Project X is a 1987 film produced by Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker and directed by Jonathan Kaplan. The film makes a political commentary on the ethics of animal research.
The screenplay’s premise has a fictional air force soldier named Jimmy (played by Matthew Broderick) who, as punishment for “misconduct” involving a romantic interlude in an aircraft cockpit, assigned to a top-secret military project wherein chimpanzees are trained on virtual reality flight simulators, and experiences a crisis of conscience as to the project goals.
The chimpanzee actors
A chimp named Willie starred as Virgil the Chimp in the film. Both Willie and another chimp used in the film, Harry, were born at Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research. They were both supposed to go back to being used for research upon the completion of the film. However, after some controversy and the death of another chimp during production, both Willie and Harry were retired to a chimp sanctuary, Primarily Primates. One of their neighbors there is Oliver (who was once alleged, in a height of scientific hubris, to be a Humanzee).
Quigley, a fourth chimp, never used on camera, was, sadly, diagnosed with a rare disease while filming and died partway through production.
Plot
The film begins with graduate student Teri Macdonald (played by Helen Hunt) and her work to learn about and train in the use of American Sign Language a chimpanzee named “Virgil.” When her research grant is not renewed, Virgil is taken away. Teri is told, and believes, the chimp is to be sent to a zoo that will take care of him. Instead, the Virgil is shown taken to a military reservation to be used in a peculiar research project involving platforms designed to simulate the operation of aircraft.
Jimmy begins to develop a type of bond of trust with Virgil such that they become attached to one another. Virgil proves to be highly intelligent–and Jimmy discovers, quite by accident, that Virgil has been taught to, and thereby, communicates using sign language. Jimmy informs his civilian superior, Dr. Carroll (played by William Sadler) of Virgil’s comparatively unique abilities, but Jimmy’s discovery of Virgil’s heightened abilities is ignored by Dr. Carroll, for reasons made clear later during the course of the film’s screenplay.
Unbeknownst to Jimmy at that point–and, until later in the film’s screenplay, the chimps trained on the flight simulators–the chimps’ fate is that they are to be killed by radiation poisoning. Once they reach a certain level of achievement in operating the flight-simulator platforms, symbolized by the use of the different-coloured neckbands, the chimps await certain death by exposure to a lethal pulse of radiation in the simulator chamber, an experiment by the military to determine how long a pilot may survive after a nuclear exchange, known as the “second-strike scenario”.
When a dead chimp is removed from the simulator room and his body is placed for dissection, Virgil breaks away from Jimmy while Jimmy is weighing him and escapes to the room, adjacent to the vivarium. Virgil sees the dead body, returns to the vivarium, and eerily screeches to his caged cohorts. Once again, Jimmy is amazed by Virgil’s seeming abilities, although Jimmy does not know that Virgil is communicating to his cohorts their impending peril. Somewhat later, Jimmy is promoted yet again, and becomes aware of the final, deathly, fate of the chimpanzees.
Jimmy, upon making his discovery (incident to his own promotion within the program) obtains and searches through Virgil’s legal file. Disturbed into action by the callous indifference of his civilian superior and the prospect of Virgil’s death, Jimmy phones Virgil’s former trainer, Teri, whose phone number is listed in the file Jimmy has surreptitiously gained access to and read.
Teri, upon learning of Virgil’s true location, and alarmed by the implications made by Jimmy’s quick telephone call to her (Jimmy only reveals to Teri that he is phoning from an air force base in Florida and that if caught making the phone call, his “ass would be nailed to the wall”), Teri is confused and outraged at the deception. She immediately flies to Florida, and proceeds to the air force base. On a hunch, Teri goes to the base recreation center–and recognizes Jimmy when she hears Jimmy remark to one of his card-playing buddies “your ass is nailed to the wall”–and thereby matches his voice exemplar from Jimmy’s comment during his previous phone call to her.
Teri approaches Jimmy, asks to buy him a drink, and she explains to Jimmy who she is by reference to his phone call to her. She explains her interest in Virgil. Jimmy, fearing for his career in the military, and even potential prosecution, tells Teri that she should not have come to the base and refuses to tell her any more about Virgil’s fate. But later that same evening, Teri is tossing and turning in her hotel room bed and finally outraged into further action. She checks out of her hotel room to proceed to Washington to inform the National Science Foundation of the military’s use of the chimps in general, and Virgil in particular. As she is doing so, Jimmy, acting on similar feelings, takes a military vehicle from the base, drives to the nearby town where Teri’s hotel is located, and finds Teri just as she is leaving the hotel. Teri tells Jimmy she is going to tell the National Science Foundation of the deception. Ominously, Jimmy tells Teri she does not have enough time to go through channels, because he knows of Virgil’s impending doom.
Teri and Jimmy arrive in the facility as Virgil is set to be placed within the flight simulator chamber and die by radiation poisoning. Jimmy acts to stop the killing by confronting Dr. Carroll and the assembled military guests and other assorted politicians as to the usefulness of the killing of the chimps, with the inescapable logic that the experimental program, ostensibly proceeding as useful–notwithstanding the scientific method–is designed to forecast the response of a pilot. Jimmy points out that the hypothetical pilot, however, knowing of the implications of the second-strike scenario, would know that he is dying, and the hypothetical pilot’s actions would, logically, be affected by this fact. However, in the scenario created by the experiment, the chimps do not, and thus the assembled group are also confronted with the similarly inescapable conclusion that therefore the entire experimental program is flawed. This enrages Dr. Carroll, who promises Jimmy that Jimmy’s career in the military is finished.
Meanwhile, in the vivarium, some of the chimpanzees have used a mop to get the keys to open their cages and have stacked crates and boxes in a calculated attempt to escape through a skylight window. Jimmy and Teri walk in to see the chimps having almost effected their escape. Having piled the objects together to reach the roof, Virgil is at the top, about to break the skylight window with some type of heavy object.
Meanwhile, the goings on in the vivarium have attracted the attention of other soldiers assigned to the program, who awaken Jimmy’s civilian and military superiors. As the authorities enter, Goliath the chimp becomes very angry (another indication of higher communication between the chimps) and fights back against Dr. Carroll, who has obtained a cattle prod and is attempting to use it to foil the chimps’ escape. Unfamiliar with the potential vicious propensities of the chimps, the authorities are chased from the room. Goliath and Virgil end up in the flight-simulator room, and a fire extinguisher is jammed, forcing the radiation generator in an exposed condition, potentially leading to an uncontrolled radiation blast. Jimmy and Virgil convince Goliath to yank out the extinguisher (with the promise of a cigarette), but after Goliath pulls off the feat, he dies from radiation (because, of course, the chamber cannot be opened until the radiation falls below lethal levels).
The screenplay’s denouement has Jimmy and Teri steal a military plane to help the chimps escape. They are eventually prevented from escaping in the plane by military police. While the police are distracted in holding Jimmy and Teri at gunpoint, Virgil takes to the pilot seat and does exactly as he was trained to do in operating the flight-simulator platform. Virgil guides the turboprop aircraft through take-off, and the chimps fly away. They eventually crash land in the nearby Everglades and evade a search. Just as the search is being abandoned, Jimmy and Teri see Virgil hiding in the bush with his chimpanzee girlfriend. Teri signs to Virgil that he and the others are now “free”. The chimps disappear into the Florida wilderness.
