The release of The Monkey marks a continuation of Stephen King’s long and weird film career. Directed by Osgood Perkins, the film reaches far back into King’s past for material, now joining the ranks of other King adaptations like Carrie, The Running Man, and The Shining. However, as it turns out, Perkins isn’t the first to bring this supposedly untouched short story to life. Kudos to you X-File fanatics who recall the episode “Chinga” in 1998, which used this same plot.
As part of a special series in Season 5, creator Chris Carter recruited some ringers to guest write. ​The result was an unofficial adaptation of King’s 1980 short story, “The Monkey,” swapping out the cymbal-clutching monkey for a creepy, haunted, Victorian Doll. Perhaps for legal reasons, the story was modified, concealing the origins. But enough of the core elements remain to trace the provenance of “Chinga.” That short story is finally getting its time in the sun, but X-Files creator and showrunner Chris Carter beat them to the punch.

The Monkey

4
/5

Release Date

February 19, 2025

Runtime

98 Minutes

Director

Osgood Perkins

Writers

Osgood Perkins

Producers

John Rickard, Natalia Safran, Ali Jazayeri, Chris Ferguson, Fred Berger, Giuliana Bertuzzi, James Wan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, John Friedberg, Jason Cloth, David Gendron, Michael Clear, Jesse Savath, Peter Luo, Dave Caplan

Freak of the Week Goes Hollywood

Flexing his power, Chris Carter began to experiment more. In the middle of the show’s run, he actively scouted out narratives outside the writer’s room for one-off stories. “Chinga” is King’s entry — set in Maine, in compliance with the King brand. William Gibson, the father of the cyberpunk genre, wrote the next episode, “Kill Switch,” in what is arguably the peak year of the show. Though fan reception wasn’t stellar, the episode was an ideal fit for the quirky “monster of the week” format.
Viewing numbers were in-line with the show, though many took exception to the execution. In Robert Shearman’s Wanting to Believe, he claims Carter’s revisions attempted to turn what was straight horror into a spoof, but didn’t fully commit. The final result of the collaboration is “unlikely to satisfy Stephen King fans or X-Files fans over much, both of whom would be looking for the depth that the other’s involvement would seem to have removed.” We unfortunately concur. If this should sound reminiscent of The Twilight Zone episode with Telly Savalas, called “Living Doll,” It is. And that is the more iconic episode. “Chinga” is amusing, not a must-see.

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Mining the Back Catalog

Delivering a slow drip of films — watch Maximium Overdrive at your own peril — the novelist supplemented his bank account with a large volume of TV adaptations. Some King TV films are memorable, like Salem’s Lot, and some should be forgotten. If you like The Langoliers, we’re not judging you, but those special effects have aged as well as year-old yogurt. The Monkey is a unique case, its path from page to screen largely obscured, as if the X-Files episode is a unique creation.
The name change is likely mundane, the key plot device being tweaked to invoke Chucky. The deviation remains a mystery. According to The X-Files: The Offical Collection, the name was also altered in some locales, as “Chinga” translates as an obscenity in some Spanish-speaking regions. The replacement title? “Bunghoney.” Which sounds substantially more revolting. Nice work, censors, really earned that week’s paycheck.

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King Leads the Retro-Horror Renaissance

Producers have come to reap the harvest of King’s less-well-known fiction, scrambling to take advantage of his innumerable stories. Thank the movie It, and of course, nostalgia, as evidenced in Netflix’s Stranger Things. Today, horror is so beloved it’s one of Hollywood’s few consistent profit drivers. King’s sitting on a goldmine that he couldn’t have fully anticipated when adaptations were being laughed at in the ’90s.
After Sleepwalkers (the one with the incestuous cat people), King briefly went out of style. That’s not a put down. We loved Thinner but Boomers and Gen-Xers sure as hell didn’t. A generation later, King is riding high once again after a new generation discovered him. The Monkey is currently in theaters, and The X-Files Season Five is available for streaming and purchase from Hulu and Prime Video as of writing.