Chimera

1991

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
6.4| NA| en| More Info
Released: 07 July 1991 Ended
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Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
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A journalist investigates the death of his girlfriend at a fertility clinic where she worked and uncovers a plot to create a new breed of human based on crossing the genetics of man and ape.

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Sci-Fi

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Chimera Audience Reviews

Mjeteconer Just perfect...
Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
screenman 'Chimera' is an extremely short-running (4 episode) horror drama from the early 1990's.The ideas are so sinister and horrific that they might have been penned by Nigel Kneale.Set in Yorkshire, in the north of England, a supposed fertility clinic is being used as a front for inter-species experiments, using eggs and sperm from unwitting patients. The result is a chimp-human hybrid that escapes during the first episode and runs amok with a large knife in the 'clinic', eviscerating everyone it finds. So, we begin with a frightful crime, and the rest of the series entails a sinister who-done-it as to the nature and capture of the culprit.The viewer doesn't know the killer's identity, there is only a clue from a screaming, violent spectre that may or may not be human, and may or may not be sane, being bundled out of a van and into the facility.This is the kind of programme at which British television could often excel. The ideas are so vile that they grip your attention as they unfold. It's science-fiction (or it was then) it's a slasher-horror work with hints of Frankenstien, it's a who-done-it, and it's a conspiracy theory.Sadly, the programme inevitably suffers from under-funding and limited production values that have always dogged British television. Lighting, camera-work and script could all have been a lot better. Even so; the 4-hours allotted to it's presentation is just about equal to the plot threads and discovery whilst still making for a worthy watch. The beast itself is rather campy in its final denouement and might have benefited from some of today's CGI, or better still - a little of Rob Bottin's animatronic magic.Worth a watch if you can find a copy of the mini-series. An abridged movie of the same material called 'Monkeyboy' is little more than a trailer. It has all of the - now - inadequate highlights and omits most of the slowly-developing tension. Avoit the latter.
Woodyanders Created by the shady animal research outfit the Jenner Clinic as an unsightly malformed mutant hybrid of both human and monkey DNA, Chad (vividly played by Douglas Mann, who skillfully alternates between being quite frightening and surprisingly touching) is part man, part simian and all-nasty, a hairy, gnarled, hunch-backed toddler with the mind of a child, superhuman strength, an easily set-off temper and a murderous sociopathic disposition which makes him one seriously lethal piece of messed-up work. Chad breaks free from his cage (where the poor critter has spent his entire life), butchers nine people, trashes the laboratory where he's been secluded from the rest of the world, and goes on the lam. He's doggedly tracked by diligent sympathetic journalist John Lynch, obsessed protective scientist Christine Kavanagh, and flinty, sinister, enigmatic lab company bigwig Hennessey (a marvelously steely Kenneth Cranham), the latter a first-class baddie who's hellbent on covering up the whole bloody affair so he can continue his morally questionable experiments undeterred. Lawrence Gordon Clark's crisp, pacy direction, a knotty, thoughtful, intricately woven script by Stephen Gallagher which astutely examines a provocative science gone amok theme without ever becoming some preachy, self-righteous, heavy-handed tract (Gallagher adapted his novel "Chimera"), fine acting from a uniformly excellent cast, top-rate make-up f/x by Bob Keen, a few gory kill scenes, an elegant orchestral score, a genuinely creepy and grotesque, but strangely poignant and pitiable subhuman monster tyke, the compact, gripping narrative, a strikingly poetic and haunting conclusion, and the all-around well-drawn intriguing characters (Sebastian Shaw in particular has a lovely part as a sweet elderly scientist who unwittingly participated in Chad's creation) combine together to form a scary, suspenseful and overall superlative fright feature sleeper which not only delivers the expected spine-tingling goods, but also gives the viewer plenty of tasty food for thought to gnaw on.
ChuckTurner MONKEY BOY is a 100-minute re-edited version of the 4-part, 208-minute CHIMERA. CHIMERA was adapted from his own novel by Stephen Gallagher, a prolific, widely-respected and internationally published UK author of fantasy and speculative fiction. It is based on first-hand research into scientific experiments on DNA manipulation, and in its original form, is one of the few pieces of genuine science-fiction writing to appear on British TV screens. CHIMERA has been transmitted several times in its original version on UK ITV. It is a fine, and very frightening piece of speculative drama, recently voted one of the 20 scariest UK TV dramas ever in a recent poll by the venerable UK listings magazine 'Radio Times'. MONKEY BOY is missing virtually the entire first hour of CHIMERA, which sets up a whole host of characters, in particular the scientists conducting the experiment combining human and chimpanzee DNA to develop a cross-species animal for further laboratory experiment and possible future use as slave labor or by the military. In a shock twist - never equalled in UK TV drama - at the end of the first hour-long episode, all but two of established characters are killed by the escaped mutant beast. The story then proceeds along an entirely new line, cross-cutting between the survivors' attempts to track down the animal, and the highly intelligent human-chimp (Chad) - a ferocious but increasingly sympathetic figure. CHIMERA articulates the debate about the use of animals in scientific experiment in a powerful, compulsive drama, which attracted many admiring reviews on its first appearance on ITV.The original has never been released on video or DVD. Sadly, MONKEY BOY remains all too available.
Axiom-2 This very low budget film is really called "Monkey Boy". It is a really crappy movie. The only good thing about it was the Laser Disc jacket that it came in.It was another .50cent disc that I took a chance on. I mainly bought it because of how funny the cover looked. It said: They made him. They raised him. Now he's coming out to play.Then they have a picture of him, with the title "Monkey Boy" under it. On the back it has the statement:Congratulations, its a mutant...Its a .50cent disc that I have had alot of laughs with. But, "Monkey Boy" is another movie that I can't figure out why they would release the Laser Disc of it. Let alone even make.