Instinct Primal

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".

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.

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.

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!

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.