Mooooooooonnnkkkkeeeee eeeyyyyyyy!! (Monkey)

Member Name: mancsoulsister

Product:	Monkey
Date:	14/03/01 (213 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great show

Disadvantages: You need Class As to understand what is going on!

Monkey first appeared on our screens in the late 70s(according to the I love 70s series it was 1979 but my memory is not that precise). And Monkey was weird, I mean really weird. Let me try (emphasis on the word try) and explain what it was all about.

Apparently Monkey is based on the writings of a 16th century Chinese chap who tried to incorporate Buddhist teachings, satire and Chinese legends into a series of stories. These stories were then taken by a very low budget Japanese production company and were totally shaken about and reworked until they produced the final product, Monkey!. I didn’t know all this at the time and it goes no way to explaining the wacko plot of the in total 39 episodes.

Monkey has been imprisoned in a mountain by Buddha for 500 years for peeing on the Empress and is then set free to accompany a male monk (who is in fact played by a beautiful young woman!) on a very long-winded trip to India. Also accompanying them is Piiiiiggggggssssiiiieee (it was never said any other way), Sandy and a dragon like creature that was sometimes a horse. There was also a cloud that Monkey summoned by wafting his fingers in front of his mouth. Monkey also had a stick that would grow, which was the butt of many Oo Er Missus Carry On style jokes. All this was set to an oriental disco sound track. This bizarre cluster of people then wandered through the wilderness to India encountering many demons to kill off along the way…

…Despite it’s somewhat bizarre plot, the Monkey! producers went to great lengths to make Monkey! understandable. Monkey was probably the first ‘dubbed’ TV series to catch on on British TV. I am using the term dubbed very very loosely in this case. Paying absolutely no attention to lip sync, a bunch of British dubbers put on their worst ever (totally rubbish) Japanese accents and told Monkey’s story. In the quiet bits when nobody was speaking, a narrator would spout words of
wisdom along the lines of ‘Even a starving camel is still bigger than a horse’. I daren’t even mention the special effects, they were terrible even by early 80s standards and I do remember cringing as a kid!

Despite not understanding a word, I absolutely adored Monkey! I used to dash home from school to make sure I got a prime seat in front of the Telly to watch the programme. The cloud-summoning waft was playground material for ages and ages as was the badly dubbed voices. I have no idea why I loved it so much, maybe it was the combination of Kung Fu fighting and manic storylines that appealed to me as a child. I am not sure.

Now they have released the entire series on 13 videos which are being produced at the rate of one a month. I have just bought episodes 1-6 (2 videos à 3 episodes each!) and am trying very very very very hard to understand what it is all about!

Summary: