Shakma

Plot synopsis:
Sam (Atkins) is a medical student performing an experiment on Shakma, a baboon, at a med school run by Professor Sorenson (McDowall). His experimental drug is supposed to make the creature less aggressive, but it ends up having the opposite effect and Sam must euthanize the animal. Sorenson wants to perform an autopsy, so orders Sam not to cremate the animal. Sam, fond of the beast, merely sedates it for the moment. Thus Shakma remains alive, and highly aggressive, unbeknownst to all.
That night, Soreson organizes a live-action role playing game for Sam and his friends—Gary, Bradley and Richard—and love interest Tracy (Wyss). The objective of the game is to reach Richard's baby sister Kim (Meyers) on the top floor. The players are issued walkie-talkies to communicate with each other, but the communications must go through Sorenson. As the game begins, Shakma wakes up, escapes and kills Sorenson.
With the game master dead, the players can no longer communicate. The doors to the offices are all locked, so the telephones are inaccessible.
Shakma is ultimately burned to death by the final surviving teenager.

Tags: cult, violence

Review:
If you have never seen the unrestrained, unreasoning fury of an enraged baboon, brace yourself.Watching Shakma, I started out thinking, "Well, he's just a little monkey, it's not like he's a tiger or a snake or something," but after seeing Typhoon throw himself (quite literally) into the role of Shakma, I reconsidered the destructive capabilities of the primate chassis.Shakma is a many-armed frenzy of horror and doom, and this movie is absolutely worthwhile if only for that awe-inspiring display.The acting's a little thin, and there are a few scenes that'll really make you roll your eyes, but if you get a chance to see this movie for under $5, take it.
Roddy McDowall plays the professor Sorenson who juices up a baboon with brain serum so he'll be calmer,unfortunately he makes a mistake and instead of injecting the right serum,he injects the serum that turns him into a bloodthirsty predator."Shakma" is a much better film than Tom Logan's awful slasher "The Night Brings Charlie".It's full of violent animal action,mostly the baboon attacking and killing medical scientists and the other animals in the lab."Shakma" offers a nice amount of blood and gore and the killings are pretty brutal.The acting is solid,the score is amazing and the baboon is downright aggressive.Overall this is an immensely enjoyable animal-on-the-loose horror flick that should satisfy genre enthusiasts.Give it a chance.7 out of 10..
some good baboon attacks, but a lot of boring uneventful wandering through empty halls and rooms.
A bunch of college students play a live-action fantasy role-playing game like Dungeon & Dragons in an (apparently) locked building with caged primates, with their professor acting as Dungeonmaster.
I'd have to guess this movie is actually older than 1990, due to the poor picture quality and the terribly simplistic computer graphics on the computers that appear in the movie (although that may be the fault of the budget and not the age).In between boring unsuspenseful scenes of people wandering around, a baboon attacks.
There is a good scene of the baboon running down a hallway, and also towards the end a student has a plan to beat the baboon when we think he has given up that is also a good scene.However, on the whole, the movie is too long, and has too many scenes that drag without serving a purpose.
You are currently reading about an excellent (see: totally ridiculous) Saturday morning monster movie starring Amanda "Tina from A Nightmare on Elm St." Wyss and Christopher "Blue Lagoon" Atkins (among others).
Well, aside from the typical "so bad it's good" moments, and my raging hard on for Amanda Wyss, the baboon footage is insane.
Fresh from playing a monkey himself in several thousand Planet of the Apes films, Roddy McDowall plays a cold, heartless college professor whom endears himself to the audience by performing some sort of operation on a baboon called Shakma.
Some jock manages to wangle his way into the game for reason, and to cut a long story short, everyone ends up trapped in the college building while Shakma gets up and starts tearing people's throats out.
Some people think its all part of the game, while Hero Guy and his girlfriend run about in circles and barricade doors as Shakman goes nuts.Although this kind of film can get tedious, this one wasn't too bad as Shakma as a real life monkey does come across as rather insane, and no wonder, if you read in the trivia bit on IMDb how they made him go mental.
Even though there's not much in way of gore or nudity, Shakma certainly munched his way through a lot of the cast, so, if you see it for thirty pence at a car boot sale in Glasgow like I did, pick it up.Is it even a monkey, or an ape?
This is an entertaining, mindless cheesy Horror flick that came in the decline of a genre.The movie is about a killer baboon.
Our killer baboon made the entire movie watchable.Rent this not so bad piece of 80's Horror trash and have a good time.
But because I have fond memories of getting loaded with my old buddies while watching a crazed baboon beat against various objects it goes down as one of my top bad movies.
A group of teenagers battle to survive against the all mighty and angry baboon(u don't need pants for the victory dance...) There's a lot of scenes when the monkey roars like crazy and rampages thru corridors also a lot of stupid quotes and a whole bunch of very annoying characters.
The monkey doesn't look so Evil that it could slay so many people but what I know, I never confronted a mad baboon.
Shakma is a good film and the Baboon is very mean.
If you like horror films about killer primates like Link or Monkey Shines then Shakma is one to watch!.
The whole storyline about "the game" is very dull and the only thing I was hoping would make it interesting was the killer baboon himself.
Overall, Shakma is not the worst horror film out there, but is nowhere near as good as others on here would have you believe..
Unfortunately, one of their primate charges is a baboon named Shakma (played by "Typhoon"), who has been genetically altered - big surprise there - and who has now gone absolutely crazy, slaughtering any stupid human unlucky enough to be close to it.
The actors treat the material with the best poker faces that they can muster: former teen idol Christopher Atkins, Amanda Wyss of the original "A Nightmare on Elm Street", Ari Meyers of 'Kate & Allie'.
The casting of McDowall is certainly appropriate given his iconic role(s) in the "Planet of the Apes" franchise.This is a junk movie, to be sure, but it's still reasonably entertaining.
It's a terrifying critter, and it's quite unnerving to watch it hurl its comparatively tiny body at stupid humans - and these nerds really do deserve to get monkey-cronked in this film, because they are absolute $∑^π at dealing with the reality they are thrust into, and the acting of the people playing them is absolute ø¥$# as well.
Not even the good kind, but the kind that makes you spill bongwater on your couch, as you pass out harboring a sneaky suspicion that your time could have been better spent in this horizontal state all along.Most of the movie takes place in a university building of some sort.
In a flagrant breach of health and safety regulations (and flying in the face of common sense), professor Sorenson (Roddy McDowall, not playing an ape for a change) locks the external doors to the college, trapping himself and a handful of his students inside the building while they play a real-life fantasy role-playing game (with the use of a hilariously crap computer, tracking devices and walkie-talkies).
Shakma, directed by Hugh Parks and Tom Logan, starts off on shaky ground, the nerds playing their silly game proving rather boring, but once the angry ape shows up to spoil the evening, the film proves surprisingly terrifying thanks to a standout performance from Typhoon the baboon.
Crazier than Nic Cage on cocaine, the hairy horror gives his all, screeching loudly, crashing wildly against doors, leaping onto victim's faces, and generally being one incredibly fearsome furry fellow.With a willingness to bump off any character, no matter how likeable, a smattering of gore (the baboon goes mad with jaws and claws and likes to eat his victims), and an unpredictable ending, Shakma is a solidly entertaining B-movie - so much so that it's easy to forgive the clichéd cat scare (and rat scare)..
Shakma was a good b horror fun for its time.
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.
A group of medical students are planning to play live role game in the shape of "Dungeon and Dragons" in the medical campus building after hours.
They didn't expect a real nemesis would try to stop them, as now a furious, drugged up lab baboon is on the loose and tearing apart the gamers.I'm stuck here, because I thought there were good moments within, but also equally bad aspects to this shonky, overwrought and mildly fun monkey on the rampage b-grade clunker.
Shakma is an all time great movie..
The filming is a bit bad but other than that, it's a great movie..
Despite a terrific concept and a unique villain, somehow "Shakma" comes down to repetitive scenes of a baboon throwing itself against various doors and Christopher Atkins running down many, many hallways, repeated ad nauseum.
It's a shame that the film also wastes the talents of genre darlings Roddy McDowell and Amanda Wyss (Tina in the original "Nightmare on Elm Street"), who have little to do while playing second fiddle to Atkins, whose good looks don't do much to distract from his limited acting abilities..
Plus, another movie with Amanda Wyss that I wish was available on DVD is My Mother's Secret Life when she plays a 16 year old who searches for her mother in San Francisco after the loss of her father..
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.
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.
I mean, for a film with such a bad rap...it's really not that terrible.Basically, a bunch of med students are LARP'ing in a tower on campus.However, unbeknownst to them, an angry baboon (driven mad by medical experiments) is on the loose, and out to kill.Shakma (the baboon) hunts down the college students, and takes them out one by one...going completely insane in the process.And I mean, this baboon goes nuts.
There is this dumb movie called Shakma about this killer Baboon running around a science lab.
The idea of these students playing a role playing game and being chased by a killer baboon sounded like it could be a fun movie.You can tell this a B-Horror Movie.
How come "Typhoon," who played the adorable Shakma, never starred in a other movies.
This is a pretty poor and derivative horror movie, but Shakma makes it worthwhile..
The main problems I had were with the extremely cheap set, which could have been much more creative (there were only two or three exterior shots in the whole film), and with the embarrassingly banal Dungeons & Dragons game that the characters play, which was ridiculous and seems like part of another movie altogether.
Shakma would be good for an undemanding video double feature, perhaps with the similiarly baboon themed In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro, which is a much better movie.
If this was in real life, the baboon would break through the doors like a speeding locomotive, Neo style.Another blooper is that this whole stuff is supposed to take place in 10+ storied building.
There are no special effects, the monkey looks like the blood thirsty rabbit from Monty Python's Holy Grail, except it's more shabby and dirty, reminding you more of a microphone boom than any kind of animal.I was bored to death by this movie from the first frame to the last.
When I first heard about this movie (earlier the same day I watched it), I said to myself, "Killer baboon?
I am pretty sure I was only one of few who saw this film in theaters when it first ran.Good B-list cast, Roddy from Fright Night and planet of the Apes, Amanda Wyss from every memorable 80's movie(A Nightmare on Elm Street and Better off Dead to name two), that guy from Blue Laggon (whose name I can never remember, but it's the first listed on the cast list above.)and Ari Meyers from Kate and Allie.
Didn't think I'd find a movie about a killer monkey enjoyable, but this film was just that.
The baboon was experimented on, got pretty annoyed about it and then decides to attack and kill a bunch of teenagers who are having a role-play party in the same building.
There's lots of running up & down hallways in this film (because of this I was actually reminded of that other ultra-amazing film, also made in 1990, called "Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor" - just replace all the alien monstrosities with one killer baboon, and you'll pretty much end up watching the same movie) and the kills are far from spectacular.
I don't think a baboon on a mission out to wreck doors makes up for a very good film in the end..
A Mixed Bag. 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.
A wild baboon attacks medical students who are playing a game, trapped in a large tower.Why did this movie attract my attention?
A six would have happened if it was trimmed down -- the monkey is not on screen too much or too little and we spent a fair amount of time watching these people play a game.
(Although it is interesting to see how little is revealed to the audience -- if you figure out the rules of the game just by watching, well done).This also is the sort of movie where the audience might point out the dozen or so bad decisions made by each character.
The whole plot of the film is fully original with a killer baboon chasing college students through a building while they are playing a game.
The film is basically your one character killed off at a time horror flick with blood and gore thrown in your face.
The film stars Christopher Atkins from " The Blue Lagoon ", Amanda Wyss, who you might remember being dragged across the ceiling in " A Nightmare on Elm Street " and screen veteran Roddy McDowall from " Planet of the Apes "..
The suspense is great and it has the vital ingredients of a good horror movie.
When my parents were back they saw me and my brother sitting with white faces, sh*tscared!This is a great movie when taking the suspense and horror into account, but it isn't great film-making.
Terrible plot + unknown cast - talent - budget + a Baboon = a hell of a movie.
For those who have never seen "Shakma" (I would say a good 90%) the plot is this (warning very Minor spoilers ahead):Some geeky-type scientist's play a "Dungeons & Dragons" type role-playing game where they work, they happen to work in an animal testing lab..
they have a Baboon called Shakma they experimented on...
when they think the baboon is dead they play their stupid game, not Realizing that THE BABOON IS NOT DEAD AND GOES INSANELY MAD AND KICKS THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYONE IT COMES ACROSS!I spent the whole movie cheering for the Baboon and laughing my ass off as he beat the bejesus out of everyone!.
This is one of my favorite non-human stalking a group of students in a building horror film.If you haven't seen this film and will, stop reading this, I don't want to spoil it for you.Shakma is one mean creature, he just goes for you and doesn't stop attacking until it kills you.
Poor Ari faces the horrors of finding her brother dead and being attacked by Shakma all alone, why did Atkins have to leave her all alone?.
"Shakma" is that film; it's an often unintentionally uproarious riot that isn't scary for a minute, but does manage to be hugely amusing and entertaining straight-to-video trash just the same.A bunch of bonehead college students playing a Dungeon and Dragons-type game in a high rise medical research center are stalked and killed by the titular deranged simian.
That being said, I have no idea why I rented this movie other than to pursue my goal of seeing every horror film ever made.
Years ago my best friend and I watched this ever so classic movie Shakma.
The only good character in this movie is the poor little monkey.
A bunch of pseudo-scientist students and professor makes experiences on animals, kill a baboon and play a rolegame after school hours in the building.
Luckily, Roddy McDowall gets to be wonderfully massacred, so he won't have to be stuck in the movie any longer.I think the makers of this movie should be shoved into a small room with the baboon from this film.
To wit: what happens when you mix a bunch of primatologists, who love dorky role-playing games, with an enraged baboon?
It has to be difficult to come up with an engaging story that features a feral baboon and a bunch of role-playing primatologists.Enter our hero, Sam (Christopher Atkins).
Sam, along with his ostensible girlfriend Tracy (Amanda Wyss), and their primatologist colleagues, are looking forward to the evenings role-playing game hosted by the avuncular Professor.
From there, the story devolves into a series of encounters with Shakma and some poor role-playing primatologist.
There's no computer animation, or puppets here -- just one PO'd baboon.For bad movie fans -- keep looking.
If it's a rainy Sunday, and you have absolutely nothing better to do, then Shakma might be worth watching.Bad Movie Score: 5/10 Good Movie Score: 6/10