Director Paul Lynch followed up his well known 1980 slasher movie "Prom Night" with this effective rural monster flick. Written by William Gray (whose credits include "Prom Night", as well as "Cross Country", "The Changeling", "An Eye for an Eye", "The Philadelphia Experiment", and "Black Moon Rising"), it tells the story of an island locale with a tragic past, which we get to see in the pre-credits sequence of a young woman being brutally raped by an unhinged, drunken admirer. Over 30 years later, some typical horror movie youths are out on a boating trip, and thanks to the monumental foolishness of the real prick of the bunch, they run aground, and soon become the prey for the offspring of that long ago rape victim, an enormous, deformed thug who's run out of dog meat and is hungry for something more.
What's been said many times before, by many horror fans, is that for years it was a little hard to thoroughly enjoy what was always a much too dark movie where it was too hard to see what was going on. That was remedied on the DVD release, which at least allows us a better look at everything. We now can take greater pleasure in a movie that has a whole lot of thick and heavy rural atmosphere. Some of those shots on the fog enshrouded lake are quite spooky. Use of locations are superb, but one thing that truly makes the movie work is good music by John Mills-Cockell. Lynch and company make the classic move of never giving us a good look at the towering brute until the end; their pacing is rather slow at times, but they do a respectable job of building up the tension in certain scenes. The gore content may be too low for some tastes, but what the movie lacks in blood and guts horror it makes up for with its overwhelming ambiance. It also gives us an entertaining, spunky, intelligent, Laurie Strode type heroine in Sandy, played by ultra sexy Janet Julian. At one point she employs a method also employed by Ginny in "Friday the 13th Part 2": trying to trick the killer into thinking she's his dead mother! Cast members also include Janit Baldwin ("Prime Cut", "Ruby"), Joy Boushel ("Terror Train", "The Fly" '86), and Page Fletcher (the title character from the TV series 'The Hitchhiker') as the rapist. Seven foot five inch Canadian former wrestler Garry Robbins, who many years later played Saw-Tooth in "Wrong Turn", is the murderous behemoth.
A good, fun flick for genre fans, "Humongous" now looks as good as we could want it to, and is worth checking out for the uninitiated.
Seven out of 10.
What's been said many times before, by many horror fans, is that for years it was a little hard to thoroughly enjoy what was always a much too dark movie where it was too hard to see what was going on. That was remedied on the DVD release, which at least allows us a better look at everything. We now can take greater pleasure in a movie that has a whole lot of thick and heavy rural atmosphere. Some of those shots on the fog enshrouded lake are quite spooky. Use of locations are superb, but one thing that truly makes the movie work is good music by John Mills-Cockell. Lynch and company make the classic move of never giving us a good look at the towering brute until the end; their pacing is rather slow at times, but they do a respectable job of building up the tension in certain scenes. The gore content may be too low for some tastes, but what the movie lacks in blood and guts horror it makes up for with its overwhelming ambiance. It also gives us an entertaining, spunky, intelligent, Laurie Strode type heroine in Sandy, played by ultra sexy Janet Julian. At one point she employs a method also employed by Ginny in "Friday the 13th Part 2": trying to trick the killer into thinking she's his dead mother! Cast members also include Janit Baldwin ("Prime Cut", "Ruby"), Joy Boushel ("Terror Train", "The Fly" '86), and Page Fletcher (the title character from the TV series 'The Hitchhiker') as the rapist. Seven foot five inch Canadian former wrestler Garry Robbins, who many years later played Saw-Tooth in "Wrong Turn", is the murderous behemoth.
A good, fun flick for genre fans, "Humongous" now looks as good as we could want it to, and is worth checking out for the uninitiated.
Seven out of 10.