The Monkey Mission

If you're into heist films (Alpha Caper, the It Takes a Thief TV series, the Burglars) this is pretty classic. I remember seeing it YEARS ago on TV. The one scene I still remember is when Greggors the monkey refuses to come back after grabbing the vase (by use of a tightrope over the vace's platform) and it's trainer, John Fiedler (Mr. Peterson from the Bob Newhart Show) tries to lure it back by hanging half of his wallet out of his back pocket and waving his butt around shouting "look Greggors! Sucker Greggors! Sucker!" Classic scene!

I love this movie! This is one of the best of all the monkey/buddy movies and TV shows that proliferated around the turn of the 80's. These include "BJ and the Bear", "Every Which Way but Loose" and its vastly superiour sequel "Every Which Way you Can" (for which Eastwood was robbed of his Best Actor Award by Robert Bulloney's Raging DeNiro), "Goin' Ape", "Goin' Bananas" and "On Golden Pond." Most of the scenes of Gregor were filmed using Coco, the veteran chimanzee actor, who of course stole the show. HOwever some of the more complicated stunts were actually performed by a little known stunt double named Jan Medlock, playing Gregor in a ape costume. This is particularly evident in the tightrope scene, where Gregor and Mr. Carlton do the little dance and shakes their butts all over the place. Its so funny because its true! I think everyone should go out and buy a copy of the monkey mission today!