Publicists are a scarily imaginative bunch, both the fictional and the real-life ones. I guess they have to be.
For example, in the TV series Younger, a campaign is successfully launched that has women around the world, including in Goa, bearing their breasts to promote an upcoming Joyce Carol Oates novel.
Topping that, I received a link to an online video promoting the latest Stephen King adaptation, The Monkey, that has its star, Theo James, and its director, Osgood (Longlegs) Perkins, watching some rather brutal Monkey clips with two certified morticians. () The foursome intermittently discussed with semi-calm facial expressions whether the manner in which the film’s characters are decimated can actually occur. Can electricity blow off body parts? Can the eyes in a recently decapitated head follow you across the room? And how would you display a body run over by 67 horses in an open casket?
This oddly engaging featurette had me a bit unnerved because I don’t handle horror on screen all that well. Youthful confrontations with Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket, Vincent Price in House on Haunted Hill, and Renée Zellweger in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation all had debilitating effects on my psyche.
As for the Stephen King adaptations, such as Carrie, The Shining, and Misery, although of a higher cultural merit, they affected my emotional and digestive well-being in a similar manner.
Consequently, for the very first time, I packed both Pepto Bismol and Tums in my knapsack before I headed for The Monkey screening. I shouldn’t have worried.
The Monkey is apparently an absurdist horror/comedy with a few splendid special effects, and by “few” I mean “few.” There are also several highly comic scenes that work, and a sprinkling of surprisingly touching moments.
But as a Stephen-King adaptation, this mechanical-ape tale has as nearly as much in common with the prize-winning short story collected in Skeleton Crew on which it is based as a can of Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli has in common with gourmet dining.
Edibles aside, on-screen, the tale is quite a simple one. Twin brothers (Christian Convery, superb), raised by their take-life-as-it-is mom (Tatiana Masiany), find a hefty wind-up monkey in a storage space in the house they are living in. The boys crank it up, and soon their relatives, neighbors, townsfolk, and pets start winding down.
Consequently, the lads, albeit not soon enough, get rid of the surly simian, or so they think. But as you and I know too well, the devil never sleeps for long.
Twenty-five years pass by, and the kids have aged into addled adults, both portrayed by Mr. James, and yes, the horror begins again.
To be honest, when I first left the screening room on West 29th Street on the 12th floor, I had one thumb down and was not quite sure what I was going to do with my other thumb. Having not viewed the director’s acclaimed, box-office smash Longlegs or any of his other works, I started reading the dozens of interviews with Mr. Perkins, who, because of his storied gene pool, was in high demand.
His dad, Anthony Perkins, was a laudable actor best known now for Psycho and in my apartment for his recording of “Never Will I Marry” from Broadway’s Greenwillow. He died from AIDS on 9/12/1992. Oz’s mom, Berry Berenson, a much-in-demand photographer and occasional actress, was aboard the plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11 nearly nine years later.
Possibly, especially if you are a Freudian, you might guess that Perkins’ past might be the reason The Monkey is all over the place tonally. There’s one highly scary midnight climb down to the basement and one well-wrought death-by-bugs escapade, both scenes interspersed with Hee-Haw-worthy antics. Imagine if director John Waters were straight and a bit less funny, and you’d have The Monkey.
Yet, there’s a moment in church where a child mourns for his parent, disbelieving his loss is genuine. That moment hovers above all the preceding and succeeding shenanigans, reminding me of what philosopher Viktor Frankl once said, "If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering." Maybe that’s the not-so-hidden theme of Oz’s biographically tinged take on The Monkey.
(Now available on Hulu and Amazon Prime.)