Shock the Monkey: Jonathan Kaplan’s tale of a chimpanzee test pilot starring Matthew Broderick, William Sadler and Helen Hunt could have easily been a prequel to a new Planet of the Apes series. Well, at least my 14-year-old self thought so at the time.
But alas, like many under-performing top-tier titles in the late 80s, it got dumped into the video store oubliette after some lukewarm box office. Over the years, it somehow managed to avoid turning into nostalgia bait or cult classic, but I’ve always had a real soft spot for this one. It hits me right in the maudlins.
I first saw it in theatres the week after Ferris Bueller hit home video, so I was still in teen-Broderick-worship mode when the lights dimmed. I wasn’t disappointed.
What stood out then, and still does now, is how directly the film handles its military context. The animal testing program isn’t treated like some background detail to get things going, it’s the crux of the story. Like The Manhattan Project and WarGames, it was part of a wave of 80s Cold War films that started questioning the infrastructure instead of strawmanning villains. Not just “what if the nukes launch,” but “who signed off on this, and why can’t anyone stop it?”
And for whatever reason, Project X never really found a second life.
It didn’t get folded into the cult movie ecosystem like other under-seen 80s films – think Miracle Mile. You’d figure the combination of Broderick, Cold War angst and chimpanzees in flight suits would have at least earned it some shelf talk, but sadly, it mostly just faded. -Pop
Project X escaped to Home Video today in 1987, after an April 17th theatrical release.