Monkey-ed Movies | |
---|---|
Written by | Tom Stern Tim Burns |
Directed by | Tom Stern |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Producer | Palomar Pictures |
Running time | 00:01:20 approx. |
Original release | |
Network | TBS |
Release | February 1, 1998 |
Monkey-ed Movies is a series of short films broadcast on the Turner Broadcasting System in the late 1990s. [1] [2] The films parodied popular films or television programs that were currently being broadcast on TBS with the use of costumed chimpanzees and orangutans voiced by human actors.
Ray Richmond of Variety noted that Monkey-ed Movies "proved to be clever stuff, in large part because it was short and sweet. It was just an irreverent little diversion made terrific by some dedicated training and impressive mimicry." [3]
The idea for the series came from a five-minute pilot that originally aired on MTV. TBS ordered 48 segments to be produced which were run during Dinner and a Movie and in odd time slots after sporting events. However, one day when a golf tournament ran short, the station played about half an hour of Monkey'ed Movies to unexpected results. The ratings actually increased, which prompted TBS to order 13 episodes of an expanded half-hour series which would become The Chimp Channel . [4]
The American Humane Association's Film and Television Unit monitored the filming of Monkey-ed Movies, and reported:
In 1999, TBS spun the popular Monkey-ed Movies series into a situation comedy entitled The Chimp Channel . The series lasted only one season and met with negative reviews criticizing its attempt to expand the already effective Monkey-ed Movies concept. The series featured a segment called Movies on Film where two critics reviewed films from the Monkey-ed Movies library and gave a non-opposable thumbs up or down.
Cheeta is a chimpanzee character that appeared in numerous Hollywood Tarzan films of the 1930s–1960s, as well as the 1966–1968 television series, as the ape sidekick of the title character, Tarzan. Cheeta has usually been characterized as male, but sometimes as female, and has been portrayed by chimpanzees of both sexes.
La Planète des singes, known in English as Planet of the Apes in the US and Monkey Planet in the UK, is a 1963 science fiction novel by French author Pierre Boulle. It was adapted into the 1968 film Planet of the Apes, launching the Planet of the Apes media franchise.
Bedtime for Bonzo is a 1951 American comedy film directed by Fred de Cordova and starring Ronald Reagan, Diana Lynn, and a chimpanzee named Peggy as Bonzo. Its central character, psychology professor Peter Boyd (Reagan), tries to teach human morals to a chimpanzee, hoping to solve the "nature versus nurture" question. Boyd hires Jane Linden (Lynn) to pose as the chimpanzee's mother while he plays father to it and uses 1950s-era child-rearing techniques.
Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp is an American action/adventure comedy series that originally aired Saturday mornings on ABC from September 12, 1970, to January 2, 1971, and rebroadcast the following season. The live-action film series featured a cast of chimpanzees given apparent speaking roles by overdubbing with human voices.
The Chimp Channel is an American sitcom which aired on TBS Superstation in 1999. Based on the Monkey-ed Movies interstitials that TBS aired one year prior, it is the network's first original sitcom. The series primarily consists of costumed chimpanzees and orangutans, voiced by human actors, parodying popular television shows, movies, and advertising as well as stars and personalities within the industry. The Chimp Channel marked the first all-simian series since ABC's Saturday morning Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, which ended in 1972.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes is a 1973 American science fiction film directed by J. Lee Thompson from a screenplay by John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington, based on a story by Paul Dehn. The film is the sequel to Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) and the fifth and final installment in the Planet of the Apes original film series. It stars Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy, Severn Darden, Lew Ayres, Paul Williams, and John Huston. In the film, after conquering the oppressive humans, Caesar (McDowall) tries to keep the peace amongst the humans and apes, but uprisings endure.
The Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre is a 65-acre (26.3 ha) ape and monkey sanctuary, rescue centre and primatarium near Wool, Dorset, England.
Link is a 1986 British horror film starring Elisabeth Shue and Terence Stamp along with a trio of simian stars which consist of Locke as Link, Jed as Imp, and Carrie as Voodoo. The title character, "Link", is a super-intelligent yet malicious chimpanzee who lashes out against his masters when they try to have him euthanised.
Dinner and a Movie is an American cooking and entertainment television program aired on TBS from September 8, 1995 to 2011.
A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures. Nature documentaries usually concentrate on video taken in the subject's natural habitat, but often including footage of trained and captive animals, too. Sometimes they are about wildlife or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema. The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series which is distributed across the world.
Marvel Apes is a four-issue limited series by comics publisher Marvel Comics which started publication in October 2008. The series is written by Karl Kesel with art by Ramon Bachs and covers by John Watson.
Planet of the Apes is a 1968 American science fiction film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, loosely based on the 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle. The film stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly, and Linda Harrison. In the film, an astronaut crew crash-lands on a strange planet in the distant future. Although the planet appears desolate at first, the surviving crew members stumble upon a society in which apes have evolved into creatures with human-like intelligence and speech. The apes have assumed the role of the dominant species and humans are mute creatures wearing animal skins.
The Center for Great Apes is a sanctuary for great apes located east of Wauchula, Florida. Its mission is to provide a permanent sanctuary for orangutans and chimpanzees who have been rescued or retired from the entertainment industry, from research, or from the exotic pet trade; to educate the public about captive great apes and the threats to conservation of great apes in the wild; and to advocate for the end of the use of great apes as entertainers, research subjects, and pets.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a 2011 American science fiction action film directed by Rupert Wyatt and written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. It is a reboot of the Planet of the Apes film series and its seventh film overall. The film stars Andy Serkis as Caesar, alongside James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, and David Oyelowo. In the film, Caesar, a chimpanzee genetically enhanced and raised by William Rodman (Franco), goes from living in captivity to eventually leading an ape uprising against humanity.
Simian Undercover Detective Squad is a web series created by The Jim Henson Company under its Henson Alternative banner. A sneak preview of the episode "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Goat" appeared on YouTube on August 25, 2009 with the series launching on The Nerdist Channel on April 2, 2012. Some of the episodes were released on the Microsoft Zune Video Marketplace.
Tim Burns is a Canadian director, writer and producer for Canadian and American television; more popularly known as the show runner/executive producer of the Teletoon-Disney Channel shared, supernatural comedy-drama series, My Babysitter's a Vampire and for writing its TV pilot film. He was also supervising writer of the third season of Crank Yankers and was a composer on The Sunny Side Up Show.
Joe Martin was a captive orangutan who appeared in at least 50 American films of the silent era, including approximately 20 comedy shorts, several serials, two Tarzan movies, Rex Ingram's melodrama Black Orchid and its remake Trifling Women, the Max Linder feature comedy Seven Years Bad Luck, and the Irving Thalberg-produced Merry-Go-Round.