Ok, so there's no monkeys in this film let alone a blue one, (though one character does mention one) but we do have a big insect, a really big insect that looks like a giant praying mantis on steroids. Well maybe not steroids, but it does accidentally get dosed with growth hormone.
What we have here is an unjustly overlooked Canucksploitation gem, directed by veteran helmer William Fruet, (Death Weekend, Spasms) and with a cast toplined by Steve Railsback and Susan Anspach, plus an early appearance from Sarah Polley. The plot is kinda sorta Alien in a hospital, only with the afore mentioned bug gestating in a handyman instead of a critter from space and an astronaut. Much of the film takes place in access tunnels under the hospital giving it the same feel as the corridors of the Nostromo in the original. It even keeps it's prey alive for it's hatchlings to devour alive. Unlike Alien however it has a couple drunken old ladies, a woman in labor and a bunch of annoying kids, one of whom holds the key to stopping the big bug.
One place it does go off on it's own and actually delivers it's most shocking scene, (especially for it's time), is the infection the creature causes which spreads through the hospital and gets it quarantined so hardcore the National Guard is surrounding it. When one of the patients tries to escape out a window he's shot dead by the troops. Instead of playing it for cheap shocks, Fruet plays the man's desperation to escape, the officer's unwillingness to give the order to shoot and his men's reluctance to follow it off against the need to contain the unknown and fast spreading infection. It's a remarkably tense scene, even if it is at odds with the rest of the film's monster oriented action.
On the downside the film is hurt by the usual plot contrivances, the horny guy who's supposed to be watching the larva but goes to get some from a cute nurse, and the fact there happens to be an incredible, beyond state of the art laser research facility in the hospital for example. But hey, it's an 80's movie about a giant bug, stuff like that comes with the territory.
