Details

Release year: 1988

Storyline

A young quadriplegic man is given a trained monkey to help him with his paralysis, until the little monkey begins to develop feelings, and rage.

Top credits

Directors

George A. Romero

Writers

Cast

Jason Beghe — Allan Mann
John Pankow — Geoffrey Fisher
Kate McNeil — Melanie Parker
Joyce Van Patten — Dorothy Mann

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Did you know

• This was the first film role for Stephen Root, then a stage actor. According to Root, he had been instructed by his agent not to let the casting directors know that he was inexperienced with film as an actor. Root's official debut was Crocodile Dundee II (1988), which had been released in theaters a month before this film, despite being shot a month after it.

• This was George A. Romero's first studio film. However, the studio he was working with, Orion Pictures, had re-cut the film against Romero's wishes which contributed to the box office failure of the film. Afterwards, Romero went back to independent filmmaking until The Dark Half (1993) (also from Orion).

• George A. Romero changed the ending at the insistence of Orion Pictures, his film's distributor. Romero's original ending was considerably less optimistic - it implied the film's evil forces were still at work. "I thought my ending played well, but I'd admit that the testing results were overwhelmingly in favor of the current version. To Orion's credit, they said - it's up to you, we'll release it either way. So I decided to go along and not fight it." He grinned. "But I'll always miss it."