Instinct Primal

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.

To be honest I wasn't expecting much from the production values or the story, but was expecting an actor of F Murray Abraham's calibre to maintain some interest. And actually, while the character and writing is beneath him( we are here talking about someone who in Amadeus gave one of the finest male performances I have seen on film), Abraham is by far the best thing about Blood Monkey, he does deserve credit for bringing some dignity to his performance. The other actors don't match him however, pretty-looking of course but they don't do anything beyond that, even being genuinely concerned about what was happening. They are not helped by their characters, which are not just stereotypical but made to do annoying things that you don't care for them one bit. The dialogue is very cheesy, while the story is increasingly dull and repetitive. The gore is minimal and pretty fake in look with the scenes they feature in unscary and suspense-less, while the effects are terrible and further cheapened by some of the most unfocused camera work and editing of any movies of this genre. Overall, other than Abraham Blood Monkey was an ugly, repetitive, annoying and very un-atmospheric mess. 2/10 Bethany Cox

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.

F. Murray Abraham pays the rent by lending his Oscar winning credibility to this routine creature feature. As a mad scientist type he joins an obligatory ensemble of bickering students as they wander around a forest in Thailand until its time for the creature to turn up. Its all very by-the-numbers and elderly film and TV veteran Robert Young keeps the quality reasonably high considering the limitations. Fans of the genre (a mainstay of the Sci-Fi Channel) will know what to expect, though this is of higher quality than many similar productions, but thats not saying much when a film displays not a single novel trait.

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".