User Reviews

BloodMonkey starts as five young promising students arrive at an isolated jungle location in the middle of nowhere, they are there at the request of scientist Conrad Hamilton (F. Murray Abraham) who has been exploring an untouched region of the forest, a large valley he has named 'Hamilton's Crater'. Despite a less than friendly atmosphere Hamilton convinces the teenage students to follow him into the uncharted jungle & valley where they are attacked by large Ape like creatures that have evolved independently by themselves isolated from the rest of the world in the valley. They are vicious predator's who don't seem to like human beings that much & like to kill us but Hamilton is determined to take a specimen back to civilisation & become famous & rich & all that sort of stuff, however the Apes have different ideas...

This straight-to-video/DVD Thai production was directed by Robert Young & as far as Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Features' go it's just as crap as most of the other's they see fit to subject the world to. The script takes ages to get going, in fact the first hour of BloodMonkey is total boredom as we follow these annoying American teenage students about & then there's the less than subtle ways in which Hamilton acts which just screams 'I'm the bad guy' (all he needed was a moustache to twirl) & the way that these dumb students still keep following him & trusting him. I thought these kids were meant to be clever? Eventually after what seems like an eternity the film kicks into gear & instead of seeing these annoying American teenagers walk around the jungle we get to see these annoying American teenagers run around the jungle! Wow, thanks guy's. The plot sucks too, it's dull, predictable & boring & if these killer Apes have never ventured beyond the valley why does that Chenne bird have to scare one away when the students first arrive? Also how does Hamilton expect to get one of those Ape things back to civilisation exactly? Why does Hamilton think he can capture one when these Ape things have killed everyone else who has gone anywhere near them? The character's are really annoying & it's a relief when they all get killed, you really will be rooting for the Monkey's here. To be fair I have no problem with feeding annoying teenagers to mutant Monkey's but this film proves it doesn't make for particularly good entertainment, sorry but it's true.

The entire film is set in the jungle & it gets a bit repetitive by the end. Unusually the monster in this 'Creature Feature' isn't shown until the very last scene in the film & to me just looked like a smaller King Kong than anything else, the rest of the time the makers hide it & it is not seen at all which either show's restraint on the makers part or the budget was so low they couldn't afford special effects. You decide. The film isn't scary or tense & there's not much of an atmosphere either, one could class BloodMonkey as much a thriller as horror I suppose. There's not much gore, there's some dead bodies, a bit of blood splatter, a bloody face, an impaling & a severed hand.

I am guessing the budget was pretty low & as such it looks unremarkable at best, shot in Krabi in Thailand probably at the same time as various other 'Creature Feature' films like The Hive (2008) about alien controlled killer Ant's. The acting isn't that good & I suspect Oscar winning actor F. Murray Abraham took the part for the free holiday in Thailand & why not?

BloodMonkey is yet another awful Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' that's just as bad as the rest of them, I have seen so many of these things they really are starting to get on my nerves. Don't waste your time or money on this, there is much better out there if you look.

1. Look up whatever's next on Sci-Fi. (I use Zap2It, YMMV, it really doesn't matter.)

2. If it's not Stargate, and it is a movie, copy the title. If it's Stargate, or another TV program (not a movie), look down the schedule for the next movie and copy its title.

3. Go to IMDb and paste the aforementioned movie title into the search box (assuming you're too lazy to just type it. This also eliminates typos.)

4. (Maybe) pick the appropriate entry from a disambiguation list.

5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where the review is, and hit the link that says: "More".

6. Presto. (No, slashdotters, there's no 'profit' step here. Move along.)

Really. Every movie I see on Sci-Fi is worse than the one before. In one, it's man-eating baboons. In this, it's man-eating - well, I'd say from the title monkeys, but it really could be just about anything, 'cause the production was _so_ cheap that we never got a decent look at it/them!

Oh, no, wait! There, we got _one_ good look, in the final second. OK. It _is_ a monkey. A big one.

Let's see if I can be more specific: the characters are a bunch of squealing twits whom we're glad to see die, the story is so formulaic it should have never been filmed, the cinematography is as bad and the special effects are about nonexistent. I mean one of the main ingredients of a creature feature is a creature, _some_ creature, preferably something scary. This is absent.

There. That's it.

Stupidest. Movie. Ever.

In fairness, there was _one_ good line: "My rappelling harness is riding up into... uh, someplace it _shouldn't_!"

I swear, they oughta call it the "Stupidity, Horror, and Sci-Fi Channel", because that's the order of their priorities.

PLEASE! CAN'T _SOMEONE_ MAKE THEM STOP?!

*** READ NO FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANNA SEE SPOILERS!!! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! ***

It's apparently a gorilla with a brain far larger than a human's. Which means _nothing_, lots of animals have larger brains than people, it's brain / body size ratio that matters. Just one more technical detail they messed up. But this big brain supposedly makes it so smart that it easily hunts down and slaughters a pack of anthropology students. If it were _really_ so smart, it would have quit this stupid picture early on, much like the ape-man in MAD Magazine's parody of "2001". (Well, I guess that dates _me_, doesn't it?) In this case, slaughtering the students is no big thing, as they're all so ineffective that all they can do is scream a lot. In fairness to the script, it would be easy to suppose that this batch has been hand-picked by their Mad Professor as bait for a hunting expedition. The hunter, however, fares no better than the bait, despite being armed with a Kalashnikov. Neither does the Professor himself.

Amusing goofs:

Rappelling is about the easiest and funnest thing you can do in the mountains, other than, perhaps, sex with yer fellow hikers. Control is a no-brainer, and it's just not that scary. It's the climb _back_up_ that's a bummer.

When yer tent gets peed on by something with a stream the size of a garden hose, it's gonna be immediately obvious that it's _not_ rain, and it's _not_ somebody's filthy bandage on their sprained ankle, either.

When both sides of someone's chest are punctured, either from Kalashnikov fire or multiple wooden stakes, both lungs deflate and the subject does _not_ scream or talk. All they can do is die.

BLOOD MONKEY is yet another poor effort from the Sci-Fi Channel. I'm tired of watching all these crappy movies, but something propels me on – maybe I'm hoping to find another like the ONE decent effort I saw, which was AZTEC REX. BLOOD MONKEY isn't it; it's another film that's been made in the Thai jungle which is the sole redeeming feature of the production. Otherwise we're in extremely familiar territory as a group of youths are whittled down, one by one, by a mysterious, unseen killer in the jungle.

This film borrows heavily from the whole BLAIR WITCH PROJECT idea of using hand-held camera footage to enhance the immediacy of the horror. The problem is, this idea has literally been done to death now, so the twist ending isn't shocking but a rip-off and the hand held footage is just an over-laboured bore. The cast of nobodies are uniformly bad and don't get me started on the technical aspects; it's amateur night all around. F. Murray Abraham follows the tradition of once-great actors dragging their reputations through the mud and the monster is seen exactly once, in a single split second CGI shot at the end, where we find out it isn't a monkey at all but an ape. The scene in which the monkeys are urinating over the tents is one of the worst imaginable and even the gore effects amount to a single, albeit effective, makeup job. The rest is just noise and inanity, signifying nothing.

Caught this on a snow day, thought the title would lead to something. Wrong...no value whatsoever. Lots of implied suspense in a deep jungle with blue lighting and fog trying to create a "we are the hunted" environment. Even trying to create a "Predator" thrill by showing "bloodmonkey" pursuit vision perspective. One good scene is when the professor gets impaled by a trap rigged by the thoughtful "bloodmonkey". It was good to see him exit the movie by having a few tree limbs impaled through his body as he gurgled his last while the two screamy girls watch in horror. No monkeys and sketchy acting. Total waste of time. Don't waste yours.

Lets strike up the band people, another Sci-Fi Channel ho-hum movie. I rated it as a 4 as it wasn't the worst of the movies they've done nor was it their best. It had fair acting from F. Murray Abraham that plays the over the hill mad professor of Anthropology that has discovered an extremely brutal smart anthropoid. He leads a group of students that by appearances think they are going to "Safari Land," on a misguided search into the deep jungle to find the creatures with disastrous results. The premise and the storyline of the movie works for me as well any Horror/Sci-fi/Action flick. The problem is with the direction and acting of the actors that leave so much to be desired. The characters were very shallow and that is the director and writer's job to fill in the, "Why we are so dumb," story that makes sense. Otherwise we wind up with a movie like "Bloodmonkey," with so-called smart students doing the most gullible dumbest things and acting like high school morons with an IQ of 80. If Sci-Fi could figure out a simple premise that all students on digs, research or hunts are not shallow blithering morons, it would go a long way to making their movies a lot better.

When six students discover a species of killer chimps, they are assured by their professor of rightful credit.

But a study in animal behaviour soon turns into a game of survival in a ruthless jungle......

Am I the only one who says 'F Murray Abraham' in their head in the voice of Homer Simpson?

I've had this problem ever since that episode aired, but it makes me want to see everything with him in it, and I love everything that he has been in. T's pretty odd, I must confess, but then some people collect shoehorns.

The film is nothing to write home about, even though I'm literally doing that right now. Abraham takes a group of students into a forest to find something that will do something for someone. It's purely narrative filler, because we haven't come to this movie for the plot, we've come to see it because it has killer monkeys, F Murray Abraham, and in the most brilliant piece of film i have ever seen, someone turning a light on and off to depict lightning.

It's not good, the acting is terrible, but F. Murray Abraham boosts this film, to make it the camp cheesy film that it is.

Funny, for all the wrong reasons.....

"Blood Monkey" is admittedly not everyone's cup of tea. But it sure is mine.

The acting is believable, the pacing is solid, the suspense is steady, and the film manages to keep a sense of wonder about it throughout its screen time.

The characters might seem like stereotypical stock, but their stories develop some depth to them: -Sydney, the "hot blond," who develops a soft spot for Josh, "the nerd"; -Greg, the "jock," who befriends (and later enters a relationship with) Dani, the camera girl; -Amy & Seth who, despite their comparatively reserved natures, form a couple before either of the aforementioned pairs; And let's not forget Dr. Hamilton, the focused professor who, in spite of his own monomaniacal motives, has a moment of mourning and emotional complexity when Chenne, his loyal assistant, dies. Some argue that Hamilton is a stand-in for Ahab, but I honestly disagree. Because whereas Ahab was bent on revenge, the professor is driven by the romanticism of adventure and discovery, as well as his own anthropological interest in the apes.

The actors performed their own stunts, which led to some surprisingly organic moments. And, similar to how people only ever catch passing glimpses of Bigfoot, we only see just enough of the titular apes to keep us wondering. Small details, too, helped flesh this movie out in ways we don't always notice on the first watch.

Since its release, "Blood Monkey" has been one of those movies that people either enjoy, or hate, with very little grey area. Watch it yourself if you care to; I certainly recommend it.

Crazy Professor Hamilton (a lively performance by F. Murray Abraham) leads a group of young American college students deep into the jungle in search of a tribe of primates that are rumored to be the missing link.

Sound good and exciting? Well, it just ain't. For starters, director Robert Young relates the by-the-numbers predictable story at a plodding pace as well as crucially fails to generate any essential tension or creepy atmosphere. Worse yet, the blah script gets bogged down in a numbing surplus of tedious talk, the red-tinted blood monkey POV shots are super cheesy, there's a shopworn found footage hook (yawn!), the briefly glimpsed titular monkeys are rendered with extremely cruddy CGI effects, and we even get an unintentionally hilarious scene with the monkeys urinating all over tents (don't ask). Only Abraham brings some much-appreciated energy to this inert lump of a movie. Despite some decent gore and beautiful Thailand jungle locations, this clunker overall rates as a steaming pile of what the proverbial monkey does behind a tree.