Animal Horror Movies Like Shakma (1990) Kinda Rule, But at What Cost?

The first horror movie I can remember watching is Cujo.

I think maybe my parents thought it had cultural value as a Stephen King property. So one day, as we were perusing the shelves of Movie Madness, the tiny video store just a couple blocks away, they let me snag that tape off the shelf.* (There was a prize wheel at the register. I bet I got to spin it. And I bet they were kind enough to give me a prize no matter what. [I believe I was about 8 or 9.])

It was a formative experience for me, as you can imagine. And I’ve been a fan of the animal horror subgenre ever since. But this genre has had a pretty interesting and complicated evolution over the years. And I believe Shakma is an interesting example here.

There’s just something so...charming, I think, about using live animals as the “antagonist” in a horror movie. There are the narrative limitations of course; animals rarely do exactly what we want them to, because, well, they’re animals. So it necessitates clever shooting and even cleverer editing, which is always fun and often hilarious. Then there’s the fact that, well, these are animals, and everyone knows animals are better than humans; what’s more, their violent tendencies are never their fault, unless you have some weird bone to pick with biology.

So in the case of Shakma, you have this murderous baboon, right? First of all, say no more, I am in. But of course, Shakma’s rage is the result of human meddling. I mean, these “doctors” inject him with some sort of experimental drug that is intended to make him angry. This is beyond a Jurassic Park scenario where the scientists are taking risks—they straight up asked for it. And there you have it: Shakma is the obvious protagonist, and it’s quite easy to enjoy watching him go on a killing spree.

The implementation of such an occurrence during production is where it gets a bit...gray. If you remove yourself from the context of how the film was made, watching a live baboon stalk and kill stupid humans is cool as hell. In the case of Shakma, the titular primate runs through lots of halls, commands some nice close-up shots, and does his signature move quite often, which is to ram his whole body into a closed door over and over again. (It is an absolutely spellbinding thing to watch.)

But how was this real-life effect achieved? According to IMDb’s trivia section (which is always reliable), the baboon playing Shakma had two trainers, one of which would stand behind these doors and whisper his name, which apparently made this baboon very angry, thus motivating him to attack the door.** Is it considered animal abuse to piss off a baboon by merely whispering his name over and over again? I am probably not the best person to decide such a thing, but I could not argue with anyone that claims it is, in fact, animal abuse.

This baboon probably got off lightly compared to other horror movie animal stars, though. Back in the 20th century, before we took this stuff seriously, all sorts of small animals like bugs and snakes were harmed or even killed on screen, particularly in horror flicks. (I recently watched the original Willard, and I have to assume that at least a few of those rats were mistreated in some way.)

And that’s a reason why this subgenre is essentially dead—or, more accurately, animal horror movies are still being made, but not with real animals anymore. And while part of me will miss the pure insanity of seeing living creatures murder people in a horror movie, I know that it’s better this way. (And that doesn’t necessarily mean these movies will be bad either! Crawl comes to mind as a really good CGI horror film, and I won’t get upset at animatronics or puppets either.)

Much like I’ve thought about Cujo all my life, I’m going to think about Shakma for the rest of my life, probably. I hope he was treated well, and I will root for him forever.

*For the Birmingham folks: Movie Madness used to be where Gianmarco’s is now. I sure do like Gianmarco’s, but I still miss my neighborhood video store.

**His name is Typhoon, and he was also in The Fly, which rules.

Shakma is now streaming on Shudder and Tubi, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.