Humongous

Humongous (1982)

Well again this was a film that stuck in my head from the days of video stores and the awesome cover of this one always intigued me.I have been looking for this one forever and to no avail as it has yet to get a DVD release in the states.I recently obtained a copy from a cool website that does VHS transfers and I picked this one up along with some other impossible to find gems.I have to say that I was a bit dissapointed by this one.Going in I knew the story of the film and it sounded rather cool ,something along the lines of your typical slasher with a bit of a twist and the fact that it was directed by Paul Lynch the director of the original Prom Night I went into this one with high expectations.
The film centers around a woman Ida who is raped in 1946 apparently and then we are instantly fast forwarded 36 years later.Where we meet our cast of charcters.five young college students at a vacation home near the water,The group takes a boat trip that is cut short when they run into a stranded man on a raft in the middle of the body of water.They take him in of course and he tells them the story of the small deserted Island they are close to.Turns out the island is supposedly overrun by dogs and the islands sole inhabitant is a old woman who does not allow anyone on her land.While docked in the water the two male college students get into a fight over whether or not they should stay where they are and the boat begins to ead towards said island when they have a accident and the boat goes up in flames.The Kids regroup on the uninhabited island and it appears completely vacant.The gang goes to find the lodge where the woman supposedly stays but find no one but some corpses of dogs and apparently her as well.they find no living dogs on the island though they still hear some growling and howling occasionally.From here on out we get the standard,group member goes off on their own and gets killed never to be seen again routine.The killer in this film is the son of Ida ,the woman raped 46 years ago,apparently Ida had the child from the rape incident and he was born disfigured and mentally challenged,she kept him on the island along with her to shield him from the judgemental public.The killer is relatively cool looking in this one and his backstory is well written,but all of the killings either happen off camera or are insanely lame.In fact the only time it shows any blood is during one of the killings where a girl has her head squeezed by him and blood comes from her eyes.I thought that this film had alot of potential and honestly if there were a bit more gore we would have a winner here.The acting is above par for the course as is the story and all ,but with such a lack of gore ,this one just comes up short.There is a scene in this flick that was straight up stollen from friday the 13th as well,where the survivng girl dressed like the mother in hopes of confusing the simple minded killer.So after all ,this movie is lost in the shuffle of slashers and probably is not remembered due to the lack of gore.Again if they would have upped the violence and the lighting in some of the darker scenes ,this one could have been another awesome hidden lesser known slasher much like Madman or The Burning.but since it is what it is , we get a forgettable film with alot of promise.This one is strictly for Serious slasher collectors and purists.I cant say enough how the lack of blood hurts this one,if it were even as gory as Texas Chainsaw massacre or friday the 13th first films this one would have ranked much ,much higher on the rating scale probably even achieving a 4 but.......
2.5 out of 5