Leave it to the Italians to come up with one of the most engrossing, cheesiest and outrageously entertaining splatter flicks of the 80s! Umberto Lenzi, here under his favorite pseudonym Harry Kirkpatrick, wrote the fantastically bonkers script but offered the director's chair to his lesser known buddy Vittorio Rambaldi. "Primal Rage" is as eighties as it gets: the über-cheesy and misfit pop song "Say the Word" doesn't just feature once or twice but three times integrally, there are loads of beautiful girls with humongous hairdos and sexy aerobic outfits and even the obsessive evil scientist sports a ridiculous little mullet-ponytail! There were quite many horror movies with monkeys during the late 80s, but unlike you'd suspect from Lenzi, "Primal Rage" isn't a clone of "Monkey Shines", "Link" or "Shadow of Kilimanjaro". Dr. Ethridge is working at a Florida University campus and uses a baboon as guinea pig for his research involving brain diseases, but he accidentally saddled the poor animal up with a virus that invokes rage and rabies. When the rebellious campus reporter Frank Duffy breaks into Ethridge's laboratory, he releases the baboon but gets bitten and thus contaminated with the virus. Duffy passes forward the virus to a cute girl he met during a blind date and she, at her turn, contaminates a trio of vicious rapists. Each virus carrier goes on his/her own killing spree during the night of the annual campus Halloween party. "Primal Rage" is clichéd, derivative and predictable, but oh-so-entertaining! The film is fast-paced and features terrific make-up art as well as countless of gory highlights, including beheadings and impalements. Hunky 80s kid Patrick Lowe is rather annoying, but the rest of the cast is decent, with young and yummy actresses Cheryl Arutt, Sarah Buxton and Jennifer Hingel. Naturally, of course, it's Bo Svenson who steals the show as the fanatic scientist (with ponytail). Special kudos for the creative minds who thought up and designed all the dozens of great costumes that people are wearing during the Halloween party! I honestly never saw any cooler or creepier horror costumes in my life.

This is a really really bad Italian B-movie which will prove itself to be a treat for bad movie lovers. It's definitely one of the worst Italian movies I've seen, but also one of the most unintentionally funny. Credibility goes out of the window right from the start, when we are introduced to a wooden cast of actors playing teenagers and 20-somethings who couldn't act their way out of a paper bag if their lives depended on it. The usual bunch of B-movie types are present and correct, from the dashing journalist hero, to his love interest, to his kooky friend, and the local gang of rapist thugs. Bet you can't guess who'll survive to the end credits, can you? Lurking around in his cheap lab (a room made up) is creepy scientist Bo Svenson, who must have been REALLY down on his luck when this was made. Svenson - who sports a really, really bad short ponytail - has been conducting experiments on a monkey (created by Carlo Rombaldi and, briefly, the only real "special" effect in the film) which inevitably escapes to go on a rampage. No matter that the "killer monkey" films had already run their course by this time (after both Romero's MONKEY SHINES and LINK), as the monkey is immediately splattered against a passing car. However, it has bitten one of the journalist's friends, thus begins the real plot of the film.The bite turns the victim into a subhuman animal unable to suppress his/her primal instincts (as the title might suggest). What this means is that a bad actor/actress goes around with some very cheap but nonetheless gruesome "vein" make up plastered all over their faces. If they last for more than a couple of hours, they also go through the old "oatmeal face" routine. Of course, this wouldn't be a horror film without pulsating wounds either, so we have those in abundance (and slime - it really does go without saying).The basic course of the film has the bitten victim committing a string of gore murders while the journalist and his girlfriend investigate and try to stop him. Four more people get bitten, and the disease is transferred to them for maximum carnage. It's all very predictable - and moderately entertaining - until the over-the-top finale, set at a Halloween party, where a number of unsuspecting dancers find themselves on the receiving end of some brute force and evil urges. That the good guys win out in the end (accompanied by some cheesy pop music playing in the background) is a foregone conclusion.Another of the Rombaldi family, Vittorio, directs in a very uninspiring manner, showing little talent for getting the best out of his performers or creating excitement or suspense. Alex Rombaldi also provided the no-budget make ups, so it really was a family get-together for the Rombaldis with this one! The script is very unoriginal and treads through the same old clichés; it's no surprise that Umberto Lenzi decided to use a pseudonym for this particular piece of work.The murders are done pretty sloppily, and usually cut away from the gore and violence. People are strangled bloodlessly and one guy has the skin ripped off his hand (a trick done simply by pulling a pink glove off a skeleton hand). Lots of death occurs at the finale, when the three infected gang members go on a rampage dressed as the Grim Reaper, complete with flashing red eyes; ironically the Halloween costumes that they wear are the scariest things in the whole movie! There's lots of fun to be had here, as they attack and kill one would-be Dracula, and are in turn spiked, crushed and axed to death. The best death occurs when one character is crushed to death in a scene which resembles the ending of THE TERMINATOR, which conveys maximum pain and brutality without having to resort to any special effects whatsoever (all we see is his mask being crushed)! Of course, there's also a cheesy twist ending in which infected scientist Svenson comes back for one last attack - and is thrown off a balcony. A dummy is used just as badly as the one in ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST, although sadly the arm doesn't come off this one for entertainment value; however, the hilarious effect has much the same impact. PRIMAL RAGE is without a doubt a really shoddily-made film, but offers hours of endless amusement for easily-pleased bad movie lovers who will have a riot with the poor effects, wooden acting and cheesiness of the film.

Virtually a little unknown b-grade campus-based oddball shocker that's efficiently catered for, but doesn't break any ground with its unspectacular story structure (written by Umberto Lenzi) and systematic thrills, despite its unsparingly nasty tone (which goes overboard in the film's last 30 minutes at a Halloween party) and suitably icky if makeshift make-up FX and special effects (done by Carlo Rambaldi who did such films like; 'Planet of the Vampires (1965)', 'A Bay of Blood (1971)', 'King Kong (1976)', 'Possession (1981)' and 'E.T (1982)'). While two different films, the way the story flowed kind of had me thinking of the 1989 sequel 'Gnaw: Food of the Gods II', but this one wasn't that shonky and campy. Again there's a focus on a cringe-worthy 80s tune, which oddly makes it way in the opening credits (which will have you thinking what am I getting myself into?) and then during the Halloween costume party as the band is performing live. Oh good.The story sees two college students Sam Nash and Frank Duffy working as journalists for the campus paper, where they suspect a professor there is doing inhumane animal experiments in the quest to restore dead brain cells. So Frank sneaks into the laboratory one night to take pictures, where he encounters a very aggressive baboon that in the process of breaking out bites him. Slowly he begins to feel the effects, he starts forming ugly looking sores and then uncontrollable bursts of raging violence takes over. Soon the virus begins to spread leaving a bloody trail and Sam along with his girlfriend try to put a stop to it.After quite a slow-going set-up, it goes on to build up a head of steam with some grisly strokes with chaos erupting and a few moments of kinkiness from a couple of ridiculously twisted beef heads. Vittorio Rambaldi direction is efficiently surefooted for its minor budget, but the half-baked execution just lacks that punch where atmosphere isn't projected and the suspense doesn't eventuate too much than just unpleasantly rowdy jolts. Then at the end you get sudden jump scene that comes from nowhere, as like a second thought because they forgot about a character. Claudio Simonetti's wonky score is just like a ragingly spreading virus with primal instincts and Antonio Climati lenses with a professional curtness. The performances are modest with Patrick Lowe and Cheryl Arutt making likable heroines. Sarah Buxton also shines in her part. Bo Svenson presenting a fashionable ponytail makes light work as the devious professor.Also there's a connection there with some of the cast and crew which saw them do the Italian cash-in of an American influenced slasher 'Nightmare Beach' in the same year.Passably average, but it does have some twisted novelty moments within.

Almost unheard of Warner Bros. pic finds a scientific research monkey biting someone. That person is then turned into a rabid, bloodthristy killer who spreads the virus to anybody that isn't dead that they come in contact with. Half hearted production is not as bad as you would expect, but not by much, this film features good make-up effects and a memorable finale. Rated R; Extreme Graphic Violence and Profanity.