On this Florida university campus budding journalist Sam Nash (Patrick Lowe) is puttering along on his scooter and snapping photos of his fellow students with his camera as they perform aerobics, canoodle, and stage festivities in the main hall. When he gets to the newspaper office he is confronted by a trio of angry girls who tell him that his friend Duffy (Mitch Watson) will be castrated should their paths cross for something he has written about them in his column. When they march out, Duffy emerges from behind a desk and makes light of the situation, but he is more interested in investigating what resident boffin Dr Ethridge (Bo Svenson) has been getting up to in his lab...
While Sam (played by Rob Lowe's brother) is more interested in Lauren Daly (future celebrity psychologist Cheryl Arutt) whose car he has just saved from being towed away, and so our love interest is established in a horror movie that some have compared to 28 Days Later... though it begins as yet another of those eighties shockers preoccupied with the danger of monkeys and apes. That's down to the baboon Ethridge is experimenting on, which in its first scene is an obvious puppet, so no need to worry about animal cruelty on that count, though once it escapes from its cage after Duffy breaks into the lab to investigate it proceeds to stand waving its arms in the way of an approaching police car and end up splattered across the windscreen.
So maybe not that benevolent to animals, though there's no indication the actual baboon was executed for the sake of the film. Anyway, plotwise what's important is that Duffy was bitten, and all Ethridge's claims to working towards the treatment of brain injuries and debilitating conditions don't mean much when he has concocted some virus or other, though the mechanics of that are rather obscure, i.e. entirely made up for the movie. That's where the comparisons to the Danny Boyle effort entered into the discussion, though while his film ended up with a full on zombie apocalypse after a fashion, in this instance it's nowhere near as devastating, with just a few people getting bitten, infected and murdered. Nevertheless, with effects expert Carlo Rambaldi on board, that was dramatic enough.
It was his son Vittorio Rambaldi who was taking directorial duties - wonder how he got that job? - and he essayed an workmanlike technique that emphasised the bloody violence rather than any of the other exploitation elements, although there was a trio of rapist students who menaced the campus. Not that we see them rape anyone, and indeed when they capture a potential victim (Sarah Buxton as Debbie, whose idea of an introduction is to airily mention her recent abortion) she turns out to be infected and bites them all, paving the way for the grand finale where the university are staging a Halloween party barely interrupted by the mayhem. Seriously, nobody seems all that bothered there are killers in their midst, they prefer to get on down to the band playing the theme song, while sporting some of the most outlandish costumes you ever did see.
Obviously Rambaldi Sr had more fun crafting those than he did doing the gore effects, and they really did show off his inventive skills with such bizarre sights as an upside down person, a back to front fat woman, a mask that opens up the face to "flash" the skull beneath, and most memorably the triple faced headgear with taps for noses that spout blood when the wearer's throat is ripped out. If there was an unpleasant streak to much of this, not least Bo Svenson's tiny ponytail, then it was par for the course as this was an Italian production shot on American soil, and their run of successful genre pictures was beginning to wind down by this stage, which both bred an anything goes mood and suggested the ideas were running out simultaneously, an unusual combination. Not one that was particularly great for filmmaking, but there was entertainment to be had for eighties horror aficionados seeking something less well seen, nobody was going to mistake it for one of the greats but for junk movie diversions, cramming together overfamiliar elements did afford amusement. Music by Claudio Simonetti.
