Humongous

source: Humongous

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"? (**)

The horrible rape of a wealthy woman trying to resist a drunken male killed by her pet dog sets in motion the later plot where a group of college kids become stranded on a seemingly deserted island thanks to the troubled Nick(John Wildman)who is incredibly jealous of his more responsible, likable brother Eric(David Wallace)who seems to get the most attention of the lovely ladies than he does. Eric is also a more heady, trustworthy type and so Nick wishes to take controls of the boat and, in a scuffle with his older brother, accidentally crashes it setting it on fire with everyone on board narrowly escaping(..including a shipwrecked passenger they take on board who boat was damaged by treacherous rock, played by Layne Coleman). On the shore, Eric calls out for his sister Carla(Janit Baldwin)with only silence answering back. Brother Nick, ashamed at the destruction and situation he caused, goes to search for help..it's told to them by their passenger that the rape victim from the start of the film, Ida Parsons(Shay Garner), has a place up on the hill from the shore, run down and decrepit, where she lived in seclusion with her dogs. What Nick encounters is something of a man who growls like a beast. Soon the others will run into this type of deformed man-monster who hunts with rage. Eric and his lover, model Sandy(Janet Julian)will have to find a way to stop him while also learning about the secrets regarding Ida while searching her home..but, even more important is that she had given birth to a child with a photo, found in an album, showing her holding it with the dog, who saved her from the man raping her, by Ida's side. Had Ida given birth to the thing hunting them on the island? Mysteries may be solved within the house as they find Ida's corpse, her diary(..or mad scribblings), and a special place where the monster lives. Interesting, gore-less slasher undermined by certain scenes at night & darkened places(such as Ida's cellar where the monster is known to lurk)where the low-quality lighting doesn't capture images or action on screen very well. Some scenes, such as the monster's chasing Nick into a desecrated boat-house, are incomprehensible..you just wish someone with excellent skill at providing decent lighting(such as perhaps Dean Cundy)could've worked in the film because the plot is quite interesting. I mean my eyes begin to hurt I was straining so. But, the unnerving music accompaniment can be quite effective and Ida's depreciating abode creates a spooky setting so not all is bad regarding this flick. And, some of the night-time sequences are quite genuinely eerie. The flick is certainly better than it's 2.1 IMDb rating. Joy Boushel portrays the object of lust(and she's quite easy on the eyes), Donna who carries a torch for Eric and envies Sandy. One thing's definitely for certain..this flick needs a different title.

Made by Paul lynch - who made the notorious "Prom Night" - this is actually a lot better than its more famous cousin. A cast of unknowns take to a summer in the Canadian lakes and stumble across Dog Island, its back history is supplied in the opening prologue and its quite brutal. the kids rescue Bert, a fisherman heading to another island and warns them off dog island,named for all the constant howling. the old lady who lives there is brutalised in the opening credits and has become a recluse with her dogs and her mysterious (un-named) son. they soon get drunk, run aground on the island and are picked off one by one by the son. its quite atmospheric, if a little slow to get going. the lighting is quite bad but it has a fairly decent script for a low budgeter and the 'homages' to Texas chainsaw, death trap and Halloween are all there but, it is very watchable and a good scare if there's nothing on the box.. enjoy..

Well, what can I say... "B"-movie status would've been an IMPROVEMENT for this movie! I watched this one in fast forward, mostly, and didn't miss much, if anything at all. The only part worth watching was when they find the diary kept by his mother. At least it'll explain the plot which, by the way, is lame: This woman gets raped and takes up residence (from what I can tell) on the same island she was raped on. Her son ends up as a cross between Norman Bates and Frankenstein. He eats anything in site and apparently wasn't well-treated as a child because of his malformation. But look on the bright side... you'll always have some dumb kids who just happen to be too nosy for their own good stumble on a DESERTED island (gee, how original *sigh*) and drink too much and start doing stuff they shouldn't. I think I'd have had more pity for the monster if he wasn't put in such dreary lighting conditions (how do you expect to be scared by something you can't see that well?!?!) The only thing I did enjoy from this film was the ending, because that meant it was over. Don't spend your money buying this one unless you can get it for $1.00 or less.

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 * 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" is appropriately titled because it's so long at 93 minutes and never really goes anywhere. The real reason for the film's title is the size of the giant man-beast. The creators of "Prom Night" fill this movie with nothing but long clichés. First, there's an un-necessary rape scene. Then, comes the stupid plot about a group of stupid teenagers who destroy their own boat and become stranded on a deserted island only to be killed off by the monster. Just about every scene is shot in complete darkness. I watched the movie enough times to get a good look at the grotesque monster, but couldn't. Maybe the producers don't want us to see what the monster looks like. No big deal, just skip it. My evaluation: * out of ****

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!

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.

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.