Hey all! I'm back with another VHS. With Canada Day approaching, it was enough of a kick in the butt to do a few Canuxploitation posts leading up to one of my favourite holidays. This one is a title I've been meaning to crack into for some time now, Bill Fruet's 1987 creature feature,
Blue Monkey.
The denizens of a hospital attempt to survive a viral outbreak caused by a giant insect. A doctor (Gwynyth Walsh), a cop (Steve Railsback) and an entomologist (Don Lake) must race against time before everyone is infected.
It was not a surprise to see the title card "INSECT" appear onscreen, as
Blue Monkey always seemed like an odd title, even with my only cursory knowledge of the movie. The movie itself is amusing, but I have to admit a lot of the appeal comes from how Canadian it is. Forgive me for blathering on about the CanCon, but as a kid who grew up in the eighties, there are so many homegrown faces here. Joe Flaherty, John Vernon and pretty much the entire fucking cast of
The War of the Worlds TV show. It was also not lost on me that
Blue Monkey featured not only the
Nabob Coffee guy (Michael J. Reynolds) but also the
Contact C guy (Don Lake). I mean, this movie even had Sarah Polley in it for Christ sake.
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| Sarah Polley, already a veteran. |
But I digress, after some setup and the introduction of what seems like a million characters, things do get going. Following the appearance of the hospital's "Laser Research" area, I was getting worried that we wouldn't get back to it, but thankfully Walsh & Railsback do eventually takes turns waving the laser gun around. It is delightfully awkward and the kind of stuff that makes my heart sing.
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| Lasers make everything better. |
Let's be real though. Despite things getting set in motion by an exotic plant - and several B-plots involving boozy bitties, unsupervised sick kids, and a pregnant woman with her overzealous husband - it does become apparent by the third act that this is yet ANOTHER Alien clone. And that's fine, but Blue Monkey is just not as interesting as Fruet's genre-bending Killer Party or his bonkers psychic snake joint Spasms. Oh, I almost forgot the probable nod to The Thing, as well?
I am, of course, sympathetic to its budget restraints, but even I can't overlook the fact I was largely watching Pertwee Dr. Who level creature effects get waved around in front of the camera. I mean, they didn't even deliver on the bug I thought FOR SURE was going to rip itself out of the pregnant lady's vagina - ala Humanoids From The Deep.
In closing, I will ask you this. Is there anything more Canadian than having inebriation be the cure to the virus? Save perhaps injecting poutine drenched with maple syrup directly into their veins?
