What if I told you Oz Perkins’ The Monkey isn’t the first to adapt Stephen King’s short story? While Neon’s 2025 goreganza is the approved and licensed adaptation, there’s a lesser-known 80s horror movie with eerie similarities to King’s short story “The Monkey.” Kenneth J. Berton’s The Devil’s Gift was released in 1984, four years after King’s bite-sized tale was published in Gallery magazine. For those who’ve read King’s fiction, it’s hard to watch The Devil’s Gift and ignore comparisons to “The Monkey” despite the production never acknowledging King in any manner.
Let’s start with the resemblances, which are glaring. In King’s story and Berton’s film, a cymbal-banging monkey causes fatalities after it clangs. They’re also supernatural situations intertwined with Death’s plans. There are murderous doll movies aplenty, and you can trace cymbal-banging monkey toys back to 1932’s Hoppo the Waltzing Monkey—but King’s imaginative blend of The Twilight Zone and Final Destination is unique. You can’t ignore how The Devil’s Gift borrows King’s specific focal point and narrative mechanisms.
Berton and the film’s two credited co-writers (José Vergelin and Hayden O’Hara) eek past plagiarism complaints based on a few tweaks. Kings’ The Monkey features Hal’s family finding the monkey in a Ralston-Purina box, where The Devil’s Gift suggests its monkey has been possessed thanks to a Ouija board. This leads to a more demonic version of the killer monkey versus King’s, which is a stand-in for Death—or at least Death’s right hand. Also, King’s time-jumpy story follows brothers Hal and Bill (but primarily Hal), whereas The Devil’s Gift makes actor Bob Mendelsohn’s father figure, David Andrews, the central character. Finally, in the ‘84 film, you can survive Mr. Monkey’s impending doom if you stop his clattering or escape its trap, unlike King’s cruel finality.
The swapability of pawn shops and antique stores links Perkins’ The Monkey and Berton’s The Devil’s Gift. It’s the scene of the first crime (we see) in The Monkey, where Hal and Bill’s delinquent father tries to sell his beady-eyed monkey. But in The Devil’s Gift, it’s where David’s current partner Susan (Vicki Saputo) buys a cheeky monkey percussionist for David’s son, Micahel (Struan Robertson). Both locations are frequently the cornerstone of stories about a malevolent trinket. King stays focused on familial hand-me-downs and inescapable curses, but when building a case that connects The Devil’s Gift and “The Monkey,” Perkins’ adaptation only adds fuel to the fire.
If you hadn’t read King’s story, you wouldn’t think twice after watching Vestron Video’s VHS release in the 80s. But with Perkins’ direct adaptation (and expansion to feature length) coming out this weekend, The Devil’s Gift’s cover might be blown. It’s a bizarre concept, almost too bizarre to be replicated. This isn’t 1997’s conundrum of Volcano and Dante’s Peak hitting theaters only months apart—volcanos are standard natural disaster fare. We’re talking about cymbal-banging, drum-beating monkeys acting as Angels of Death.
About the monkey itself, King writes: “It grinned at him with its murky amber eyes, doll’s eyes, filled with idiot glee, its brass cymbals poised as if to strike up a march for some band from hell.” Is it a coincidence that Berton keeps opting for close-up shots of the monkey’s deviant grin, allowing shiny amber eyes to glisten? Even funnier is how Perkins chooses to trash the traditional cymbal monkey prototype recognized by pop culture in favor of a drum. The Monkey, the direct adaption of King’s “The Monkey,” opts to differentiate where The Devil’s Gift stays with the common brass discs. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say.
The Devil’s Gift’s legacy is much stranger than possibly (probably) ripping off Stephen King. If you’re a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan, you may have already seen The Devil’s Gift—or, more appropriately, parts of The Devil’s Gift. Berton would direct a film in 1996 titled Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders, featuring Ernest Borgnine “as a grandfather telling his grandson a story about the wizard Merlin opening up a store in the modern-day United States.” It’s an anthology with two segments, but instead of shooting a brand new second story, Berton recycled The Devil’s Gift. He cleaved out story chunks, added a few sequences where Merlin chases the monkey toy, and voilà! You’ve got the back half of some oddball fantasy flick where Merlin ruins people’s lives with his magical creations.
MST3K would eventually dedicate an episode to Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders, where Merlin’s interference would taint Berton’s butchered version of The Devil’s Gift. Instead of a Ouija board unleashing evils powerful enough to blow up a house, doofy criminals steal The Monkey, and that’s how it ends up in a small town’s pawn shop. None of the beginning exposition matters, nor “boring” scenes between the monkey’s horrors. What’s left of The Devil’s Gift is a deceased goldfish, a dead dog (boo, R.I.P. Sparkles), and David’s frantic attempt to discard his son’s devilish birthday gift before it kills again.
The Merlin Cut of The Devil’s Gift is prime MST3K fodder. Berton’s full-length version of The Devil’s Gift from 1984 never made waves, but at least attempted some semblance of storytelling. Oh, you replaced what little coherent plot that existed with Merlin running around America, trying to collect misfit objects? Yeah, the MST3K crew had a field day between “Rock and Roll Martian” and a fortune teller’s “Bethagram” necklace (whatever that means, but it looks like a knock-off sheriff’s star). Berton’s attempt at double-dipping backfires, especially considering how the original film at least dared to end things on a bleak-as-heck note. Merlin’s version wraps on a cutesy little button-up where everything’s just dandy.
So I guess there are technically two unofficial movies that beat Perkins’ The Monkey to the punch? And one involves Merlin. And they’re both technically the same movie. Ish. Kinda?
As of today, there are no definitive answers as to whether The Devil’s Gift wanted to be an adaptation of “The Monkey” or not. It’s easy to speculate about unmissable influences, and many have (many, in this case, being relative to the very few people who have seen the film). King was never involved, nor was the property cited, and “The Monkey” wasn’t even published outside Gallery pages until 1985’s Skeleton Crew—but c’mon. The empirical evidence is everywhere. People recognize Child’s Play as one of the killer doll subgenre’s crowning achievements, but even its imitators found ways around outright duplication. Why not make your figurine an elephant instead of keeping it a monkey and highlighting the elephant in the room?
The Devil’s Gift is one of those video store rentals from the ‘80s worth checking out for its audacity alone. It’s not fooling anyone (re: The Monkey), which is suspiciously charming. Although, it’s hard not to recommend MST3K’s Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders episode instead. Who needs all that pesky exposition, endless dad chores, and random costumed creatures? If all you want are the down-and-dirty highlights of this Stephen King imposter, trust in Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot. It’s the primer for Perkins’ The Monkey you never knew existed—separated at birth but tethered nonetheless.
Article by:Source – Matt Donato
