Humongous (1982)

Humongous  starts out all right, there is a graphic and prolonged rape scene, then the rapist gets savagely ripped to pieces by a pack of German Shepherds and receives the coup de tat from the woman he just defiled.  Emotionally scarred and vacant, she secludes herself to Dog Island to give birth to the monstrosity known as Humongous.  Years after she has passed Humongous roams the island killing anything he can for food, lost in a blind rage over his mother’s passing, when a group of yuppie vacationers is stranded in his kill zone.  Humongous will tolerate no trespassers, having lived in seclusion his entire life the man-monster only knows how to kill with his bare hands, and he does it well. 

Humongous features one of the biggest assholes I can think of in slasherdom; the mullet toting yuppie Nick  He is literally the only reason the crew gets stranded, getting drunk and holding everyone hostage as he slams the yacht into shallow water.  Every ounce of his dialogue is filled to the brim with displaced anger, the kind that only a spoiled yuppie dickhead brat could muster.  He even fires a live round past his brother’s head for seemingly no reason. 

Then there’s Donna, the slut that aspires to be a model.  Her blueberry stained boobs are really one of the only reasons to sit through this slash fest.  Her first introduction as a character is topless, which is really all you need to know about Donna.

When the crew reaches the island the movie spends a lot of time bumping around in the dark trying to figure out what Dog Island is really about.  Humongous trails them, eventually killing Nick and Donna off screen and hanging them on meat hooks in his basement.  After the crew plays Scooby Do for a while Humongous springs his full on attack, crushing a nerdy girl’s head and giving a killer bear hug to the clean cut leader of the vacationers, leaving only the final girl, who was kind of obvious from the get go.  She managers to burn Humongous in a shack, somehow making him even uglier than before, then impales him on a jagged piece of wood.   Cue the slow jazz music.

Humongous is one of those movies that really works on nostalgia, but otherwise it’s kind of a dull toothless slasher.  The characters are more developed than most slashers from yesteryear, however following the first savage on screen death all the others murders seem watered down in comparison.   Old VHS copies of the movie were far too dark to see anything, but even seeing it uncut is kind of a tedious bore.  It borrows a lot from Friday the 13^th but seems to reel back the crowd pleasing aspects of stalk and slash, like the gore.  I feel like it sits right in the cozy middle of slasher flicks if we were going to rank them, not too bad to skip but not so exciting as to really seek it out regularly.  I really want to like it more, just can’t justify it.