Shakma



A group of medical students and their professor are staying on campus late one evening so they can get their geek on and utilize the building as a “dungeon” to play a giant Role Playing Game. The place has been closed up, and the offices locked down so no one can leave until the game is over. But unfortunately for everyone inside that proves to be a potentially fatal problem….

Earlier that day one of the lab monkeys, a hamadryas baboon named Shakma, had been given an experimental serum meant to inhibit his aggression. But the injection failed miserably and instead did the opposite, enhancing Shakma’s aggression to dangerously volatile levels. The teacher in charge of the experiment, Professor Sorenson, orders one of his students, Sam, to put the animal down. But Sam accidentally grabs the wrong vial, and instead of killing Shakma, he just knocks the ape out for a few hours. So when the baboon finally awakens he’s in an understandably foul mood and decides to take out his anger by killing all the innocent lab animals…and if he happens upon any idiot college kids wandering through the lab looking for keys and puzzle clues, well then they’ll do too….



Shakma is an American horror film from 1990. It had a limited theatrical run before being released on tape, but I’m pretty sure they just did that so that they could avoid the oft dreaded “Direct to Video” moniker. But make no mistake, theatrical run or not, “Direct to Video” is exactly the kind of story and film quality you should expect going into this movie. Not that that particular label 100% guarantees that a film won’t be any good, cause it doesn’t. I’ve seen plenty of “Direct to…” films that are flawed, but still plenty fun. It’s just that in the case of this film it kinda does. Which is a shame. Because even though it’s not very good, it’s the kind of movie you want to be good, because you can see some of the fun ideas it has rumbling around in its noggin’. It’s just that the execution is so bad that none of them really panned out.



I’ll give the movie credit on a couple of counts. The premise for the story is actually pretty fun…on paper anyway. You’ve got a group of dorks trying to recreate what is essentially a giant Dungeons and Dragons game and they’re walking into danger without knowing it. Decent setup so far. And they’ve done a good job setting up the game too, with walkie-talkies and computerized trackers, and clues set up in the room, and a princess upstairs, and even one schmuck in a werewolf mask who’s supposed to be the dungeon’s bad guy. Is it hella cheesy? Oh gods, yes. But it’s enough of a framework to make you think, “Okay. The monkey is going to get loose, replace the dungeon’s “Big Bad” and stalk/kill everyone from floor to floor while they wander around looking for clues. Cool.” But that never happens, because the film never actually commits to this premise. It starts to, at least with the first three deaths, and you think it’s going to continue to go in that direction, but then it completely abandons that plot-line after the first half hour. After that things quickly devolve for the next HOUR into a repeated pattern of the two main characters making stupid decision after stupid decision that only furthers making the group’s plight worse. Or really, I guess I should say it’s mostly Sam making stupid decision after stupid decision and then everyone dying as a result. Proving that Sam, not the crazed monkey, is the real villain of this story. And the worst part is, you can tell as you’re watching it that it’s all completely unnecessary.



Sam’s entire motivation for inadvertently luring everyone into an early demise is centered around trying to find everyone so they can warn them about the monkey and get out. Which, okay? I mean, I’d go try to get the police NOW, cause you’ve already confirmed that you’ve got two dead bodies on your hands and a potential bio-hazard raging upstairs, but that’s cool, I guess. Feel free to indulge your hero complex, Sam. But even ignoring Sam’s hangups, please allow me to explain how stupid the plot is from this point forward: Sam and Tracy already know that at least two people are dead on the 5th floor, so in their minds, they’re missing three people (hint: one is dead). The gal playing the princess is one floor up and out of harm’s way. So now we’re down to two. So, in their minds (or Sam’s mind), they need to find the other two before they come across the killer monkey. Makes sense, I suppose. Here’s the thing though: the crazy monkey is actually stuck on the fifth floor. The elevator is stuck on that floor because a body is blocking the door, and Sam and Tracy barricaded the door to the stairs, so the monkey can’t get out that way either. So the monkey is trapped.

I repeat: THE MENACE IS CONTAINED.



In the entire movie the monkey never leaves the 5th floor. Ever. So all these idiots reasonably had to do was have one of them go up and grab the princess, leave a couple notes on the doors, then head downstairs to the 4th floor, and either wait for someone to show up, or have the princess yell that the game was over, since reaching her was the whole point of the exercise, and her presence alone would mean that the game would indeed be over and not some kind of trick. At that point the group could have leisurely meandered their way downstairs, barricaded the stair door, and broken out and gone for help. But nooooo. Sam and Tracy instead put everybody’s lives in danger, including their own, by continuing to go to the 5th floor, and by inexplicably not telling people what the hell is going on. At one point Tracy gets ahold of one of the other characters on the walkie-talkie, and instead of warning him about the murdering monkey upstairs she just keeps asking him where he is. Like, bitch, just tell the poor fool two people are dead, the game’s over and to go up to the 6th floor. WHY IS THAT SO HARD?!? Jeebus. I know people in horror movies have a reputation for being stupid, but the choices some of the people make in this movie are just downright infuriating. These aren’t your standard ‘dumb teenagers’. They’re supposed to be medical students, for cripes sake. You’d think they’d be smarter than this and you wouldn’t still have to deal with all your characters being dumber than a sack of moldy cheese. And again, you have to put up with this crap for over an hour. AN HOUR! It’d be funny if it weren’t so annoying.


Argh! This could have been avoided!

I might otherwise be able to forgive such weird plotting and story issues if the movie at least looked good or had some decent acting, but, perhaps predictably, it fails on those fronts too. The entire movie is filmed at a single location, which is either one or two floors of a single building, or a bland, pre-designed set that they rearranged in multiple configurations. Point is, unless it’s the lab or a quick shot of a room, 90% of the movie involves watching the characters walk down beige hallways with blue/gray doors. And because everyone seems inexplicably drawn to the 5th floor, you get to look at the exact same beige hallways with blue/gray doors for much of the movie. Fun. They do occasionally throw a fake fern in a corner to add a splash of color if they’re on another floor and feeling generous, but that’s about it. So if you plan to watch this be prepared to sit through some riveting set design, courtesy of any cheap, sub-standard office space.



I initially had at least some hope for this movie because I recognized some of the actors, like Christopher Atkins from Blue Lagoon, Amanda Wyss from Nightmare on Elm Street, and even freaking Roddy McDowall is in this (and no, his connection to Planet of the Apes was not lost upon me.) But unfortunately the script and direction in this film are just so shoddy that I don’t think there was really much hope for any of them. I mean, I guess Roddy McDowall is okay, because it’s just Roddy McDowall being… Well, freaking Roddy McDowall. But the terrible characterization and levels of stupidity present in the rest of the characters leave the others to falter. Atkins in particular is either walking around being totally bland, or completely over the top. Every time he comes across another dead body he looks like someone just shot his dog in front of him and kicked its corpse. Like, the first dead body, sure. But after that it’s like, dude, you’re a freaking medical student, you’ve seen a dead body, dial back the shock.

The one exception might be Typhoon the baboon, who looks like he was giving his furry little all in every scene he was in. Most of which involved attacks. So there’s snarling, and biting, and absolutely manic movements. And keep in mind that this is before CGI, meaning everything you see the monkey do is 100% legit. So it’s not too hard to see why people would be legitimately scared of this tiny little hell beast, despite the fact that he’s only as big as your typical fru-fru dog.


They did get some pretty neat shots of the monkey though. I’m not gonna lie…


You know Sam, you’d just gone to get the cops sooner you could have avoided this.

I still kinda feel like there’s a good movie to be found somewhere in Shakma, but I think to find it you’d need a couple script changes, a better editor, and at least 20 minutes cut from the runtime. Because this damn thing is just WAY too long. The movie may start off fine, and it actually has a decent ending (believe it or not), but after the descent start it just turns into characters walking and/or running down the same boring hallway for over an hour and occasionally getting attacked by a fuzzy baboon. It’s just…not enough to build a decent movie behind. Maybe a Twilight Zone episode, but even that might be pushing it. Which is a shame, because you can tell things were at least semi-thought out, because you can see the various plot points they planned out. It’s just that 80% of those plot points involve a repeated pattern of continually throwing false hope at the characters just so their hopes will be dashed 5 minutes later, and let me tell you, shit like that gets real old, real fast.

So yeah, that’s Shakma. Decent idea, but horribly, painful execution. If you’re looking for a killer monkey movie and have a high tolerance for repetition, or if you’re just curious about horror movies that involve random Dungeons and Dragons plot-lines and/or references that play out at about the same speed as your typical D&D game, then I guess you can check this out. But if you’re looking for something that involves even a modicum of common sense, action or pacing, then I suggest you just keep looking.

Shakma is available on a variety of streaming services.

Shakma is also available on DVD and a limited Bluray release.

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