Who doesn't like a psychotic monkey film? 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. This doesn't go well and he asks Shakma's mate, Hero Guy, to put the monkey to sleep. Which he doesn't. Or something. I was too busy trying to figure all the crap they were talking about this game they were going on about. This game they were going on about seems to be some sort of live action dungeons and dragons type deal, but not much is explained to be honest. 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? We'll never know.

The students in the med school of a university play a "Dungeons & Dragons" type of role playing game in their tower after hours. They're supervised by their head professor, Sorenson (Roddy McDowall). 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. As the humans dwindle in number, they find that getting help from the outside world is next to impossible."Shakma" is pretty laughable, all right, not that it's *completely* worthless. The action is passable, the suspense passable. The most entertaining aspect is the animal action. Typhoon is a real force of nature and was obviously trained as well as a baboon could possibly be trained. Things get pretty gory, too. The movie is generally amusing for putting an "animal attack" spin on the standard slasher formula. Everything about it is no more than adequate on a technical level; it suffers the most from its silly script and inane characterizations. 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. One big problem is that it's overextended, going on too long at approximately an hour and 42 minutes.Five out of 10.

I'm unsure why there's so much praise for this film because Shakma is really quite boring throughout. 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. There's a few decent scenes scattered about, but not nearly enough to call this a cult classic or even close to a cult classic. The scene where the woman gets killed in the toilet seemed very well shot at first, until she gets back up and reaches for the ventilation grill. Yeah, as if Shakma is gonna suddenly stop attacking her. Overall, Shakma is not the worst horror film out there, but is nowhere near as good as others on here would have you believe.

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. I enjoyed the D&D game the characters were playing, it reminded me of my own geekiness, and thought it was creative. Didn't think I'd find a movie about a killer monkey enjoyable, but this film was just that. This movie was also released under the title "Nemesis" on home video, which I think sounds like a much better title, even if it has nothing to do with the story. All in all, a very entertaining piece of escapism.