Humongous

Humongous has been largely forgotten amongst the glut of 80s slasher flicks. However,that is a shame. It's certainly no masterpiece,not even of the slasher genre,but it's quite interesting and better than quite a few of the other,similar films released around that time.

It opens with a brutal rape,and it almost gets the movie off on the wrong foot as although not that graphic it's hard to watch. Then we jump forward to the usual small group of young people discovering an island. Much time is spent of them wondering about,which does make the film a little slow,but there is a fair amount of suspense,sometimes underlined by the synthesizer score,which shouldn't work but does. As has often been said before,the film is too dark,but some of the photography is pretty good,which makes one wonder if the darkness was a deliberate experiment which didn't quite come off.

This movie was obviously {well,in the versions I've seen} heavily cut,during the killings we cut away just before we think we'll going to see something nasty. There's just about enough suspense to almost compensate,and the acting isn't too bad,but gore hounds will probably be disappointed. The climactic scenes are pretty exciting though and even though you still don't get much of a look at the monster,this is actually quite effective.

There's a underlying element of sadness to Humongous which is provided by the film's back story,and it's perhaps this which most sticks in the mind. Nothing in the film is especially remarkable,but it does have it's interesting elements. It certainly deserves a proper,uncut DVD release,and far more than some of the other films of this type which already have been!

Humongous (1982)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This film starts off as a woman is violently raped by a drunk man. The man is eventually killed by the woman's German Shepard and this our story fast-forwards thirty-six years. In the current time, a group of teens head off to the island where this woman's story has become somewhat of a myth and once there they come under attack by a deformed monster.

HUMONGOUS isn't the greatest horror film you're ever going to see but there's quite a bit to like here. Director Paul Lynch was coming off the Canadian slasher PROM NIGHT when he did this picture and it's quite interesting to see how this pretty much avoids the various trappings that you'd expect from a horror film of this era. For starters, if you're wanting gore or mindless violence then you're certainly not going to get it here considering that most of the violence happens off screen.

The violence is off screen? Yep and that's just one reason why I said this here isn't your typical slasher. The film doesn't go for cheap gore but instead it tries to build up an atmosphere as well as a scary story. The story here is like one of those legends that you tell around the campfire and for the most part I thought the director did a very good job at showing off this side of things and the story itself was an interesting one. The film contained some pretty good atmosphere and especially once we get to the island and the teens are wondering around in the dark.

The performances are pretty good from the entire cast and they certainly make you like and care for the people. Again, they're mostly killed off camera but this actually helps build up some of the mystery as to what's going on. I'm really not sure how much of the mystery was supposed to be a secret because the opening segment makes it quite clear who is going to be doing the killings. Technically speaking the film is well-made and it's certainly not like most films from this period. With that said, there's really not too much that happens during a lot of the running time so a bit more would have kept the film moving a tad bit better.

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.

I was present at Delmonte in the Pines resort when they filmed this movie. My parents took us there every year. It certainly was no great film, BUT we got to see the actors and the old resort house/area and boat house area in between filming. I was a kid, 9 years old, but I remember seeing dobermans in large fenced areas for the movie and the actor who played "Humongous" was sooo tall, but very nice. They did actually blow up an old boat house out on a little island. When they did that, I was going to bed in the new resort area and remember being afraid of the noise, and the filmed "screaming" from the movie being shot. For a low budget film, it was totally cool to see the remains after the shoot, the old boat house, the props left behind and they ripped an entire floor out of the old resort main house, and there was "blood spatter" etc. in it. That was truly a cool experience.

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"? (**)