Blue Monkey

 

Blue Monkey (1987)

Editor's note: Despite being named Blue Monkey on IMDB, the title card in the movie itself reads Insect!

The Plot: An infected patient brought to a hospital spawns an insect pupa that grows to immense size and terrorizes the hospital patients and staff.

Blue Monkey is an odd title for this movie. There are no monkeys at all. In fact, there is a giant insect instead, which makes the title card of Insect! a much more appropriate title. I wonder what the producers were thinking with Blue Monkey? 

The action takes place in a hospital after a man who was pricked by something in a plant is brought in. The hospital administrator is played by John Vernon, Dean Wormer from Animal House. And what a day he had in this movie! The initial patient is brought in with an unidentifiable virus which causes the hospital to go into lockdown, it hen spawns an unknown insect lifeform which quickly mutates into a hermaphroditic insect that births a male version and then lays 500 eggs. The army arrives to enforce the quarantine and quickly machine guns down an escaping patient. This is a much different approach to a quarantine then the governments of the world had during Covid. So look on the bright side! The hospital is also over 100 years old and was converted from an insane asylum so it also houses a maze of tunnels no one seems to know how they are laid out. It also inexplicably houses a state of the art laser.

And you thought you were having a bad day

Dean Wormer is about as effective at stopping the man eating insects as he is dealing with Bluto and the gang in Animal House. In my head canon, this movie is in the Animal House metaverse and this is Dean Wormer running the hospital, forced to change his name and go into a new career after the events of Animal House thus leading him to wilt under the pressure of man eating insects running amok. 

Dean Wormer wishing he could go back to Bluto being his worst problem

Luckily for Dean Wormer, Steve Railsback stars int his movie as Detective Bishop who valiantly leads a team of Dr. Rachel Carson and entomologist Eliot Jacobs (played by the wonderful Don Lake) into the laser room and take down the man eating insect and save the day. Who knows what would've happened if there wasn't a state of the art laser in the run down 100+ year old ex-insane asylum. But luckily we do not have to ponder that scenario. 

When all else fails, use the laser!

Blue Monkey (or Insect!) is pretty bonkers and enjoyable. A feast of sketchy 80s practical effects only adds to its charm as does an out of left field cameo by SCTV actors Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke. I give Blue Monkey 6 man eating insects