‘There are some turds in the hall, clear them up…’
You know when people talk about the ’80s as being some mad time in the world of cinema when some of the most mental movies ever committed to film were not only apologetically nudged out of the door but widely released in hundreds of movie theatres? Well, Link is one of the films they are talking about. This is the kind of project that is tailor-made for the phrase ‘You couldn’t make this today’. You absolutely could not make this today. Thank God…
I hope everyone is ready for this plot synopsis. A young American zoology student (Elisabeth Shue) is hired by her lecturer Dr Steven Phillip (Terence Stamp) to serve as his assistant. So far, so normal, right? Well, not quite. You see, the good doctor lives in a remote stately home that he shares with three chimpanzees. Not puppets. Not CGI. Not men in suits. Actual chimpanzees. Well, one of the trio is an orangutan with prosthetic ears and dyed fur but still. Chimpanzees are banned from film sets now on account of their fondness for ripping people’s faces off, and here they are being carried around an English stately home by Daniel LaRusso’s girlfriend.
I’m being facetious, of course. Shue is far more than just the chick from The Karate Kid, she is a fine actor in her own right, and it’s because of her that this film isn’t a total piece of shit. The dialogue would be bad enough without Shue having to spend most of the film’s 103-minute runtime conversing with apes. Director Richard Franklin is aiming for a mixture of Cujo and Jaws but Link never threatens to trouble either in the league table of animal attack movies (this isn’t a real thing but I wish it was), although it is a lot of fun watching the various simian stars interacting with each other and wearing human clothes and erm… smoking cigars. Hmm… on reflection, it’s probably for the best they don’t make ’em like this anymore.
