Rider Reimagines Monkey Shines

Alternate title: Proof I Can Write About George A. Romero Movies Without Lapsing Into Zombie-speak

I caught Romero's 1988 flick Monkey Shines on IFC last night (for the first time since its video release) and it didn't disappoint. It had all the elements of a perfect film: quadriplegic sex, a killer monkey wielding matches and syringes, and John Pankow's enormous forehead.

But deep down inside my wooden cranium I wondered how it could be better. How could it be updated with current celebrities and state-of-the-art FX to really make that monkey shine?

For starters, I'd put Jason Statham in the wheelchair. He'd still be the quadriplegic hero who uses a mouth-tube to roll around his house, but I'd set the film in a future where he telepathically controls a pair of hologram arms for getting dressed. That way, when Yakuza cyborg-ninjas attack, Statham's "holarms" can defend him with a twisted-up shirt. Besides, his contract stipulates that clothing be used as a weapon in at least one scene.

Ella, the helper monkey who both loves and taunts him, will be played by Dakota Fanning. I'll use Lord of the Rings-like forced perspective and camera tricks to make her appear 18 inches tall. Nothing will make the audience cheer more than when Statham seizes little Dakota's neck with his teeth and chokes the life out of her as she gibbers and screeches. Fanning doesn't do her own stunts, so we'd have to use a Monchichi stand-in.

I'll change the epilogue to bring the Statham legend full circle: after his character's spinal surgery is a success, his girlfriend picks him up at the hospital (she's played by Angelina Jolie's CG doppelgänger in Beowulf but voiced by Doc Hammer as "Dr. Girlfriend"). She's driving a black Audi A8 or a BMW--depending on who offers more for product placement. It seems they're going to move to France, and he's going to call himself...Frank Martin! Never mind that it's set in 2021 and The Transporter took place in '02. It's Statham. Why question it?

After the credits roll, we'll fade back in on a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse, and a voice on the radio will say, "The dead are rising from their graves and eating the flesh of the living."

D'oh!