gavin6942 Scientists Robert Culp and Eli Wallach suspect that there is someone other than their research primates inhabiting their polar station.Director Jerrold Freedman and writer Christopher Knopf are not known figures, though the big name actors more than make up for that. The producers had previously made another ABC movie, "Brian's Song", which is still respected today. The film is fairly simple, but worth checking out, as it sort of anticipates John Carpenter's "The Thing" and the monkey movies of the 1980s.With this cast, why has the film not been released on DVD? Surely ABC must have a copy around somewhere. Until then, though, there is a very poor quality version available on CrypticTV (and probably YouTube).

jaj6786 I saw this TV movie classic when I was 11 or so and have never forgotten it. I watched it again last night on YouTube, and despite the poor visual quality, it delivered the goods again, mostly: eerie, mysterious, claustrophobic, and very memorable.But I had a big question about it when I saw it as a boy and it persists today: what exactly is the movie revealing about the monkeys at the end? Yes, we discover that they, or at least one of them, is killing the scientists. And yes, the monkeys, or at least the one who's doing the killing, seem preternaturally intelligent--capable of pressing the correct buttons on the tape recorder to erase a lengthy tape, capable of opening padlocks and locking doors with keys, capable of manipulating the objects in a room--a window, a door--in order to trap people inside it. That alone is a puzzle that the movie doesn't solve: were the monkeys chosen for the study on the basis of extraordinarily high intelligence? There's no reason that they would be, given the study's goals. And--this is the big question--who named them after famous conquerors in history (Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Julius Ceasar, Augustus Ceasar), and why? Were the monkeys bred for high intelligence and leadership/autonomy, thus given their names, and then planted in the study in order that they would oppress their handlers and thus turn the study into a test of the scientists' capacity to endure hardships? Or what? As the movie stands, it's hinted that the monkeys somehow possess the intelligence and martial qualities of great conquerors, and have been named to reflect their possession of those qualities. But again, named by whom? And how could the monkeys have been expected to possess these qualities, except via some sort of supernatural intervention? Are we supposed to infer that they have the actual souls of those famous conquerors? Or what? It's all a bit murky, no? And I have no problem with a bit of murkiness in a great horror film, so long as it's just a bit and not a heaping portion that's hard to digest, as it is, I think, in this movie. It thrilled me at 11--I couldn't stop talking about it at school the next day--but even then, these questions bothered me.Any theories out there? Or is it, as I suspect, simply beyond rational analysis--more from writerly error (i.e., a narrative/thematic loose end never really dealt with) than from well-considered & resolvable complexity?I suppose the standard answer will be that it was a kind of supernatural kismet--the cruelty of this isolated study was punished by the monkeys having been given the souls/powers of conquerors, thus aptly punishing the scientists who blithely mistreat them in the name of science. If that's the answer, the movie has a supernatural element at its core: fate put the monkeys there in order to punish the cruelty of the humans who mistreat them "innocently." Still, it feels a bit contrived: do their names make them conquerors, or are they named after conquerors because that's their intrinsic nature? And if the latter, who did the naming? Was that fellow attuned to supernatural possibilities that evaded others?

The White Crane Among many horror movies that can truly be called a buried treasure, this takes the cake. This is it. This is the most unknown horror movie that will scare anyone that has ever seen it. It is so unknown, it practically got little to no recognition even among the majority of horror movie buffs.It told the story of two researches taking over a laboratory after their fellow died a mysterious death atop a snowy mountain. Slowly but surely, they begin to experience what their colleague might have experienced.Among many horror movies I've ever seen, this may very well be the best when it comes to creating the feeling of claustrophobia. And the tension was very well built as the trust of the two deteriorated as days went by, making the final twist in the end much more terrifying.And without a doubt, no other made for TV horror reached this level of horror film-making. Hell, it's rare to see a horror film-making that actually touched this in general, period.Greatly recommended. 10/10.

CatTales What could be so frightening and irrational that a scientist would choose to freeze to death rather than confront it? You'll find out.While we think of scientists as being unflinching heroic seekers of truth, they can be pretty nutty people in denial of reality (it's true!). The movie is about two different types of scientists who are trying to complete some research involving monkeys in a remote freezing mountain environment. The experiment was left uncompleted by the death of a scientist who seems to have gone insane, and died freezing to death. Regardless of the fact that the audience can more-or-less figure out who the culprit is, the last 30 seconds are incredibly chilling to see. Imagine characters debating if a shark was involved in the deaths in JAWS, but only in the last minute of film you finally see a fin circling the hero. Or a ventriloquist who insists his dummy is alive, and at the end you see it move. Worth watching in the dark for the very creepy climax. Kudos for the director's long-takes and Gil (Andromeda Strain) Melle's unsettling score.