Monkey Shines (1988)

Scare cinema auteur George A. Romero had already established himself as a master writer/director of American horror by the time he unleashed Monkey Shines (1988). Where Night of the Living Dead (1968) depicted the dregs of your neighborhood as flesh-eating zombies and Martin (1978) presented the sexually-infatuated adolescent next door as a vampire, Monkey Shines raises the specter of a helpful capuchin monkey who becomes too smart and vicious for the good of humanity. Like all of Romero’s best work, Monkey Shines is troubling and creepy as much for raising usually unacknowledged questions about day-to-day existence as it is for gory, demented violence.