Blue Monkey isn’t a great movie, which is impressive as it’s almost a direct rip-off of Aliens. Instead of a Xenomorph, in this film it’s a killer insect that plants its larva inside its unsuspecting victims (poor Fred). After a group of children decide to randomly pour chemicals on the larva, it morphs into a giant killer insect before retreating to the bowels of the hospital which look so much like the Nostromo I expected the hospital to zoom off into outer space.

Sometimes as a group and sometimes on their own, members of the hospital staff (two female doctors, the janitor, an entomologist and the hospital’s director) team up with a visiting detective to locate the insect. The insect is pretty easy to find; it’s usually in whatever area has the most fog machines, blue spotlights, and strobe lights.

The fact that the insect is a big puppet is mostly hidden by poor lighting and POV camera shots, but occasionally we do get a glimpse of the creature and… yeah.

As with Alien, the monster is only half the problem — the basement is filling up with oopy-goopy egg sacks, and eventually the whole hospital will be bug city. Fortunately, two lushes discover that the creature has an aversion to alcohol. If only COVID worked the same way!

As the insect returns and the chase is on, the monster is portrayed by a guy in a giant insect suit who stumbles around, flails his insect legs, and is probably only the fifth worst actor in the movie. From the children to the doctors and particularly the star detective, no one seems all that interested to be in this film.

The tone in Blue Monkey is all over the place. For the most part the film is presented as an honest-to-goodness horror film, but in between scenes we get two elderly woman wandering around drunk, a woman giving birth (and her goofy husband), and a dead doctor that gets stepped on by fleeing patients like an old Three Stooges gag. It’s often hard to tell how serious we are to take the film, and unfortunately the actors don’t help in this department.

After a nearly 30-year wait, Blue Monkey was finally released on disc (Blu-ray!). Sadly, I suspect high-definition works against the shots of the monster rather than for it.

I really wanted to like Blue Monkey, and I did… when it was called Aliens.

Tags: halloween2020, horror

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