Instinct Primal

Is it beyond the realm of possibility that there may be more than one Robert Young? You are correct in the fact that Robert Young is not listed in the cast - however, he is the director of the film. No, Robert Young did not come back from the dead to direct it, there are actually 18 Robert Young's listed in IMDb. I do have to say that this review section proved to be more exciting than the film. xminusone, please , before railing somebody else's opinion, do your due diligence by at least reading some of the credits first. Nice review Richard! Keep up the good work. F Murray Abraham's performance is well done, but that is to be expected. I have to agree that this film seems to be one step above the usual Sci Fi junk (ie anything starring Lorenzo Lamas).

On a scale of "Good" -> "Bad" -> "So bad it's good", I have to rate this waste of digital video tape as "A Waste of Digital Video Tape".

"Blood Monkey" lacks two things: Blood, and a Monkey. It has one Name, and a bunch of waiter-slash-actors doing the biggest and best movie they'll ever be in.

And that's two truly sad things. One: that there are people in Hollywood who are desperate enough to be cast in a Waste of Digital Video Tape like this, and two: that there's apparently nobody better available. I jest not - every "actor" in this piece should be wearing a name tag, because it's otherwise impossible to remember who they are from one cut to the next. It's a positive relief when they are mercifully dispatched by the makeup department, and a shame that they're not put out of our misery sooner.

Everything about this disaster is amateur hour. Script, cinematography, editing, score, everything. Nobody working on it gave a Goddamn about this movie. The utter contempt for the viewer just spurts out of the screen in every scene.

Don't watch this, no matter how bored you are. Watch anything - except the Star Wars Holiday Special - instead of this. Yes, anything, including Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. That's how bad we're talking.

And if you rate this higher than a 1? God have mercy on your soul, because no mortal will.

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.

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".

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).