Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Project X’ (1987)

Written by Scott Edwards

There can be nothing more hurtful than to hear that your services are no longer required. When you are at the top of your field and are let go because of it, you wonder who or what will be replacing you. Hopefully your employer is gracious enough to let you leave on your own time and not force you to train your replacement, because that is just cruel. Never knowing what the future will hold for anyone, it may be a blessing in disguise that you never expected, just keep looking forward, never back.

Working with a chimpanzee for the past year, Teri has seen growth in herself and Virgil and wants to keep working. But when her boss comes in and tells Teri that her funding will not be renewed, the soon to be professor is dumbfounded and wants to do everything in her power to keep Virgil from being mistreated by anyone, since she is the only one, he knows. With the promise that the chimp will be passed on to a zoo, Virgil is carted away from the university and Teri for bigger and better things. But what nobody knows is where Virgil will really end up, since the government has plans for him.

Needing to come up with a great excuse for stealing an airplane from the base, Jimmy Garrett is in hot water once again. Telling a lie, but not debating the reason for taking the plane, Jimmy is reassigned to a division that he knows nothing about. Meeting his new boss Doctor Carroll who is in charge of the Experimental Pilot Performance Project, Jimmy is grateful for the new opportunity. But when he sees that he will not be the one being trained, he starts to question what is happening around him. Being in charge of training chimpanzees on how to pilot planes, Jimmy quickly finds out that his new friend Virgil is something special and can help his career by leaps and bounds.

Working side by side with his new friend, Virgil shows that he is smarter than the average chimp and is trying to communicate with his new handlers, but nobody takes note, until Jimmy sees sign language being used on the television. Knowing that Virgil is trying to tell him things, Jimmy takes the time to learn what the signs mean, and he knows that Virgil is not really cut out for what the program has in store for him. When it is announced that the stake holders are on their way to check up on Doctor Carroll’s project, Jimmy is promoted and sees firsthand what is really happening to the chimps that graduate. Not wanting this to happen to any more of the test subjects, Jimmy needs to come up with a plan to get the innocents free of the training compound, but that may be easier said than done. 

Just your average story about a boy and his chimp taken to the next level with having the military testing on the animals with radiation. You have to hand it to Jimmy since when he finds out that what he is doing is actually delivering his chimps to their death, he wants to take a stand for what is right. Even though none of the superiors will listen to his argument, they know that he is right, but being a time of possible war with nuclear weapons, everything must be checked and rechecked. With chimpanzees, an out-of-control pilot, sign language, an upset university worker, a doctor with an agenda and a smart chimp that wants to help his friends, it is a sad story that needed to be told, if not to save the animals, to at least get the public informed about what animal testing can really look like.

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