cheese Imo's pizza. Watch adult med students play a fantasy game until they're stalked by a killer baboon. Roddy McDowall plays the students' teacher, who for some reason sponsors their sophomoric game. He goes by the alias GAME MASTER.

As sophisticated audience members, we're expected to know what the hell is going on in this little game of wizards, jewels, princesses, walkie-talkies, and demons. The premise of the game is so ridiculous, it sets the entire movie up for failure.

This isn't a long movie by any means, but it feels like three hours, and I'm not even kidding. Basically the exposition takes a half hour, then the rest of the movie is the cast running around and Shakma attacking doors. That's all you really need to know.

Shakma will require you to abandon any sense of logic. None of the characters make any sensible decisions. Apparently in a building with 7 floors, there's only one telephone. ONE TELEPHONE. Come on people, there's no way you can make this fall under the umbrella of suspension of disbelief.

There are a few instances in Shakma that are brilliant. For an entire minute, I thought this movie was going somewhere. Alas, too much cheese stole all these moments away.

So if you want to see discount Luke Skywalker chase a baboon, this is the movie for you. If you want to see sexual deviants play a dress-up game, Shakma is your go-to. If you don't want your intelligence insulted, stray far away from Shakma.

Good for a few laughs though.

This movie looks and feels like it escaped from a 70's or 60's drive-in cinema. It's plot is terribly feeble, the actors are more amateurs than anyone could be, and this computer game scheme was out of date even then.

Looking back at it now, I think it's much worse than it could have been in 1990. Camera work is like a Kentucky chicken farm home-movie about Fido, the family basset hound, who celebrated his 5th birthday, and got a bite from the prise winning rooster, filmed with a VHS-C camera. Microphones hang in more times than they don't. The shadows cast by the crew or the lamps, or whatever that has nothing to do with the given scene occasionaly hang in to the picture.

Major editing errors occur very often. For example: the baboon bangs on the door, trying to break it in. On the other side two teenagers, looking like extras from an early season starsky&hutch episode, are pulling it towards themselves, trying to stop the baboon from opening it. If this was in real life, the baboon would break through the doors like a speeding locomotive, Neo style.

Another blooper is that this whole stuff is supposed to take place in 10+ storied building. At the start of the movie, we see the big block, OK. But in the last quarter of the movie we see the building again from the outside, (this time at night) and just above the second floor we can see the underpart of the drain pipes. This is way beyond anything I've seen.

There are no special effects, the monkey looks like the blood thirsty rabbit from Monty Python's Holy Grail, except it's more shabby and dirty, reminding you more of a microphone boom than any kind of animal.

I was bored to death by this movie from the first frame to the last. It's not scary, it's not exciting, it's not dramatic, it's plainly the shame of every movie maker.

It's bad. -4 out of 10.

You are currently reading about an excellent (see: totally ridiculous) Saturday morning monster movie starring Amanda "Tina from A Nightmare on Elm St." Wyss and Christopher "Blue Lagoon" Atkins (among others). Sounds like a terrible movie, so why do you love it mickeyshamrock? Well, aside from the typical "so bad it's good" moments, and my raging hard on for Amanda Wyss, the baboon footage is insane. I've never seen anything like it. Shakma (aka Typhoon) literally goes ape sh*t every take. Every time the baboon is on camera it elevates this movie beyond it's B-movie shackles. Definitely to be watched in one sitting, breaking it up will only expose some of it's faults. Turn off your mind and get ready for some ape-tastic surprises.

The students in the med school of a university play a "Dungeons & Dragons" type of role playing game in their tower after hours. They're supervised by their head professor, Sorenson (Roddy McDowall). Unfortunately, one of their primate charges is a baboon named Shakma (played by "Typhoon"), who has been genetically altered - big surprise there - and who has now gone absolutely crazy, slaughtering any stupid human unlucky enough to be close to it. As the humans dwindle in number, they find that getting help from the outside world is next to impossible.

"Shakma" is pretty laughable, all right, not that it's *completely* worthless. The action is passable, the suspense passable. The most entertaining aspect is the animal action. Typhoon is a real force of nature and was obviously trained as well as a baboon could possibly be trained. Things get pretty gory, too. The movie is generally amusing for putting an "animal attack" spin on the standard slasher formula. Everything about it is no more than adequate on a technical level; it suffers the most from its silly script and inane characterizations. The actors treat the material with the best poker faces that they can muster: former teen idol Christopher Atkins, Amanda Wyss of the original "A Nightmare on Elm Street", Ari Meyers of 'Kate & Allie'. The casting of McDowall is certainly appropriate given his iconic role(s) in the "Planet of the Apes" franchise.

This is a junk movie, to be sure, but it's still reasonably entertaining. One big problem is that it's overextended, going on too long at approximately an hour and 42 minutes.

Five out of 10.

When I saw that movie a few years ago it totally freaked me out. Which is surprising, as I had thought I had become immune to horror movies. I am surprised the movie got such a bad score, because for me it totally worked. Watch at night, alone.....

Who doesn't like a psychotic monkey film? Fresh from playing a monkey himself in several thousand Planet of the Apes films, Roddy McDowall plays a cold, heartless college professor whom endears himself to the audience by performing some sort of operation on a baboon called Shakma. This doesn't go well and he asks Shakma's mate, Hero Guy, to put the monkey to sleep. Which he doesn't. Or something. I was too busy trying to figure all the crap they were talking about this game they were going on about.

This game they were going on about seems to be some sort of live action dungeons and dragons type deal, but not much is explained to be honest. Some jock manages to wangle his way into the game for reason, and to cut a long story short, everyone ends up trapped in the college building while Shakma gets up and starts tearing people's throats out. Some people think its all part of the game, while Hero Guy and his girlfriend run about in circles and barricade doors as Shakman goes nuts.

Although this kind of film can get tedious, this one wasn't too bad as Shakma as a real life monkey does come across as rather insane, and no wonder, if you read in the trivia bit on IMDb how they made him go mental. Even though there's not much in way of gore or nudity, Shakma certainly munched his way through a lot of the cast, so, if you see it for thirty pence at a car boot sale in Glasgow like I did, pick it up.

Is it even a monkey, or an ape? We'll never know.

When I was in my early teens, there was this guy we knew.... Okay, never mind the story behind that quote above. It's a long one.

Fast forward to a few years ago, when I happened to stumble upon "Shakma" on DVD. Of course I instantly remembered this one ultra-amazing movie from my early teen days. Regardless the fact that I remembered it to be a pile of poop, I felt the uncontrollable need to re-watch this film. And what the heck, it's still a bad 'slasheresque' film. But one with a killer baboon in it. The baboon was experimented on, got pretty annoyed about it and then decides to attack and kill a bunch of teenagers who are having a role-play party in the same building. There's lots of running up & down hallways in this film (because of this I was actually reminded of that other ultra-amazing film, also made in 1990, called "Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor" - just replace all the alien monstrosities with one killer baboon, and you'll pretty much end up watching the same movie) and the kills are far from spectacular. There's one cool shot in the film, kind of a POV shot from the baboon, with his bloody mouth & teeth leaning into the frame. And there are several, and I do mean a lot of shots where the baboon can be seen going totally nuts over a door. I mean, the beast profoundly hates doors, that much is clear. Whenever he sees one, he goes berserk and wants to destroy it.

I don't think a baboon on a mission out to wreck doors makes up for a very good film in the end.