SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

An Exercise In Nonsense

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The first must-see film of the year.

Not exactly sure why, but I seem to enjoy horror films with primates as the villain like two other horror films of the same era Link and Monkey Shines. I did think it was a very good film, but as the viewer it really does depend or how much you give in or accept the role-playing game in which the characters are playing within a locked research lab. I did accept it and thought it was a very interesting and cool twist to be used. It is here that a baboon that has been injected with an experimental drug wrecks havoc on the unsuspecting players of the game. The always entertaining Roddy McDowall stars along with Christopher Atkins and Amanda Wyss.

My 10/10 rating means that "Shakma" is so ridiculous that it's fun. It's basically an excuse for a baboon to come up with ways to kill people who had the misfortune of playing a game in a building with no way to communicate with the outside world. Roddy McDowall - himself a veteran of a certain primate-themed franchise - plays the stodgy scientist who doesn't understand the danger. And the blonde woman? That's Amanda Wyss, best known as the first victim in "A Nightmare on Elm Street". She's a real babe here.But of course the star is the aggressive simian. I guess that one could say...he goes bananas. This movie reminds us that we shouldn't, well, monkey with nature.A truly enjoyable time.

We've all heard the stories, and some of us have seen the pictures: a chimp goes apes--- and attacks a man/woman and proceeds to eat his/her face off. In SHAKMA, we have an enraged baboon wandering around a deserted office building with a bunch of role-playing nerds in the dead of night. Monkey or Ape (I prefer to think of baboons as Apes DESPITE the prehensile tail, because of their size), Shakma isn't the kind of creature you want to f--- around with- even in passing. When he becomes "enraged", he literally bounces off the walls, screaming his lungs out. I say "enraged" because the baboon in the movie isn't so much enraged as AROUSED. Look closely and you'll see whereof I speak... Give the filmmakers credit (or condemnation) for one thing: they had the nerve to sexually arouse a powerful primate just for a few scenes in their movie. Watch closely and you'll actually see the walls SHAKE when Shakma bounces off of them. That in itself puts this movie in a category all its own.

Shakma is a rather interesting creature feature about a killer baboon loose in a building terrorizing graduate students. It has some decent gore and a good supporting cast, but suffers from numerous plot and pacing issues.The film benefits from some genuinely gruesome make up effects, with numerous after views of the baboon's mauled victims. The make up is, with a few exceptions, convincing, providing the gore we expect from a good B horror movie. Furthermore, Amanda Wyss gives a decent performance as the love interest, with Roddy McDowell serviceable as a professor. However, the film has many issues, starting with the weakness of the baboon as a villain. Although baboons are actually dangerous, they are also rather silly looking animals. The film unwittingly emphasizes this issue by showing repeated scenes of the baboon pounding on doors, with its hairless posterior mooning the camera. This is compounded by the brief but noticeable shots where the animal's genitals are plainly visible. (Star Christopher Atkins stated that the filmmakers had to airbrush a number of scenes to hide them, but there are at least three to four glimpses that they left in.)Furthermore, the film over relies on plot induced stupidity, with characters doing every idiotic thing imaginable. For example, when they find out about the baboon, the lead characters decide to take it on themselves rather than make a sustained effort to seek help. Furthermore, when a character finds a room with bloody paw prints and an obviously dead man in it, he decides to investigate rather than run and warn the others. At 100 minutes, the film feels padded out, with too many pointless scenes of people running around. The ending is especially drawn out. However, the climax and denouement has a bleak, futile feeling that earns the film an extra star.