Monster Movie Monday: Shakma (1990)
Review Overview
Typhoon the baboon
8Creature wrangling
8Surprising darkness
8Matthew Turner | On 06, Feb 2023
Director: Hugh Parks, Tom Logan
Cast: Christopher Atkins, Amanda Wyss, Ari Meyers, Roddy McDowall
Cert: 16+
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Co-directed by Hugh Parks and Tom Logan, Shakma is a low-budget creature feature that has built up a small but devoted cult following since its limited theatrical release in 1990. It’s notable for its use of a single animal for the majority of its shots, a hamadryas baboon named Typhoon (which would have made a much better title).
The film begins in a high-rise medical building, where Professor Sorensen (Roddy McDowall) performs experiments on a baboon called Shakma. When Shakma goes berserk after being injected with experimental drugs, Sorensen orders that the animal be put down, but kind-hearted student Sam (former Dallas co-star Christopher Atkins) takes pity on it and leaves it unconscious instead.
In a decidedly unusual plot development, it turns out Sorensen has devised a live-action role-playing Dungeons & Dragons-style game, which involves locking his participating students in the building, while they search the rooms and corridors for clues. However, when Shakma wakes up, he’s still extremely angry, so he starts killing off the students, one by one.
Shakma immediately elevates itself above similar films in the genre, because the featured creature is such a good actor – with all due praise to baboon wrangler Gerry Therrien of Action Animals. Accordingly, the film contains a collection of the finest baboon reaction shots ever committed to celluloid.
In addition, Typhoon manages to be scary just by scampering about and screaming a lot – there’s an unpredictability to his movement that is genuinely unnerving. His signature move, however, is to repeatedly hurl himself at a door, with extreme force, something that was apparently achieved by having Therrien crouching behind the door and whispering his name.
Needless to say, there are also a fair few effects shots – fake baboon arms reaching through doors, big balls of grey fur that the actors have to hold during attack scenes, etc – but they’re largely pretty decent. To that end, the kill sequences are effectively staged, though there are a couple of missed opportunities – the first kill could have been dramatically improved by having the actor scream, for example.
The film’s gore factor is unusual, in that the kills themselves tend towards a few splashes of the red stuff and not much else, but some of the background shots are genuinely horrible, and give the impression that the baboon essentially eats the faces of his victims – there’s a particularly creepy long shot of Shakma happily chewing away next to a corpse at one point.
Despite the fact that each of the attack sequences are essentially some variation on baboon-leaps-at-victim, Parks and Logan compensate elsewhere with some entertaining moments of direction, whether it’s Shakma casually pushing an elevator button to “call” his next victim to the floor he’s trapped on, or the inspired framing of a kill framed by a toilet stall. There’s also the film’s best moment: a terrific shot of actress Amanda Wyss, filmed from behind the baboon’s dripping jaws.
On a similar note, Parks and Logan occasionally find ways to make routine shots interesting, most notably the decision to have a character wear a fright mask, so that when he’s trapped in a closet and the mask is on top of his head, the camera is positioned above, looking down into the “face” of the mask. There’s also a judiciously chosen slow-mo shot in the exciting finale that is perfectly timed and highly effective.
That said, Parks and Logan have no shame at all when it comes to jump scares – there are at least three (mask, skeleton, cat) and they’re all laughably terrible. One in particular backfires, because you end up thinking, “Considering all the corpses in that room, if it hasn’t gotten the hell out of there by now, that cat is an idiot.”
The pacing is initially remarkably efficient – there are three kills in the first 45 minutes, which is quite the achievement considering there are only seven available victims. However, the sense of pace doesn’t last and there’s a frankly embarrassing amount of padding later on, to the point where characters are shown deciding what to do by just standing still and frowning for a full 20 seconds of screen time.
It goes without saying that the live-action role-playing plot is ridiculous, but the script doesn’t even bother using it to its full advantage. For example, it goes to some lengths to set up the idea that each of the players can be tracked on a computer screen, then completely fails to use that.
Ultimately, both the silliness of the plot and the cheesy elements are balanced by the surprising darkness of the story. Indeed, the film essentially defies the standard conventions and it’s difficult to think of another example in the genre that leaves quite the same impact. You’ll definitely never look at a hamadryas baboon the same way again, let’s put it that way.