Primal Rage, College Love and a Baboon

Beautiful Florida International University! Every guy is a hunk and every coed is a babe. The campus quad is filled with guys strumming guitars or flexing their pecs, and gals jiggling in aerobic tights. Yep, that is the college we all remember. At FIU love is in the air. A good looking guy meets a beautiful dame and sparks fly. Yep, it always begins that way. There is a but, however. We've all experienced it. Yep...when a mad scientist is entered into this equation and a really mad baboon that love can turn to contagion and carnage...happens all the time. Hence 1988's "Primal Rage."

Mad scientist Ethridge (Bo Svenson) seeks to cure Alzheimer's disease. Regenerating dead brain tissue is the key to this and he is experimenting on a baboon. This won't go well as the ape turns psycho. Meanwhile, campus reporter Sam (Patrick Lowe) meets the nubile and perky Lauren (Cheryl Arutt). They fall in love instantly...very sweet. Uh oh, Sam's reporter pal Duffy (Mitch Watson) decides to sneak into the lab for a story. Duffy will be bitten by the baboon. Okay, back to sweet campus romance. Sam hooks Duffy up with Lauren's hot room-mate Debbie (Sarah Buxton). A double date occurs and the two couples part so they can have privacy for pre-marital sex.

Unfortunately for Debbie, the bite sustained by Duffy turns him into a homicidal and drooling monster. Bad news for Debbie as the hickey Duffy gave her turns her into a beast, as well.
Duffy will pull apart a professor and his skank student who are parked in the woods. Now Duffy is wanted by campus police. He'll go through the cops like crap through a goose. As for Debbie. The formerly hot Debbie is now a grotesque fiend. Hey, after four beers, a grotesque coed can still look pretty good. So when a perverted gang try to gang rape her, she fights them off, bites them, and now three more monsters are unleashed on the campus. Now drunk students on their way to FIU's Halloween party are ripped to shreds by these monsters as Sam and Lauren still harbor hope for helping Debbie. But wait! Our mad-scientist isn't through with Debbie and he has plans for her that may not reside in the bounds of ethical science.

Will the love Sam and Lauren have found survive a monster outbreak and mid-terms? We have all faced that question. Will the once stunning Debbie regain her beauty or forever be the folly of drunk college guys? Exactly what does Ethridge have planned for the maniacal and violent Debbie monster? Perhaps "Primal Rage" is a thinly veiled metaphor of what the American university system turns our youngsters into. Or perhaps it is a warning for the carnage that can result in dating on campus. Either way this is a nice horror story that turns quite gory. Directed by Vittorio Rambaldi, enjoy "Primal Rage" and be taken back on memory lane to a time when the woman or man you dated turned into a real monster.