SHAKMA!!!

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, my dear Enemaniacs! So, check it out. Last week, I revisited Red Letter Media by reviewing their 2016 comedy Space Cop. Whenever Red Letter Media comes up, there are a few things that you know are also going to be mentioned. One of those things is their panel show, Best of the Worst. When I was setting up what I was going to review, I thought this would be an excellent time to slot in a movie I’ve wanted to have on this blog for some time, 1990’s baboon out of control flick, Shakma.

Shakma is probably better known over the last decade or so than the decade before that because it was featured in one of the earlier episodes of Best of the Worst. That… That’s the connection between Space Cop and Shakma. That’s all I have to say about that.

I think there was a kind of fascination with apes and monkeys in the 80s. We had Project X with Matthew Broderick in 1987. Link was another horror film from the mid 80s. George Romero got into the game with 1988’s Monkey Shines. Let’s not forget The Devil’s Gift, which was a cheap knock-off of Stephen King’s “The Monkey.” That last one also got trimmed down and shoved into an anthology film called Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders that was featured in the very last televised episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (it wasn’t the last actual episode of the original run, just the last one Sci-Fi Channel aired).

And also The Monkees returned too.

My point is that everyone was monkey crazy in the 80s. Shakma starred Christopher Atkins. Atkins became famous for The Blue Lagoon, a movie hated by critics, but adored by horny teenage boys who wanted to see Brooke Shields wearing little to nothing on an island and discovering sexuality. The trailer for Shakma says that Atkins was a two-time winner of the National Association of Theater Owners’ Star of the Year Award. The First time was for The Blue Lagoon, and I can understand that one. That was a box office hit. They said the second time was for Shakma. I call bullshit on that.

I went to a lot of theaters to see movies in 1990. I do not remember Shakma playing at any movie theater near me in Indianapolis. I know that Indy seems like a small city, but it was not… Especially in 1990. I think back then, we were still the largest population for a state capital? Maybe? I could be wrong about that. Either way… I didn’t know anything about Shakma until Best of the Worst.

This is a strange production. For one, Atkins did tell people the production was pretty intense. The actors were warned NOT to make eye contact with the baboon used for the movie for fear it might fucking snap and kill them all. My words, not his. Plus, the general plot of this movie seems straightforward, right? A baboon that got scienced on and its brain bits were mixed up for the sake of study goes apeshit and starts killing people. Seems pretty, as I said, straightforward.

But the reason why the victims are in the building to be slaughtered by Shakma is… precarious. They are there playing a fantasy role-playing game. But not at a table… Like a LARP (live action role play). I feel like a bunch of guys in 1987 were sitting around playing Dungeons and Dragons while stoned out of their gourds and watching, I dunno… Link or something. And they all got the idea for this movie. But then they went and saw Monkey Shines, again, stoned out of their gourds, and said, “Brooooo… We gotta get on this immediately!” But none of them could remember what type of primate to use, so they just said, “I dunno, dude… A baboon?”

Bada bing, bada boom… Shakma.

All good killer monkey movies start with, what else? The creation of the killer monkey. In this movie, oddly enough, the creation of Shakma is being done by the guy who’s best known for playing a simeon, Roddy McDowall. He’s doing a little head operation on Shakma, the baboon owned by his student, Sam (Christopher Atkins). Dr. Sorensen (McDowall) cut open Shakma’s skull and injected a fluid directly into the baboon’s brain.

This is being done in front of a class with students looking on, but we’ll find out later that this is a part of an experiment Sorensen is doing with his students. However, it seems like most of the class is far more interested in a game that will be played later that evening. As soon as Sorensen was done with the injection, one of the students leaned over to Sorensen to ask him about that night’s game, but Sorensen is not having any of this talk right now. I mean, for god’s sake, man… There’s an exposed, soon-to-be-killer baboon brain in front of everyone!

This even extends to Shakma’s owner. Sam is just counting down the minutes to tonight’s big game. One of the students involved in the game is a real dork. This guy, Bradley, is one of those A/V nerds. He’s set up a computer program that serves as something of a map for the game that will use trackers to monitor where everyone is. He’s also rigged a bunch of walkie-talkies to allow players to speak only to the gamemaster, Sorensen.

Sam’s girlfriend is Tracy. Tracy is an engineering student. She’s apparently some sort of feminist because she doesn’t want to stay at home while Sam is working long hours at a hospital. If you’re of a certain age or a fan of a certain key horror film from the 80s, you know who Tracy is. That’s Amanda Wyss of A Nightmare on Elm Street fame. She’s the third piece of the famous trifecta of McDowall-Atkins-Wyss that was likely used to sell this movie to investors. But this scene introducing her is pretty key.

First, we understand that Sam is into experimental medicine. Second, his girlfriend Tracy is also a smartypants. Third, we find out that Sam owns and cares for Shakma, but he was not aware of Sorensen’s work with the baboon that he’s affectionate toward. But, fourth, Sorensen took Shakma to do this experiment.

Sorensen injected Shakma with corticotropic. This experimental form of the stuff is being used to try to induce a more passive, less aggressive attitude in Shakma. Richard, the guy who kept asking Sorensen about playing the game later in the evening, explains to Tracy that sometimes, corticotropic can actually cause the opposite to happen.

Guess what it’s going to do to Shakma.

Sam is kind of shitty about this because he was working with Shakma to train him. Richard mentions that the reason they used Shakma for this experimental corticotropic is that baboons are second only to humans in terms of aggression. Just then, Shakma wakes up and goes berserk. Sam manages to sedate Shakma, but Sorensen comes in and orders Sam to destroy Shakma so he can perform a necropsy the next day. However, Sam can’t quite bring himself to destroy the baboon he spent a lot of time bonding with and helping train to be much less aggressive. Instead of euthanizing the creature, Sam just keeps Shakma sedated. Between Sam not euthanizing Shakma, and Professor Sorensen not allowing Richard to cremate the baboon until he has a chance to cut him open again, Shakma wakes up a few hours later and is pretty murderously pissed off.

Alright, so the evening has arrived, and it’s time for this live-action role-playing game to begin. I can’t really stress enough how strange, yet still unique and original, this plot construction is for this movie. Conventional thinking would just have Shakma running wild through the building and killing medical students and whatnot. Nope, not Shakma the movie! Why just have graduate students sitting around waiting to be massacred when you can have them play an RPG? Why have this RPG be a game organized by a student when you can have their professor be the one running everything? Isn’t that strange?

Again, it’s not at all what you’d expect from a horror movie where a killer baboon is going to go around and pick hapless graduate nerds off one by one, but, also again, it is so interesting because it’s about the last thing you’d expect to play a major plot point for more than two-thirds of the movie’s runtime. I think the most clever thing about the RPG element is that it helps inform a few of the characters and gives a reason as to why doors will be locked and entire floors will be darkened by way of having the power completely shut off. In the world of the game, the floor without lights is meant to be a cavern that the characters have to traverse through. The locked doors are meant to contain the game in particular ways.

The movie isn’t so good at naturally introducing these characters. However, the RPG gives a little shorthand for it. Richard is a brown-noser. He wants to get in on whatever it is that these other students have that naturally keeps them in a closer orbit to their professor. It’s the fact that Sam has recruited Richard’s younger sister, Kim (played by Ari Meyers from Kate and Allie) to play the part of the “princess” who serves as the object of the game (the players have to get to her on the top floor to save her) that leads to her accidentally revealing this game to Richard, which now brings this smarmy douche into the game. He’s more about having connections and being a cool guy who wants to have a cool job that pays well and will help him get the chicks than he is about WHAT it is he is actually doing in his chosen field of study. That makes him the wild card in the goings on that will ensue with the game.

While that is clever, I do like that ALL of what’s going to happen with Shakma is the direct result of Sam (the “good” guy) and Richard (the “bad” guy) both not doing something to the creature, but I’ll say more about that later.

The guy above, the dude who set up all the computer tracking business (Bradley), entered the room where Richard was supposed to basically “kill” him. Richard hides and does not do his part as the character “Nemesis.” He’s basically throwing the game so it ends quickly and he can get back to a date he was supposed to be on with his girlfriend. Basically, he’s still participating to show he is part of the “favored” group that Sorensen hangs out with, but he cuts corners and does a little Kobyashi Maru stuff for his own needs.

Not “killing” Bradley in the game gets Bradley killed in real life. By being allowed to leave the room with the clue that will take him near the specimen room where Shakma has reawakened, he’s the first to discover the baboon is alive, killing other specimens Sam keeps in the room, and viciously attacks Bradley. To show that Bradley is dead, his locator and walkie-talkie stop working, so he can’t be reached by Sorensen, and he also disappears from the computer screen where the gamemaster is tracking all the players.

Sorensen sends Richard to check on Bradley before relocating him to another floor to wait for the other players. Richard finds Bradley’s walkie-talkie, along with some blood. The next discovery in the room is Bradley’s body with his throat ripped out and stuff! He soon realizes that he’s not alone in the specimen room.

Motherfuckin’ Shakma is in there too.

Richard manages to get to a supply closet before Shakma can get him. He holds the door shut while he prepares a beaker of hydrochloric acid. He steps out of the closet to look for the baboon, which only means one thing… Shakma is laying a trap for the smarmy fucker. Shakma is both pissed off and angry.

The movie takes a break for a couple of romantic elements, I suppose. Sorensen needs to check on what happened to Richard, who, of course, was checking on what happened to Bradley. This gives Sam and Tracy the chance to take a break in the game to do sexy stuff to each other. Elsewhere, after quite a few lines indicating that Kim has a crush on Sam, and Sam not exactly rebuffing the obvious signs of this from what I believe is a high school girl, we see what Kim described as a “surprise” for Sam when they see each other later. She’s come dressed as a midriff-baring princess. She admires herself in the mirror before whispering for Sam to come “save her.”

Sorensen soon discovers that Shakma killed Richard, as well as Richard spilling acid he was using to dump on Shakma on his own face, so he’s got some bitchin’ gore with half his face going on. Sorensen is attacked and killed by Shakma. This is actually maybe the best thing in this movie. Sorensen is trying to get to the elevator, but he hears something in the shadows. Shakma comes charging out of the shadows before Sorensen can use his key to activate the elevator again.

It’s a good shot. There’s a good element of tension with the elevator needing to be reactivated. Then, it means the elevators are activated again, potentially giving Shakma a way to easily get out of the floor he was on. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t actually use that for added thrills. Instead, they just leave Sorensen’s body in the way of the elevator doors so they can’t close and can’t be called to different floors.

Oh, and it includes the ironic element of the guy famous for playing Cornelius in Planet of the Apes being killed by another primate creature.

With the commotion of Shakma attacking and killing Sorensen, Sam investigates. He comes face to snout with Shakma. Sam and Tracy barely escape. They decide they have to get to a phone to call for help.

While they take a strobe light that Tracy has in one of the other lab rooms, there is still one other player roaming the halls, trying to win the game: Gary. So that means we have Sam and Tracy trying to deal with Shakma. Exactly what their plan is, I’m not certain, but it did lead to Sam moving Sorensen’s body. So I guess they now have the elevator at the characters’ disposal. On the top floor, we have Kim, and we have the roaming Gary.

I’m not sure if this is as present with you physically watching the movie, but we’ve quickly run through most of the characters here. In short order, Shakma killed Bradley, then slashed at Richard, making him melt half his own face with acid, and he killed Sorensen. It seems unlikely he will kill either Sam or Tracy. And I don’t think he’s going to kill the girl whose brother is missing half his fucking face if he’s not dead (he is mega dead). We’re only halfway through the movie, and that leaves only one possible victim on the table, the aforementioned Gary.

I was wondering how a 100-minute movie was going to be paced when there is only one location. I didn’t mind the first 30 minutes being used to kind of set up everything and do game stuff, etc. That’s fine. That’s to be expected. But within, like, 15 minutes, Shakma killed the majority of the available possible victims.

That leads to a very long sequence of Sam and Tracy effectively each needing to distract Shakma so the other can do a thing. You can really only go so long ping-ponging the baboon back and forth. Is there tension? Maybe a little bit. There’s a little bit of interpersonal drama between Sam and Tracy too. I think she kind of blames Sam for Shakma’s rampage, but it kind of comes and goes after he shouts about it not being his fault (it really kind of is).

Gary walks right into the buzzsaw that is Shakma when he decides to go to the fifth floor. He then continues onto the sixth floor, but not before he’s attacked, mauled, and killed by Shakma. That should mean Shakma is no longer confined to the sixth floor. Again, they never do much more with that. So that means Shakma and Tracy are on six. Sam is on three. Kim is on the top floor. 40 minutes left in the movie.

Fuck.

Now, I will give credit where it is due for this movie. I mentioned earlier that I didn’t expect Sam and Tracy to be among the dead. Well… The movie managed to surprise me. Shakma, now on the sixth floor where Tracy is, traps her without anyone able to distract him. She tries to get through a vent in the bathroom, but when she tries to retrieve the radio to communicate with Sam, Shakma hears her and catches her, mauling her to death.

I really didn’t think Amanda Wyss would be killed. So, yeah, credit where it’s due, Shakma. It’s actually quite sad when Sam finds her.

Just before Sam discovered Gary and Tracy’s bodies, Sam retrieved Kim. After finally getting her to understand the game is over, they go to find the others and basically find a way out. Kim knows her brother’s girlfriend, Laura, is in her car on the street waiting for Richard to be done with the game. However, she blasts her radio too loud to hear Kim banging on the window trying to get her attention. Laura eventually drives off.

Kim was told by Sam to wait for him on the top floor. However, after she failed to get Laura’s attention, she gets impatient and goes to find her brother. When Sam finds her note, he knows this is probably gonna be bad. So… Surprise #2. I didn’t think this movie had enough balls to kill Tracy. I also placed Kim in the safe because they already melted her brother’s fuckin’ face. She was also pretty damn innocent. Now, I have more to say in general about these surprises because I do think that is where this movie actually kind of succeeds, but I’ll hold that until my final thoughts.

This also, again, kind of highlights my main problem with this movie. There is, somehow, still, like 20 minutes remaining. Before finding out that Kim wandered off to her death, Sam obtained the keys to the locked doors. He enters Sorensen’s office to call 911, but decides, nope… I gotta get that fuckin’ monkey.

So he tapes the kitchen knife he grabbed earlier from the faculty lounge and bandages up his forearms to guard against bitey teeth and slashy claws. He sets a trap that would electrocute Shakma. He lures Shakma to a lab mouse in a cage, and it seemingly shocks the monkey. However, Shakma is only hurt a little bit by the shocks. He sneaks up on Sam and tackles him. He bites and slashes, putting a hurting on Sam. Sam manages to stab Shakma, which causes the primate to disengage, but not before biting a pretty large wound into Sam’s neck.

Eventually, Sam uses a mirror to trick Shakma into thinking he’s lunging at Sam, only to crash through the mirror and into the incinerator, where Sam cremates the baboon. Sam stumbles into the halls, collapses, and states he has “won.” He sees the little stuffed monkey that Shakma used to cuddle with in his kennel, and Sam dies from his wounds.

So… The movie’s finally over. Man, I’m of two minds here. On the negative, the movie is about 20 minutes too long. Remember, this uses only one setting – the school. Most of the movie features characters running or walking down hallways. There are whole sections of the movie that just feature people distracting Shakma here, so the other person can do something over there. You can only do that for so long before it gets rather tiresome.

Additionally, I am left trying to figure out if I wanted this movie to take itself less seriously or not. There’s a little bit of levity in the early part, as you would see in most horror movies. But once the horror element really kicked in, it became this overly serious thing. Add that overlong runtime, and it kind of becomes a slog. Only a little bit of time is devoted to Sam’s relationship with Shakma and his disappointment that Sorensen used the baboon as an experiment. It takes a little bit of bite out of the end. Sam should be more upset that his trained baboon is now a psychopathic, murderous monster. He doesn’t. So that leaves quite a bit to be desired in terms of just feeling something.

One last thing that I found myself questioning about this movie, and I’m really sure I shouldn’t be doing this in the middle of a horror movie… I’m not sure why Amanda Wyss is here in this movie. Okay, yes. Wyss is here to attract buyers to make the movie and renters at the video store. Yet, the moment Kim shows up, it’s very clear she has a crush on Sam. Somewhere along the way, they met each other. When she arrives, they immediately talk to each other with considerable familiarity. It’s heavily implied that she is a teenager. He asks her if her parents were okay with her being the damsel in distress for this LARPG. Now, she says he maybe doesn’t know her actual age, and that it wasn’t something she had to ask for permission to do, but still. How do they know each other? Where did her crush start with Sam? The answer is not “the moment she saw him” because they clearly have history. Also, Sam is not rebuffing her obvious crush.

Now, I can say that I definitely don’t want to be distracted by this weird love triangle that really isn’t, but Sam’s refusal to rebuff Kim’s affections for him does play into an interesting angle about his character in contrast to Kim’s brother, Richard.

Now, sure, the movie is too long. The movie takes itself too seriously when maybe it shouldn’t. The movie flirts with the idea of this emotional connection between Shakma and Sam. All these things are bad for the movie. But there are a few good things about the movie too. As I said earlier, I should give credit when it is due.

First and foremost, I appreciate the misdirection. I said Sam, Tracy, and Kim should be considered safe to survive the movie for a few reasons. All three of them died. I think there was a chance, even if I thought he was safe, Sam was the most likely of the trio at the top of the cast to die. I’ll get to the reason why I think that, but yeah, the movie did give a misdirect to basically kill everyone. I didn’t expect that, and I appreciate that I was wrong.

The best thing about this movie is that Sam is, technically, the villain. We’re supposed to not like Richard. He’s the outsider to the group. He’s a suck-up and a smarmy prick. For a while in the movie, we were supposed to be cheering for who we thought was the hero, Sam. We were supposed to be looking for Richard to get some comeuppance for being kind of a creep. However, neither of them rid the world of the monster that was Shakma. Technically, Sam didn’t just refuse to put Shakma down; he actually got distracted by Richard, and he took the wrong stuff and only sedated Shakma for a little longer. Richard didn’t act quick enough to incinerate Shakma, and, thus, both of these guys, who we figure to be the two alphas of this group of students, are to blame for everything that happens.

Let’s add to this what I was kind of insinuating when talking about Kim obviously having a crush on Sam and Sam not rebuffing her when he has a woman he seemingly is going to marry (Tracy). Sam and Richard aren’t really that much different, are they? Sam wants to have sex with Tracy at a time that seems kind of inopportune for the game they are both seemingly taking seriously. He’s kind of got a bit of smarm to him too. He is simply more affable than Richard. These two guys are basically opposite sides of the same coin. Interestingly, they are both connected to the same character… Kim. If Kim were an older character, she would replace Tracy. And maybe she should? Was the Kim character added at the last minute? Was casting Amanda Wyss and positioning her as a love interest for Christopher Atkins what led to a change in the Kim character? But… still keep the attraction between the two characters? Whatever happened here, Sam comes off a little slimy by maybe letting Kim think he will reciprocate her feelings?

I dunno, I’m just spitballing here, I think, but Sam has layers that are there enough for me to think this is an interesting character.

Once we realize that, yeah, Sam is basically at fault for the death and everything that goes on the rest of the night, he’s doomed at this point. There is no coming back from his mistake. And, I suppose, if you think about it from the lens of what he is training to be, a doctor… Well, malpractice can basically doom a doctor to a life of never being able to practice medicine again. In this case, Sam’s malpractice dooms him to never being able to practice life again. He’s the one who is ultimately to blame for a friendly professor’s death, a couple of students, two siblings, his girlfriend, and himself. This isn’t the normal thing to expect from the horror films of the time… especially indies like Shakma was.

I can’t entirely hate the movie. That said, I can say the negative stuff about it is heavy enough to balance out the weight of what was actually quite surprisingly interesting about the movie. You can do worse than Shakma, but you can do a hell of a lot better.

Next week, we gotta get some blaxploitation back in the spotlight here at B-Movie Enema. What started as a movie that was supposed to star someone like Ernest Borgnine playing an aging white detective turned into Academy Award-winner Isaac Hayes playing a badass black bounty hunter. I’m gonna review 1974’s Truck Turner from Jonathan Kaplan!

Until next time, I’m going to wait on the top floor of a college building in my finest Renaissance dress, showing off my belly, so that Christopher Atkins and/or Amanda Wyss can come and save me from a killer baboon.