Humongous

I very much enjoyed Humongous. Yes, it's dark, yes, it's slow, but it's honest. The story is unlikely but plausible. The acting is sufficient to convey the story, and even good by Janet Julian. I immediately contrasted it with Last House on the Left... gritty and plausible, good stuff done by talented amateurs. It is best seen on a TV/monitor with the brightness turned way up.

It is easy to overlook slasher horror of that period due to production quality or unknown performers, but, the early 80s was a boom time with VHS/beta reaching market and semi-professional gear coming to market. With the advances came a greater variety of scripts and interpretation, tho perhaps without the backing of large studios or with less finesse. Don't be so shallow as to overlook them, for they seem to have had quite an influence on the diversity of fringe cinema today.

Give humongous a go if you're a fan of the genre.

Most of the reviews would have you believe that this is completely terrible, but actually it's not such a bad effort. It's predictable, to be sure, but directed with more skill than you'd expect, with a score that reminded me (in a good way) of Italian horror movies of the period, and a cute, fairly smart heroine in Janet Julian. Reports of it being "too dark" are true to a degree, but greatly exaggerated; have you seen the much better-known "Hell Night"? (**)

This Canadian slasher is definitely one of the better slashers of the 1980s and is unjustifiably panned by everyone. When HUMONGOUS was released the biggest criticism against it was how predictable or derivative it was and it was dismissed as being just another slasher. Yes, there's a very familiar feel to the story-line but most slashers are basically the same movie done over and over again so I don't see this necessarily as a bad thing. But the fact is HUMONGOUS actually tries to be different and in some ways, it succeeds in being different. HUMONGOUS is more the unofficial companion and has more in common to that other Canadian horror film, RITUALS, than to HALLOWEEN or Friday THE 13Th. Both HUMONGOUS and RITUALS have almost the same kind of deformed killer who lives in the backwoods. The killer remains unseen until the very end. And there's an obvious Canadian feel to both films.

The beginning of HUMONGOUS is brutal and sets up the familiar story-line of a gruesome incident which happened in the past that will affect a subsequent generation. In this case, the film starts in the 1940s. After a woman from a rich family is raped, she decides to live in seclusion on an isolated island where she gives birth to a deformed kid. Flash forward 40 years and we see a bunch of horny young adults who were vacationing on another island and as they're heading back to the mainland on their boat they crash on the island where the woman lived after one of the passengers, Nick the hotheaded brother, takes control of the boat and rams it into rocky shore. Everyone leaves the burning boat and they all have to go to the island and the rest of the story is basically about the group surviving on the spooky island where there's a monster killing them one by one.

The atmosphere is very good and the cinematography is actually good too. Some interesting camera positions. But like many have mentioned already, many scenes during the night are EXTREMELY dark and it's difficult at times to know exactly what's going on. I set up my TV's brightness level to the max and the image was improved greatly but there were still some moments were I didn't see anything at all. As annoying as the dark scenes were, I believe this was done deliberately, not because the film is a low budget movie and they couldn't afford lighting but because that's what the director wanted. The darkness was at times carried to an extreme which can only be attributed to a director's decision and not some low production value. With that said, I personally find it fascinating that so much happens in the dark. The darkness is stylised. Notice when the monster crashes through the door or when the boathouse catches fire, how the brightness of those scenes create a shock. I think the director wanted to shock people with light by having most of the action happen in so much darkness. In a movie theater, after watching scenes that happen mostly in the dark, a quick shot of a bright image creates tension and actually hurts the eyes. It's like when you wake up in the morning and how the bright lights outside the windows hurt your eyes. Well, that's what Paul Lynch tried to recreate here by having so much of the action take place in near total darkness. The monster's appearances during those brief scenes of brightness must have been startling in a dark theater.

The acting is mostly serviceable but the last three survivors, Janit Baldwin (the girl with the glasses), David Wallace (the blond guy) and Janet Julian (the last girl) are much better than your average slasher actor. The gore is limited and in a way it's unfortunate. I'm not a gorehound but I thought the film needed a bit more blood to be that much more creepy. The biggest weakness of HUMONGOUS (aside from the extreme darkness) is the score. There's almost no music. When the film starts getting scary it's no coincidence that it coincides with the moment when the score finally makes its presence felt. The jazzy music during the opening and closing credits didn't belong in this kind of film though. And the story itself is actually interesting and there's an underlying lurid aspect about it that's fascinating. Dogs are a major part of the underlying story and something tells me they have more to do than meets the eye.

Anyway, I personally like HUMONGOUS. The poster is cool and I really like the title. As a real horror film, it's definitely more successful than Lynch's other horror opus, PROM NIGHT, and a good portion of other slashers made in the same period and those made today, like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, which was obviously inspired by this film.

A woman is raped, but her attacker is devoured by dogs. Several decades later, a group of teens arrive on the island, but fall victim to a humongous, deformed mutant; the result of the rape. Starts out interestingly enough, but quickly goes downhill with cliched characters and routine script. It's biggest problem though is it's awful lighting and you never ever get a good look at the creature.

Rated R; Rape, Brief Nudity, Violence.

Second slasher effort from Paul Lynch. HUMONGOUS pits a group of stereotypical early eighties youngsters against a demented hermit on a remote island. So far so good...

A group of fun loving teens head out on a luxury vacation aboard a large boat. Eric (David Wallace), Nick (John Wildman), Donna (Joy Boushel), Carla (Janit Baldwin), and Sandy (Janet Julian) are in deep, dangerous waters when they come across Bert (Lane Coleman) stranded on a lifeboat. They let him climb aboard before the six of them continue on their doomed excursion. As the warm summer's day gives way to a foggy night sky, the overly cocky Nick looses control of the boat and it crashes into some hidden rocks. Just after they all manage to jump into the safety of the cool water, the ship bursts into a ball of flames and disappears into the depths of the ferocious sea. The group manage to swim to a nearby rocky shore, where the screams that pierce the haunting night sky make it sound like it's inhabited by a pack of wild dogs. Bert knows of the stories of Idah Parsons, a lonesome woman who lives all by herself on the island and keeps the animals for protection. They hope that maybe she can call for help. When Nick goes looking for her and doesn't return, the gang begin to realise that there is something far more sinister than a group of mutts or an elderly lady lurking in the dense forest that surrounds them...

As where PROM NIGHT owed more than a touch of inspiration to HALLOWEEN, Lynch's second effort looks as if it's more influenced by backwoods slashers such as THE BURNING or FRIDAY THE 13th. In one scene Sandy dresses as the killer's mother to try and trick him into thinking it's really her. I had to check the cover to make sure I was watching Steve Miner's second edition to the FRIDAY series! But as I've said before 'pinching from your peers' is a common practice in slasher cinema, so this didn't particularly surprise me! To be honest there's loads to recommend about HUMONGOUS. For a start there's some genuinely fine acting on display. David Wallace who plays the heroic Eric is brilliant and so was his leading lady Janet Julian. Director Lynch keeps things smooth throughout and adds some interesting ideas of his own. One bit that immediately caught my attention was when John Wildman was searching the boathouse for some help. He hears strange grunts coming from the other side of the gate and moves closer to see if he can see what's making the noise. He finds a hole big enough to look through and moves his eye up to it to see what he can spot. He jumps back in shock, when he sees a grotesque eye looking through the same hole back again! It's the little touches like that , which can make a movie all the more memorable. The butcher himself is pretty darn creepy too. He's your typical backwoods psycho, in the tradition of Jason, Marz and Cropsy! Big, mean deformed, surly and nasty! He also possesses super human strength and lets just say you wouldn't like to meet him on your way home late at night! He makes his presence known pretty early on in the runtime and he doesn't stay far out of sight for long ever after! So with all that HUMONGOUS has going for it how could it possibly ever fail?

Well...there's a terrible lack of lighting in the night scenes. Some of the best moments of the film can barely be seen because it's just too dark! We only get to see the killer's face for a couple of seconds tops, all the other shots either have him surrounded by silhouette or it's just too poorly lit to get a good view! You may think that this is only a minor set back and I'm over reacting, but when you've watched through the best part of the feature in broad daylight and built yourself up for the 'final showdown' so to speak, it pretty much spoils it when you can barely see a damn thing that's going on! I'd have thought that a director as experienced as this would've been able to handle a problem like that with ease. But that inconsistency alone prevents this flick from ever touching true greatness. As it stands it's not rubbish, but still, with a little more care with the lighting this could've been a classic.

In the odd small way, this manages to even outshine the director's previous effort. It's far more brutal with a stronger emphasis on horror. But due to that aforementioned flaw PROM NIGHT remains the best of Lynch's slasher work. That said though it's still worth watching for the superb cast and some exciting sequences. But be warned...bring your night vision goggles!