King Kong
Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1933 classic set the tone for pretty much every blockbuster adventure ever made – and it also gave us cinema’s most iconic simian. The giant ape Kong has appeared in many more movies since, but arguably none carry quite the same power as the original creation from stop-motion animation pioneer Willis O’Brien.
Bedtime for Bonzo
1951 comedy Bedtime for Bonzo famously teamed up then-matinee idol and future US President Ronald Reagan with a cheeky little chimp named Bonzo. Reagan plays a college psychology professor who takes Bonzo into his home in the hopes of teaching him human morality. Much tomfoolery ensues – as did a sequel, 1952’s Bonzo Goes to College, in which Reagan did not appear.
Dunston Checks In
1996 family comedy Dunston Checks In centers on an orangutan whose duplicitous owner (Rupert Everett) brings him to a five-star hotel to steal from the rich guests – only for the ape to instead befriend the lonely children of the hotel’s manager. Though a flop at the box office, Dunston Checks In proved hugely popular on home video and was a childhood favorite of many.
Congo
In the wake of Jurassic Park, no one thought a big-budget blockbuster based on a Michael Crichton novel could possibly fail – but 1995’s critically derided flop Congo proved them all wrong. The outlandish jungle adventure features a swarm of vicious white apes, but is more notorious for Amy, a mountain gorilla who effectively speaks English via a machine that translates sign language.
Planet of the Apes
Any movie that centers on actors dressed up as walking apes might seem certain to be camp, but 1968’s Planet of the Apes remains one of the most serious, intelligent and powerful science fiction films ever made. Charlton Heston is compelling as the human lead, but the apes remain the real stars, largely thanks to the special makeup that still looks impressive today.
Monkey Shines
Based on Michael Stewart’s novel, 1988 horror film Monkey Shines follows the struggles of a man left quadriplegic after a traffic accident. He is assigned a trained Capuchin monkey as a helper – but when the monkey is dosed with experimental intelligence-boosting drugs, things take a dark turn. Director George A. Romero’s film makes monkeys a lot less cute than usual.
Every Which Way But Loose
We all know Clint Eastwood for his westerns and cop thrillers, yet the single biggest hit of his career came when he teamed up with a primate. 1978 action comedy Every Which Way But Loose casts Eastwood as a trucker and bare-knuckle fighter who keeps a badly behaved orangutan named Clyde as a pet. A sequel followed in 1980’s Any Which Way You Can.
Gorillas in the Mist
One of the more serious simian-based films is Gorillas in the Mist, 1988’s Oscar-nominated biopic of Dian Fossey (played by Sigourney Weaver), the primatologist and anti-poaching activist who worked with gorillas in Rwanda before her murder in 1985. Much of the film was shot on location in Rwanda with real gorillas, although certain scenes used actors in suits built by special makeup master Rick Baker.
Mighty Joe Young
The King Kong team of directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, actor Robert Armstrong and stop-motion animator Willis O’Brien reunited for another big monkey movie in 1949’s Mighty Joe Young. Notable as the first film credit of legendary special effects creator Ray Harryhausen, the film follows a 12-foot ape who is brought to America to seek his fortune. A remake followed in 1997.
Phenomena
Italian horror director Dario Argento produced one of his most ambitious and audacious films in 1985’s Phenomena, which sees Jennifer Connolly’s psychic schoolgirl battle a deranged serial killer. The plot (too bizarre and unwieldy to surmise here) includes Donald Pleasance’s disabled entomologist owning a helper chimpanzee, which develops a bitter vendetta and seeks vengeance against the film’s masked murderer. Yes, sometimes monkeys want revenge too.
Monkey Business
1952’s Monkey Business only briefly features a chimpanzee, but the animal has enough impact on the plot to get its name in the title, so the film warrants mentioning here. The classic Howard Hawks comedy stars Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers as a couple who regain their youth after drinking a serum unknowingly brewed by a mischievous chimp. Marilyn Monroe also makes an early appearance.
Project X
Not to be confused with the 2012 teen comedy of the same name, 1987’s Project X stars Matthew Broderick as an Air Force airman assigned to work on a secret research project involving chimpanzees operating flight simulators. Also featuring early appearances from Helen Hunt, William Sadler and Stephen Lang, director Jonathan Kaplan’s film wasn’t much of a hit.
MVP: Most Valuable Primate
From the producers of 1997 dog comedy Air Bud, 2000’s MVP: Most Valuable Primate centers on a chimpanzee who winds up the star player of a high school ice hockey team. The Disney release proved popular enough to launch a trilogy: 2001’s MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate puts the chimp on a skateboard, whilst 2004’s MXP: Most Xtreme Primate puts him on a snowboard.
Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla
1952’s low-budget comedy horror Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla casts the iconic horror actor as a scientist in the jungle, whose experiments with a gorilla are interrupted by comedy double act Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo. A cut-price rip-off of the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedies of the day, it’s considered even worse than Lugosi’s later films with infamous filmmaker Ed Wood.
The Mighty Peking Man
Also known as Goliathon or Utam: King of the Orangutans, 1977’s The Mighty Peking Man is a Hong Kong production designed to cash in on 1976’s King Kong remake. Hitting the same narrative beats as Kong, a giant ape is found in the Himalayas and taken to Hong Kong. We also have the obligatory blonde in German actress Evelyne Kraft as a wild jungle woman.
Ape vs. Monster (2021)
American mini-studio The Asylum are notorious for releasing cut-price direct-to-DVD rip-offs of major blockbusters – so in 2021, the year that Warner Bros released Godzilla vs. Kong, The Asylum gave us Ape vs. Monster. It’s a pretty self-explanatory title: a giant ape and a mutated dinosaur get loose and do battle. Infamously prolific B-movie star Eric Roberts makes an appearance.
Instinct (1999)
1999 psychological thriller Instinct casts Oscar-winning superstar Anthony Hopkins as an anthropologist who resurfaces after several years of living in the jungle of Uganda with gorillas, in which time he may have wound up more ape than man. Alas, the presence of both Hopkins and fellow Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. could not make director Jon Turteltaub’s film a hit.
The Beast of Borneo
A 1934 jungle adventure film, The Beast of Borneo sees a scientist, his assistant and their pet orangutan head into the jungles of Borneo to locate primates for experimentation. Considered a progressive, pro-animal rights film by some fans, the film presents the true monster as man, as the scientist gets progressively crazier and more ruthless the deeper they get into the jungle.
Ed
At the height of his Friends fame, Matt LeBlanc made some unsuccessful attempts to find similar success on the big screen. This included 1996’s Ed, in which the sitcom star plays a baseball pitcher whose pet chimp serves as his team’s mascot. Critically reviled, Ed bombed at the box office and was nominated for numerous Golden Raspberry Awards (missing out on most to Striptease).
Going Bananas
A 1987 family comedy from the notorious mini-studio Cannon Films, Going Bananas features funnymen Dom DeLuise and Jimmie Walker, and centers on a boy who befriends a mischievous chimp. Notoriously, the flop was conceived as a vehicle for Every Which Way But Loose’s Manis, but as he was growing disobedient with age, the role instead taken by dwarf actor Deep Roy in a monkey suit.
Shakma
When will scientists in movies learn that experimenting with primates never works out? 1990 horror movie Shakma casts Roddy McDowall as a professor experimenting on the baboon of the title in the hopes of repressing the animal’s aggression – but instead turns the animal into a brutal killing machine. As laughably absurd as things get, there’s no denying the baboon itself is pure nightmare fuel.
Queen Kong
Another cash-in on the 1976 King Kong remake, British comedy Queen Kong casts 70s comedy star Robin Askwith in a gender-reversed parody of the classic giant ape story, which ends in the mighty primate causing havoc in London. Hit with lawsuits over its clear similarity to King Kong, the film was barred from release back in 1976 but has since built a cult following.
Blood Monkey
There’s no shortage of low-budget animal-based horror movies with low rent CGI out there, but not many of them feature a Best Actor Oscar winner among the cast. Amadeus star F. Murray Abraham appears in 2007’s Blood Monkey as an anthropologist who leads a research team into the jungles of Thailand in search of a new species of primate. Be careful what you wish for!
The Jungle Book
Disney’s 1967 animated classic The Jungle Book sports a menagerie of anthropomorphized animals, and one of the most memorable is of course the orangutan King Louie, leader of a primate pack who famously sings I Wanna Be Like You. The 2016 remake changes Louie (voiced by Christopher Walken) into a Gigantopithecus, a long-extinct primate native to India, where Rudyard Kipling’s classic story is set.
Rampage
Based on the 80s video game series, 2018’s Rampage casts Dwayne Johnson as an ex-military primatologist whose beloved albino gorilla suddenly mutates into an aggressive giant after being exposed to a mysterious chemical agent. Throw a giant wolf and a giant crocodile into the mix, and the stage is set for an epic giant monster showdown in downtown Chicago.
A.P.E.
Another of the many late-70s giant monkey movies designed to cash in on the King Kong remake, 1976’s A.P.E. (supposedly an abbreviation of ‘Attacking Primate monstEr’) is a US/Korean co-production which sees a 36-foot gorilla wreak havoc in Seoul. The tongue-in-cheek production is best remembered for a heavily-memed scene in which the giant ape flips the bird after smashing a helicopter.
Konga
1961 British production Konga stars Michael Gough as a scientist who brings home a baby African chimpanzee to use in his experiments of growing animals and vegetation to unusual size. You can guess how that turns out for the deranged doctor, and the people of London. The resulting low-budget mayhem features both a giant ape and oversized carnivorous plants.
Bingo Bongo
1982 Italian comedy Bingo Bongo centers on a Tarzan-esque character played by Adriano Celentano, who was marooned in the jungle as a baby and raised by apes. Brought back to Milan, research student Carole Bouquet tries to help him learn human ways. Though considered a family film, the ape-man’s primitive ways with women results in jokes which would not be considered too family-friendly these days.
Bye Bye Monkey
Gérard Depardieu takes the lead role in 1978 French/Italian co-production Bye Bye Monkey, a comedy drama which casts the French actor as a waxwork museum electrician who finds a baby chimpanzee and decides to raise it as his own child. It’s yet another monkey movie with a King Kong connection, as Depardieu finds the chimp in the palm of an oversized Kong puppet.
Funky Monkey
18 years after starring in Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam classic Full Metal Jacket, Matthew Modine appeared alongside a precocious chimpanzee in a Hawaiian shirt in 2004 comedy Funky Monkey. Modine plays a spy who saves the streetwise chimp from being experimented on by Gilbert Gottfried’s mad scientist. Fred Ward and Jeffrey Tambor also appear in the direct-to-DVD family film.
Tarzan (1999)
No discussion of monkey movies could fail to mention the classic big screen hero Tarzan, the Ape Man. The creation of writer Edgar Rice Burroughs has appeared in scores of films over the decades, but the 1999 Disney animated production brings the apes to the forefront, voiced by such big name actors as Glenn Close, Lance Henriksen and Rosie O’Donnell.
Going Ape!
Tony Danza and Danny DeVito were best known for their roles on sitcom Taxi when they co-starred in 1981 comedy Going Ape! Danza plays the prodigal son of a circus family whose father passes away, leaving him a substantial inheritance – but only on the condition that he looks after his late father’s three beloved orangutans.
The Jennie Project
Home Alone 3’s Alex D. Linz takes the (human) lead in family drama The Jennie Project, centered on a chimpanzee taught sign language by a kindly scientist, who brings her to live in his family home. Based on Douglas Preston’s 1994 novel Jennie, the film was produced specifically for the Disney Channel in 2001.
Animal Behavior
1989 romantic comedy Animal Behavior is all about a love triangle that forms between Karen Allen, Armand Assante and Holly Hunter – but more importantly, there are monkeys in it. Allen plays a scientist who works closely with chimpanzees, developing methods of communicating with the cute and cuddly primates.
Kong Island
Also known as The King of Kong Island, 1968 Italian jungle adventure Kong Island goes to unusual lengths to associate itself with King Kong, considering that there aren’t any giant apes in it. Curiously, the film’s original title – Eva, the Savage Venus – makes it clear that the apes are very much supporting characters, with the real focal point being a Tarzan-esque jungle woman.
Max, Mon Amour
1986 Japanese-French co-production Max, Mon Amour sports an eye-opening premise indeed: Charlotte Rampling stars as the wife of a diplomat, who takes a lover in the form of… a chimpanzee. As you might anticipate, the film is a surrealist farce not meant to be taken too seriously – and, thankfully, the chimp in question is played by a human actor in a suit.
Aaaaaaaah!
British actor Steve Oram made his debut as writer-director with 2015’s Aaaaaaaah!, a surreal, dialogue-free comedy horror with a simian twist. Whilst no monkeys actually appear in the film, it’s set in a world in which human beings communicate and behave like our hairier cousins. As you might expect, it’s all a bit strange, but the critics loved it.
The One and Only Ivan
Released to Disney + in 2020, The One and Only Ivan is adapted from a children’s novel based on the true story of a gorilla raised in captivity among humans. Bryan Cranston plays the ape’s owner, whilst Sam Rockwell voices Ivan himself. Other big name actors voice the film’s animal characters, including Helen Mirren, Danny DeVito and Angelina Jolie (also the film’s producer).
Link
Pitched as “Jaws with chimps,” Link centers on primates being studied by Terence Stamp’s primatologist in his English mansion – but after Elisabeth Shue’s American zoology student arrives to assist in his research, things take a dark turn. The 1986 British production was directed by Richard Franklin (Psycho II), who called the film “an anthropological thriller.”
Spymate
Starring a young Emma Roberts, 2006 family comedy adventure Spymate features – yes, you guessed it – a chimp who is also a spy. The suave ape is even a martial arts master, having been trained by none other than Mr. Miyagi himself, Pat Morita; the film was one of the last the Karate Kid actor made before he passed away in November 2005.
