Curse of the Monkey Questions:

1) if a hero is transformed into a monkey after opening a chest, does the group still get the chest loot? Or does some other hero have to re-open it?
2) if a hero is transformed into a monkey does their turn end right there? If they have movement left, can they move off that square?

-you get the loot. the only thing preventing this is mimic

-again its in the rulebook page 6:

When a hero is transformed into a monkey, the player
must immediately replace his hero figure with the monkey
marker. The hero’s turn immediately ends.

Gath said:

1) The chest is still opened and the loot is distributed.
The card itself only triggers "when a hero opens a chest". The chest is therefore open already, or the card cannot be played.
From the FAQ pg4
Q: When a chest contains curses, can the overlord use the threat generated by the curses to play a trap on that chest? Does the trap go off before or after the rest of the chest contents are distributed?
A: Curses are always the first thing distributed from a chest, and threat from curses may be used to play a trap card in response to opening the chest. The rest of the chest contents are only distributed after the trap card (if any) resolves . In the case of a Mimic or similar card, this could be several turns later!
Note that the monkey card resolves immediately after the hero is turned into a monkey (ie everything written on the card has happened), not when the hero turns back into a hero (or dies). The mimic card for example has explicitly different instructions that delay the distribution of the chest until another trigger is achieved (the chest-beastman being killed in the case of mimic).

2) DJitD pg 16
When a hero is transformed into a monkey, the player must immediately replace his hero figure with the monkey marker. The hero’s turn immediately ends.

Question:

Can other heroes attack the transformed hero to decrease the time the hero stays a monkey?( 12 turns with a transformed hero can mean a losing party)

You only have two full turns with a Transformed hero. But yes, attacking and killing him with another hero would reduce that and would be perfectly legal.

To clarify: the wound tokens used to track the monkey duration have nothing to do with actual wounds, they're just a convenient token. You normally spend 2 turns as a monkey. Suffering actual wounds does not affect this time in the slightest, unless the hero actually dies, which causes him to revert immediately (and suffer all the normal consequences for hero death).

we take threat tokens for that. dunno what the designer thought would be cool about wound tokens..