There are a lot of furry critters in Bye Bye Monkey, a wink and a nod of the head to the disastrous Dino DeLaurentis remake of King Kong. There’s the title monkey, of course, plus rats…and plenty of beavers, thanks to the funky female cast (remember it was the ’70s!) which includes giallo queens Mimsy Farmer and Stefania Casini, and the seldom-clothed Gail Lawrence — even 60-something Geraldine Fitzgerald gets a bit freaky in a gropey scene with main star Gérard Depardieu.

Depardieu plays Lafayette, a slovenly yet inexplicably buff lighting guy who works for a militant feminist theatrical troupe that, on occasion, “rapes” him. (Don’t worry: no Depardieus were harmed during the making of Bye Bye Monkey.) But the inevitable happens, and one of the lascivious ladies (Angelica, played by Lawrence) falls for him…and baby ape makes three.

Yep, there really is a simian stand-in child in this, the first English-language film by the late Italian satirist Marco Ferreri (Don’t Touch The White Woman). The baby Kong is found nestled beneath the corpse of its gigantic daddy, King, on the shore of New York City. The squalling infant is discovered by Lafayette’s own father figure, the wise and melancholy Luigi (Marcello Mastroianni). In the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, Luigi passes the paternal torch to Lafayette, who adopts the baby as his own and tries in vain to raise her as a person. Often turning to his own surrogate nuclear family — kindly Mrs. Toland (Fitzgerald) and the insufferable, histrionic Flaxman (James Coco) — for help, Lafayette finds his life spiraling further and further out his control as the city’s rat infestation mirrors his own inner turmoil.

While I can’t say Bye Bye Monkey is a great film (or that I’d need to see it again), I will say that it’s much more entertaining than Don’t Touch The White Woman (also re-mastered and coming to DVD on July 14th), and it’s got a very haunting quality to it. I see so many movies all the time, and seldom to do they stick, so even though I did find Bye Bye Monkey slow and tedious in spots, I definitely recommend it to fans of absurd art films or anyone who is intrigued by human drama. The performances, while wildly over-the-top, are strangely real…and truly touching when tragedy strikes. Ferrero and his stellar cast sell it strong, making us care about these bizarre characters and their fates.

There are several iconic moments and scenes (Luciano Tovoli’s cinematography is gorgeous) in Bye Bye Monkey that will have armchair psychologists and film students alike frothing at the mouth — it will either leave you in shock or awe…but it will affect you.

DVD extras include portions of a 45-minute documentary on Ferreri, which is also available through Koch Lorber Films. The doc looks to be pretty static, but in spite of its stale presentation, I learned a bit about Ferreri — and it made me want to track down his cinematic adaptation of Charles Bukowski’s Tales of Ordinary Madness.