Word: ellas
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...have botched his operation. His nurse, a sulky sadist named Maryanne (Christine Forrest), cares more for her parakeet than for her patient. And Allan's best friend (John Pankow) is a mad scientist of the cybernetic age, Cuisinarting the genes of capuchin monkeys. One of these -- she's called Ella -- is placed in the care of the comely Melanie (Kate McNeil), who trains simians to function as the hands of the disabled. As Allan's new housekeeper, Ella is a dream. She fetches; she spoon-feeds him; she even does windows. The clever little monkey has a mind...
...thunk it? A horror movie with brains and guts. That is, as it happens, the theme of George A. Romero's Monkey Shines: a battle of intellect vs. instinct, the moral vs. the feral, Allan man vs. Ella monkey. Ella learns to know Allan, through a kind of transspecies ESP, and to love him, with a frightening intensity. He is seized with visions, from Ella's point of view, of the creature's nocturnal rambles as she acts out his jealousy and frustration in the most violent form; and Romero films the images as if through a late-night monkey...
Emma is th' only one in th' family who has more brains than God gave a chicken, but she doesn't realize that she, too, is doomed 'cause she carries Dad's "poison" in her veins. Ella, of course, doesn't carry it, but she makes up for it by bein' self-righteously angry at th' rest of her brood. This is th' archetypal Western family, says Shepard; th' Cleavers or th' Huxtables they...
...might guess, Weston n' Ella don't get along too well. Each is tryin't' sell th' ranch from under th' other's nose--Weston t' a tacky nightclub owner named Ellis (Caroline Bicks), Ella t' a slick lawyer who's th' head zombie (Ethan Mintz). This sounds like th' set-up for a farce, n' it would be if everyone wasn't so serious n' aware of th' future about t' crash down on 'em like a watermelon on an anthill...
Actu'lly, th' funniest part of the show is th' costumes. I liked Weston's hobo outfit that makes him look like Emmett Kelly Jr., Wesley's jeans that sit too low in th' seat and that zip instead of button, Ella's sensible shoes with heels th' size of hockey pucks, Emma's cute little shitkickers and Ellis' golden drugstorecowboy suit. I 'specially liked what th' two thugs (Laurence Thomsen n' Eric Oleson) wear: plaid bellbottoms n' white chaps, respectively (n' the yo-yo is a nice touch, Laurence). Not too accurate--no self-respectin' Westerner would be caught...