Humongous

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.

In 1946, a woman is raped during a party on her father's island. Her dogs come to the rescue, viciously attacking her attacker.

More than thirty years later, two brothers, their sister, and their two girlfriends go out on their large boat on a large lake. One of the brothers is a rather disturbed individual, who fires a gun he has nearly pointed at his brother at point-blank range, among other things. They have some trouble navigating the boat at night, and come across someone stranded in his boat. They bring him aboard, and he's grateful. He tells them about the island they are near, where a crazy old lady lives with lots of dogs.

The psycho brother decides he wants to try driving the boat at night, though they had anchored already. He grabs his gun when they try to stop him. The boat runs aground and blows up, landing everyone on the island.

Though they had heard dogs barking, the only dogs them come across are skeletons. There's no sign of the old lady, and someone starts killing them off. It's no secret that the killer is the old lady's son, the son of the rapist, presumably. Though we never get a good look at him, a diary they find indicates he has acromegaly. Having that doesn't make a person a monster (André the Giant and Rondo Hatton, among others, had that condition). Evidently he is brain-damaged as well, or severely screwed up because of the way his mother raised him.

The movie is pretty derivative. I've seen quite a few movies where at some point a young woman pretends to be a killer's mother to try to save herself, for example. At a couple points, the good brother, his girlfriend, and his sister reminded me of Fred, Daphne, and Velma, respectively, from Scooby-Doo.

Many of the scenes take place at nighttime, and on the videotape, yes the picture is often almost completely or completely black. Evidently this was not true when the film had been projected, so it is probably a matter of a bad transfer.

A hulking, brain-damaged beast stalks teens trapped on a remote island: not exactly the most original of plots, for sure, but it sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? Unfortunately, despite this one having many of the raw ingredients necessary for a hugely enjoyable slice of trashy 80s horror, it screws matters up with mundane direction, very dark photography, virtually no decent gore, and a creature that is hidden away in the shadows for most of the film.

Humongous begins with a promising pre-credits sequence set in the 1940s, in which a young woman is raped on Labour Day by a drunken party-goer, who immediately gets his comeuppance when a dog rips him to shreds.

The action then moves to the present day (ie., the early 80s), and sees five teenagers—Eric (David Wallace), his girlfriend Sandy (Janet Julian), nerdy sister Carla (Janit Baldwin), hot-headed brother Nick (John Wildman), and Nick's slutty squeeze Donna (Joy Boushel)—taking a trip on a lake in a motor cruiser.

After becoming lost in a bank of fog, the group happens across a man named Bert stranded in a lifeboat, who warns them that they are approaching some dangerous rocks. Nick seizes control of the boat, but crashes it, and the friends are forced to leap for safety and make for a nearby island, which according to Bert is home to a crazy woman and her pack of dogs. Bert's info, however, is not entirely correct: the old woman, who turns out to be the rape victim from the prologue, has recently died, and her dogs have been devoured by her hideously deformed son, who is on the loose on the island and still very hungry!

The rest of the film sees the teens, and an injured Bert, being hunted and killed one-by-one by the ravenous monster; it's all par for the course, with the expected false scares, sudden deaths, the discovery of the creature's lair, and a scene blatantly cribbed from Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) in which final survivor Sandy tries to confuse the killer by masquerading as his mother.

Although director Paul Lynch seems content to to deliver a by-the numbers product, the film does boast two marvellously tacky scenes that I feel are worthy of note: Donna the slut tries to warm up a shivering Bert by taking off her top and pressing her breasts against him; and Sandy falls backwards onto a mouldy corpse, which somehow becomes attached to her. If only Lynch had included more trash of this calibre, or just gone for a higher level of blood and guts, I might have thought more highly of it. As it is, it's just another title in a long list of instantly forgettable backwoods horrors.

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!

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.