Humongous (1982)

Our expository prologue begins on Labor Day, circa 1946, where lumber tycoon Ed Parsons is currently throwing a party for his fellow swells at his luxurious summer lodge, which is nestled on the tallest hill of Parson’s very own private island. 

And while everyone else appears to be having a pretty good time, Parson’s youngest daughter, Ida (Garner), is definitely not as she avoids the crowd and, instead, spends the evening near the kennels, where her beloved dogs are being incarcerated for the night -- a mix of Dobermans and German Shepherds, who appear to love their mistress as much as she does them.

Then, the source of her foul mood presents himself: Tom Rice (Poor Man’s Rutger Hauer, Page Fletcher), who’s about six-sheets to the wind and shooting for seven with each completed swig. And as they argue, we (sorta) learn that these two used to be an item but Rice blew it by cheating on Ida with another woman (-- I think. Or he might've just been flirting with someone else at the party and Ida was having none of that).

Now, as the intoxicated Rice demands a second chance, it becomes readily apparent that in his current condition this sozzled lout won’t be taking “no” for an answer. Thus, Ida tries to put as much distance between them as she can by fleeing into the nearby woods. But Rice pursues, and when he finally catches up to her things quickly take a dark and sinister turn that no amount of drinking can excuse.

For after Ida rejects his unwanted advances with a slap to the face, Rice throws her to the ground and starts tearing her clothes off, promising the “virgin princess” a comeuppance she both deserves and won’t soon forget -- all according to him, mind you, as he pulls his own pants down. And then the rape of Ida Parsons begins in earnest and violence.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Ed Parsons (McFadyen) notices Ida’s dogs are stirred up about something going on in the woods. And so stirred up are they, a couple of the German Shepherds manage to scale their way out of the enclosure and bolt into the darkness. And while they were too late to stop the rape, they savagely attack Rice and deservedly rip him to shreds. However, Ida calls them off before they can actually kill him. But! This wasn’t to save her rapist's life. No. She reserved the right to deliver the killing blow for herself.

This prologue then ends with a fairly effective montage of tinted photos for the film’s opening credits, starting with a younger Ida and better days on the island, spending time with her new pups and family. And as she ages in the photos, we even see a couple snapshots of Ida and Rice together before things went sour. Then, the credits end with several photos of Ida post-incident, which show she never really recovered from the rape, the resulting murder, nor the consequences it rendered.

As to what those consequences were, well, we’ll be unraveling that mystery while the rest of the movie plays out as we jump ahead some 36 years to the present -- 1982, for those playing at home, where we find another private island party winding down after a wild weekend. Here, the last five participants present are either cleaning up the carnage or packing-up before they all head back to the mainland together.

The property in question belongs to the Simmons family, and the party was instigated by the latest generation: eldest brother Eric (Wallace), younger brother Nick (Wildman) -- or Nick the Asshole, for reasons that will soon become apparent, and daughter Carla (Baldwin). Eric is the responsible one, Nick, meanwhile, is an immature sociopath of the highest caliber, who likes to pop-off shots from a loaded rifle at his older brother’s head just because. And it's not like he hit him or anything, geez!? (Good grief.) As for Carla, well, I’m thinking little sis is regretting tagging along on this weekend getaway right about now.

The rest of their gang is rounded out by Eric’s girlfriend, Sandy Ralston (Julian), and Nick’s on again / off again -- and currently off again, again, girlfriend, Donna Blake (Boushel). And a more unlikable group of protagonists you’d be hard pressed to find in any movie as they all pile into the Simmons’ family cabin cruiser and putter off for home.

Alas, all the dickering and bitching back on the island gave them a late jump; and after the sun sets, a thick fog has settled in and Eric, at the wheel, unable to see any landmarks or hazards, has the boat crawling along at a snail’s pace. No, the only thing he can really see at the moment is a lit flare, dead ahead, waving at them madly.

This flare belongs to the sole occupant of a much smaller boat that’s currently run aground on some rocks. Luckily, Captain Eric and First Mate Nick the Asshole manage to avoid a collision. Thus, they are able to pull a thankful Bert Defoe aboard and offer him a ride and a tow to shore, who rewards this act of kindness by taking a massive plot dump once they get him inside the cabin. (Ah, he shoulda done it on the poop deck.)

Seems the Simmons party has veered way off course and into the treacherous waters near the shores of Dog Island -- a mysterious place where no one except the eccentric owner has dared to tread for some 30 years now; the owner being Ida Parsons; the last surviving heir of the Parsons estate, who only comes to the mainland twice a year for supplies, according to DeFoe.

But she associates with no one while there and just as quickly returns to her isolated existence. For no one else is allowed on the island, as the shores are littered with No Trespassing signs. And if any wayward traveler chooses to ignore those, there’s still the owner’s flying squad of vicious guard dogs to contend with, who have the run of the island. Then, as if right on cue, the air is pierced by the sound of a mournful dog howling from the nearby island, somewhere in the fog, and too close for comfort. 

With that, DeFoe advises Eric to just stop for the night. Negotiating the waters around Dog Island is bad enough in the daytime, he says, and at night, under these conditions, it’s next to impossible. Eric agrees and drops the anchor. 

Well, at least he did drop it until Nick the Asshole, ignited by an eruptive snit of jealousy when Donna started paying a little too much attention to Defoe, decides to mutiny. He then storms the bridge, stoned out of his gourd, and engages the engine, wanting to get home and away from everyone else as soon as possible. (And, really, Can we blame him?!)

And I’m honestly not even sure if he bothered to pull up the anchor before gunning it; but this doesn’t really matter as Captain Asshole McDickhead immediately crashes the yacht into some rocks in a failed attempt to … jump the boat over Dog Island? Maybe? I’ll assume this violent impact also ruptured the gas tank, explaining why, not long after everybody went over the side, the cabin cruiser chose to promptly explode in a massive fireball and sink to the bottom. That, or the Simmons children were running a meth lab in the hold.

Come the dawn, the survivors of this spectacular shipwreck find themselves washed up on the deserted shores of the dreaded Dog Island. Everyone is present and accounted for except for Carla. And as the others fear the worst for her, as no one actually saw her get off the boat before it went down, these castaways suddenly remember they’re not alone -- as they hear that dog howling in the distance again. And I hate to break it to such a nice group of people, but, believe me, the dogs and the reclusive landlord are about to become the least of their worries. Trust me. For there’s something else lurking on this island, too. And it’s hungry…

Caught up in the critical backlash against the surprising and somewhat baffling commercial success of the burgeoning Dead Teenager or Slasher Cycle that started with John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and then pushed inland with Friday the 13th (1980), the “rave reviews” for Prom Night (1980) -- director Paul Lynch’s entry into this body count glut, were soon rolling in and pulling no punches after the film’s general release.

“Lynch could’ve made a witty satire on the nature of proms or a frightening excursion into the terror of locker-lined hallways after dark,” said Michael Blowen of The Boston Globe (August 19, 1980). “But, with the exception of one obvious cut from a bloody victim to the Hawaiian punch bowl, he’s humorless and inadequate.”

And according to Joanna Waters of The Minneapolis Star (August 29, 1980), “The makers of Prom Night concocted what they call a ‘teenage psychological thriller’ from what appears to be a horror film recipe for success. It’s easy: You just take a little of this hit and a little of that hit, splice it all together, and release it during the summer. The only smidgen of fun in this thoroughly boring film is identifying the other moves from which it begged, borrowed and stole.”

Jack Matthews of The Detroit Free Press (August 22, 1980 ) also chimed in and got even more specific than that, saying, “So here we are with the latest in a seemingly endless string of films ripping off either Brian De Palma’s stylish Carrie or John Carpenter’s throat-slitting Halloween. Prom Night rips both off -- borrowing the prom and its circumstances from Carrie and the theme of a stalking madman from Halloween. The result is a movie that is, predictably, not as effective as either one.”

And Vincent Camby of The New York Times (August 16, 1980) summed up Prom Night thusly, “It’s a comparatively genteel hybrid, part shock melodrama, like Halloween, and part mystery, though it's less a whodunit than a who's-doing-it … The most noteworthy thing about the movie is that, although the murders are ghoulish, Mr. Lynch chooses to underplay the bloody spectacle. More often than not the camera cuts away, or the screen goes discreetly gray, before the audience is drenched in gore. This may or may not be the reason that the audience with which I saw the film booed at the end.”

Hell, even I think Prom Night is a rather shameless pastiche of Black Christmas (1974) -- the crank calls, Carrie (1976) -- sabotage at the prom, and Halloween -- a relentless masked killer, but I still liked the movie quite a bit. In the director’s commentary on the Synapse Special Edition DVD, Lynch even cops to most of this pilfering, and even insists that he stole the most suspenseful sequences directly, almost shot for shot, from the Made for TV Movie Dead of Night (1977); more specifically, "The Bobby" sequence from that anthology of twisted tales, which was directed by TV horror-vet, Dan Curtis -- The Night Stalker (1972), Trilogy of Terror (1975).

But remember, when Prom Night was finished, it triggered a bidding war between Paramount Pictures and AVCO-Embassy for distribution rights, with AVCO winning out. (Of course, Paramount would win by losing this battle, when the consolation prize turned out to be landing the way more lucrative Friday the 13th franchise.) But before they would release it, AVCO demanded a few changes first, requiring some extensive reshoots to shoehorn in the entire subplot of the escaped lunatic and his threatening phone calls to the already finished film; all in an effort to make Prom Night more like Halloween and When a Stranger Calls (1979) -- Fred Walton’s take on the old urban legend of a homicidal psycho calling a babysitter, only it turns out he was inside the house all along, calling from an extension, the whole time.

Now, despite all of these “homages,” I honestly think Lynch bristles a bit when his films are lumped wholesale into the Slasher category, insisting his films weren’t even intended as horror films but 'psychological thrillers.'

The Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1980.

As Lynch told Connie Tadros in an interview for Cinema Canada (Issue 94, March, 1983), “I really like thrillers, I really like making thrillers. But there’s no thrill to me in doing blood or great special effects or anything like that … You can cut somebody’s head off and it looks like a real person is being decapitated in front of your eyes, but none of that is a thrill.”

Of course, Prom Night contained such a decapitation, which included the severed head trundling down a runway. But, when compared to other splatter films of this strata, Lynch’s efforts were very atypical, bucking the soon-to-be established rules of 'sex equals death' and the virginal Final Girl; and the murders themselves, while elaborately staged, aren’t all that graphic and more concerned with the intricacies of the Why as opposed to wallowing in the grisly details of the How -- something that was to become the bane of the Slasher genre’s cyclical existence. Thus, his films owe just as much to Agatha Christie as they do to Carpenter, Curtis, De Palma and Cunningham.

Lynch was born on June 11, 1946, in Liverpool, England. And according to a profile piece written by Sam Weisberg for Hidden Films (November 18, 2011), “Lynch’s fascination with movies began at the age of 10. Saving up money from his part-time job of -- in his words -- walking horses on the beach in the British seaside town of Hoylake, he bought a picture book of movie stars; but his mother made him return it, since money was tight for his working class family. But his cinematic passions wouldn’t go away for long.”

In 1957, Lynch’s family migrated to Canada and settled in Oakville, Ontario. And throughout his teenage years the amateur film buff would split time between the two theaters in town; one which showed Ingmar Bergman-type art house pictures, which he hated; and at the other, he’d see Roger Corman and American International exploitation pictures, which he loved. And throughout these formative years it soon became apparent that someday, somehow, Lynch was going to make movies, too.

Now, according to that Weisberg interview, it was while perusing a trade magazine when Lynch first read about some hot-shot new director named Kubrick, who had gotten his start as a photographer, who then made documentary shorts, then an independent feature, and was now making the multi-million dollar 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) for MGM. Not much later, Lynch also learned that one of his personal cinematic heroes, and fellow Canadian, Sidney J. Furie -- The Ipcress File (1965), The Appaloosa (1966), had followed a similar career trajectory. Furie was also no stranger to exploitation features, having previously directed Doctor Blood’s Coffin (1961), The Snake Woman (1961) and The Leather Boys (1964).

“What really drove me was The Ipcress File,” Lynch told Weisberg. “Not only was it a great thriller, it had a fabulous leading man (Michael Caine), and a great style … The way he used a camera, his editing. It really made me decide to leave my day job and go into movies.”

Thus and so, if it was good enough for Kubrick and Furie, then Lynch would do his damnedest to make sure lightning would strike for a third time. Said Lynch, “In order to be a director, it takes that kind of outsized arrogance.”

By now, Lynch had dropped out of high school and had been working as a cartoonist for The Toronto Star. After his epiphany, he then transitioned to photography, selling “picture stories” -- mostly chronicling blue collar people -- to the paper and magazines like MacLean’s and Toronto Life. He was also hired on as a graphic designer for several publications. And all the while, he kept shooting film.

Paul Lynch (Cinema Canada, 1983).

Around 1966, Lynch decided to expand one of his pictorials on teenage marriages and turn it into a documentary short. And it was here, by mere happenstance, that Lynch first met William Gray. Seems Lynch was freelancing as a photographer at the same magazine Gray was writing a column for. Before switching gears, Gray had been a film editor, cutting promos for the CTV Network. The two hit it off and Gray helped Lynch shore up his documentary, which he then sold to the CBC.

This led to more work for the CBC, including Little Indian Boy, an expanded docudrama, which focused on a Native youth taken off the reservation and sent to a government school, who then runs away and subsequently freezes to death while trying to make his way back home. And as he moved into the 1970s, Lynch would also work on a documentary for Penthouse magazine and its notorious publisher, Bob Guccione. He would also, quite inexplicably, wind up as an extra in Bruce Kessler’s Simon, King of the Witches (1971) and was told in no certain terms to “stick with directing.

Now, after accumulating all of this experience, like his cinematic heroes before him, Lynch felt he was finally ready to take the next step and become a filmmaker. And to those ends, he raised enough funds to finance and direct his inaugural feature, The Hard Part Begins (1973) -- another blue-collar tale written by John Hunter, where a small time country music singer gets dumped by his longtime partner, and then gets dumped on by his estranged family, as he tries to get his life back in order. He followed that up with Blood and Guts (1978), the tale of an amateur wrestler trying to make it while dealing with a seedy promoter, which was co-written by William Gray. 

Neither of those features were picked up by an American distributor. And wanting to expand his horizons, Lynch decided he needed to do something more commercial. As Lynch explained to Tadros (Cinema Canada, March, 1983), “Believe me, in this business, if you don’t have a commercial film, you just aren’t in the business very long.” And so, “A friend and I sat around thinking about what we could do in terms of a horror film. We came up with a really grotesque thing called Don’t Go See the Doctor.”

At the time, Lynch was fascinated by two independent horror productions: John Carpenter's Halloween and Charles B. Pierce's The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976); the second mostly for its highly evocative promotional campaign and press materials. “And because [I was] a graphic designer,” said Lynch, “I took the old American International route of ‘do the poster first’ -- because when you walk in with the poster and the treatment, producers can see something in front of them that maybe could make them some money.

“So I did a poster for Don’t Go See the Doctor and a treatment, but it was really going off the deep end. (The poster as described had a crazed doctor, holding a bloody scalpel, looking down at his patient. And the proposed tagline was: “What happens when your gynecologist cracks?”) It was really bizarre, and quite horrible.”

Lynch initially pitched this movie to Pierre David, who would eventually go on to produce The Brood (1979), Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983) for David Cronenberg; but at the time he wasn’t interested in making something like Don’t Go See the Doctor -- though David would later produce his own hospital-centric thriller, Visiting Hours (1982). Undaunted, Lynch decided to try again and managed to get a meeting with Irwin Yablans, who had produced Halloween.

Alas, like David, Yablans felt the idea of a murdering doctor was a tad distasteful. But he liked Lynch's enthusiasm and encouraged him to try again, to focus on teenagers, and to ground the film around another holiday. And as the legend goes from there, it was while on the way home after this failed pitch meeting when Lynch passed a certain hotel marquee, touting it was a perfect place to fill the needs of any Spring Formal or Prom Night, and was instantly inspired.

Gray, meanwhile, had transitioned to writing screenplays full time and had scored a major success co-writing The Changeling (1980) with Diana Maddox, a stellar ghost story, that was currently in production and set to be released in 1980. Gray would then flesh out Robert Guza’s initial treatment for Prom Night and expand it into a shooting script. But before Lynch could present his retooled ideas to Yablans, the film was hijacked by Peter Simpson and Simcom LTD. And the rest is Slasher Film lore, as the Canadian-bred Prom Night caught lighting in a bottle and lit-up the American box-office for AVCO-Embassy.

And so, finally, with a bona fide commercial success under his belt, Lynch started getting offers to direct other scripts. But he took a pass on nearly all of them -- including a chance to reunite with Prom Night star Jamie Lee Curtis for Terror Train (1980). “I got offered a lot of bad scripts,” said Lynch. “And a lot of those bad scripts were made into movies in Canada. I’ve never yet taken a picture that was not a good script. There’s no point.”

Simpson also tried to talk Lynch into coming back for the inevitable sequel to Prom Night, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987). “But I didn’t bother doing it because it had nothing to do with the original,” said Lynch. In his mind, “The only possibility for a Prom Night II is to pick up with Jamie Lee Curtis in a mental institution. That’s where I figured I left the first film. She was sitting on the ground outside the school, she’d just killed her own brother, and they’d take her away to the asylum.”

However, there was one prestige offer made to Lynch -- by none other than Charlton Heston, to direct the film Mother Lode (1982). Heston would star in the film as a pair of Scottish twin brothers fighting over a gold mine, based on a screenplay written by his son, Frasier Heston. Lynch found the idea intriguing but both he and Gray felt the script just wasn’t there. And despite an ever escalating offer to sign on, rumored to have topped-off at $500,000, Lynch took a pass, drawing the wrath of the almighty Heston, who would go on to direct the film himself. Turned out Lynch was right to skip it, as the film is a turgid mess.

And so, once again, Lynch tried to get a production going from scratch and pitched the idea of a non-psycho-killer thriller called New Orleans to producer Michael Stevenson, who wasn’t interested in doing a conventional thriller. However, the producer did suggest he would be open to financing another horror film by Lynch -- if it was in the same Prom Night vein.

From there, as the myth goes, Lynch overheard someone use the word “humongous” -- a word he had never heard before, but thought it would make a brilliant title for a horror movie. And once again teaming up with Gray -- who had never heard the word either and had a helluva time spelling it correctly, they started cooking up a tale of “a bunch of kids in the summer, on an island, and something terrible happens to them.”

And from that nugget sprung a bizarre psychodrama filled with a convoluted backstory, wrapped up inside a mystery, surrounded by plenty of expendable fodder to give Stevens and co-producer Anthony Kramreither the sex and body count they needed. Only this time, Lynch and Gray would look to Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) to liberally borrow ideas from for their tale of closeted skeletons, wayward travelers, malformed mutants, and cannibal killers on the loose for Humongous (1982).

Theoretically set in the 1000 Islands area of the St. Lawrence River, just east of Lake Ontario, straddling the border between the United States and Canada, Humongous strives to be a brooding, waking nightmare type of horror film. Remember those consequences I mentioned earlier? Yeah, well, they’re about to come into play as our protagonists argue over whether to search the beaches for Carla or head inland to ask for help.

With no food, water, or any means of communication, their outlook is pretty dire if they just wait it out and hope for a rescue. And since this was basically, completely, and totally all his fault, Nick the Asshole is the first to volunteer to go over the bluff all by himself. Donna tries to stop this, but Eric, still angry over the dire consequences of his little brother’s last pique of temper, ignores her pleas and couldn’t care less if Nick runs off and gets himself killed. Why, yes, Fellow Programs. That does qualify as 'ominous foreshadowing.'

For! As Nick the Asshole pushes his way through the brush he stumbles upon one of those guard dogs, who quickly gives chase to the fleeing trespasser. And the dog is almost upon him, too, when the animal is intercepted, mid pounce, by -- something else, which promptly kills the dog by strangling the life out of it with his massive bare hands. But whatever killed the dog now takes up the pursuit, chasing Nick the Asshole into a rundown boathouse, who was so busy running away I don’t think he even realizes it’s no longer the dog that was chasing him.

A quick search finds a boat-hook to defend himself, and an overwhelming stench leads to a half eaten carcass (of something) tucked away in a darkened corner to be polished off later. But polished off by what? Well, we get our answer quick as a giant, crazed, half-seen hulk busts down the door and attacks Nick the Asshole -- make that, Nick the Former Asshole, as Nick the Current Asshole is no longer with us.

Back at the beach, as the hours tick by and Nick the Former Asshole Who is No Longer WIth Us doesn’t return, Eric decides he’d best go and look for him (-- especially after they hear something that sure sounded like a death-scream to me). Leaving Donna behind to look after DeFoe, who broke his leg while getting to shore the night before, Eric and Sandy head over the bluff and push inland.

Here, Sandy asks if Eric has noticed how quiet the island is? No other animal sounds? And it's been hours since they last heard the dog howling. It’s downright eerie. But Eric has other things to worry about as they track his brother to the boathouse. Inside, they find two scuttled boats, which Eric deems irreparable. Further searching finds those animal remains, which prove to be a dog carcass, and then Sandy screams!

And, yeah, I thought she had just found Nick the Former Asshole Who is No Longer WIth Us’s corpse but, nope. She’s found Carla, alive and well, and who apparently took refuge in the boathouse long after her other brother was killed, who then hid when she heard the others breaking in, thinking it was Ida Parsons or one of her dogs.

After their happy reunion concludes, the trio follow the path from the boathouse to the main lodge, which shows decades of neglect. (They also find the skeletonized remains of yet another dog in the kennel.) No one is apparently home; and while the power still works, meaning there’s a generator somewhere, being maintained by someone, the phone line is dead. And since the place appears to be totally abandoned, the decision is made to just scrounge what they can -- canned food, blankets, and Sandy finds a desperately needed box of matches; as all efforts to light a signal fire the old-fashioned way without any phosphorus sulfide have failed miserably.

Speaking of which, Donna has just returned to the beach from her own scouting mission for driftwood to burn, where she found even more dog corpses, some skeletal, others, well, more recent. She also found a patch of wild blueberries and carefully brought a shirt-full back to share with DeFoe; only he won’t respond to her overtures.

Realizing he’s most likely suffered some kind of internal injuries on top of that fractured leg, and is currently going into shock, Donna tries to warm him up by sharing her body heat with him. Thus, she strips down and lies on top of her patient. (No snark here. It’s actually a pretty smart move under the circumstances.) Alas, this leaves her in a rather vulnerable position when that bashful giant wanders on scene and quickly kills them both.

Back at the lodge, further exploration finds an abandoned nursery littered with broken toys and an old photograph album filled with more pictures of Ida Parsons and her baby -- remember those consequences I mentioned earlier? Yeah. And while our amateur sleuths link the lack of photos of the child growing up with the ravaged condition of the nursery and conclude Ida must’ve lost the baby, never recovered, and became a recluse, the truth is actually worse. Much worse.

Yeah, it won’t even take you two guesses to figure out that the giant mutant cave troll clandestinely laying waste to half the cast is Ida’s baby -- courtesy of Rice, all grown up. This is all confirmed later when the group also finds Ida’s diary while trying to trace some guttural noises coming from the basement via the air vents. 

And as they read, the entries explain the son’s condition as a combination of acromegaly and severe brain damage. Seeing this as a punishment for her sins, Ida stayed on the island to care for her son, her secret shame, forcing everyone else to stay away for their own safety. Only now, the system has broken down.

Why? Well, they get their answer when Carla asks Sandy to open a window to let more light in. And when she does, it illuminates the desiccated and nearly mummified corpse of Ida Parsons, resting in a chair. And her last journal entry reveals Ida knew she was sick, and did everything possible to cut off the island so her son couldn’t escape. In fact, the original plan was to kill him, too, before she died; but that, quite obviously, didn’t pan out. 

Now. It appears she’s been dead for quite some time, too, meaning her son has been on his own for just as long. And with nothing to eat, he started hunting down and killing the dogs, and anything else he could find, for food. (I think the dog we saw him kill earlier was the last survivor of the pack.) And I mean anything as they later stumble into the larder, where the corpses of Nick the Former Asshole and Sandy now hang from meathooks, waiting to be cut up into more manageable pieces.

With that, the trio abandons the main house and flee back to the beach, where Carla, as she pukes up her guts, discovers what happened to DeFoe as his decapitated head floats by in the water. After that, Carla kinda checks out for a while.

Meantime, Eric comes up with a plan that will hopefully solve all their problems: he intends to use the gas found in the boathouse to burn the lodge down, hopefully while that thing is still in the basement. And he figures this conflagration will also serve as a signal fire to attract some help. A sound plan, sure. The only problem is, at some point during all those jumps-scares and mayhem earlier this afternoon, Sandy kinda lost track of that box of matches.

But! She has the general idea on where she lost them; and so, Sandy joins Eric on a return trip to the lodge to commit some felonious arson in the interest of self-preservation. And as they quietly search, she manages to find the matches near the remains of Ida Parsons, which sort of attacked her upon their first discovery because of … reasons.

Anyhoo, despite their best efforts, alas, they weren’t quiet enough and Eric, despite stabbing the monster multiple times with an impromptu stake, is killed -- essentially bear-hugged to death until his spine snapped. And Sandy would’ve most likely met the same grisly fate, only she managed to pull a faux Pamela Vorhees -- ala Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), dressing in Ida’s shawl, and is convincing enough to stop her “son” as she scolds him, who then returns to the basement “where he belongs” as ordered by his “mother.”

Again, after this close call, Sandy makes too much noise while trying to get out of the house and the giant is soon upon her again. And after a few harrowing close calls on the porch, where the girl fell through the rotted floorboards, Ida’s son chases the girl all the way to the boathouse. Here, Carla picks the absolute worst time to pop back into the narrative after getting left behind and gets her head crushed most righteously.

Sandy, meanwhile, does the best she can to hide inside the boathouse. She also smells fuel all over the place -- I guess Eric planned to burn it, too, and drenched it. And so, when the giant breaks in after her, Sandy finally gets one of those out-of-date matches to ignite and the boathouse goes up like a Roman Candle.

As the giant screams, struggles, and burns, the girl manages to stay out of its reach and makes it back out the door. Once outside, she collapses on the docks, watching as the boathouse burns and the monster continues to scream until the structure collapses into the water. Then, silence.

Safe at last -- OR IS SHE! As the giant freak breaks the surface of the water! Burnt to a crisp but still kicking, it pursues an unbelieving Sandy back up the path toward the lodge. And as she scrambles to find something, anything, to defend herself with, the only thing available is, ironically enough, one of those massive No Trespassing signs, which she manages to unearth just as the giant reaches her.

Here, the girl stumbles back, with the sharp end of the stake pointing skyward, which the lunging giant manages to impale himself upon. And this, finally, seems to have done the trick as the almost pitiable creature struggles for a few moments until it finally falls dead. For real this time. No. Honest. Really! He dead. 

Which leaves us with a final tableau of Sandy posing languidly on the still smoldering docks until, I assume, help arrives (-- at least she had the courtesy to replant the sign), bringing the absolute worst episode of Scooby Doo, of ever, to a merciful end.

You know, circling back to that Hidden Films interview with Lynch for a sec, I suddenly remember Weisberg pointing out something so profound I did an honest to god spit-take when I read it. So, put your glasses and bottles down and swallow what ya got, Fellow Programs, 'cuz here goes as Weisberg sums up Humongous almost poetically and quite perfectly, “It’s hard to tell if the film itself is terrible or if it’s actually good because it successfully made YOU feel terrible.” Genius. Pure genius.

Lynch always was one for the slow burn; a slow build to a big payoff. And while that approach sort of worked in Prom Night as it crescendos toward the climax and the revelation of the killer’s true identity, it really does not work for Humongous. In fact, given the subject matter, it’s completely counterintuitive. But Lynch and Gray kept trying to pound that square peg into a very round hole for the film’s entire running time.

And this really doesn’t help matters when the film had already shit the bed early, when we meet our insufferable protagonists. And sadly, one of the main reasons they have to be that insufferable is because the entire plot hinges on an excuse of the dumbest order to get them off the boat and onto the island. As a character, Nick the Asshole is a lost cause from the jump, but even I don’t buy his boneheaded actions that led to them getting shipwrecked. That’s on Gray and Lynch.

Luckily, Nick’s the first to go. And once he’s out of the way, you kinda start warming up to the others as they unravel the mystery of Ida Parsons, her offspring, and the current state of rot and decay on Dog Island. Here, Lynch’s methodology excels as the film doles out the clues deliberately but fairly. And his actors handle all the plot exposition well as they unravel things, conjecture, make wrong guesses, and then finally piece it all together.

But among the film’s myriad problems is the fact Lynch might’ve played his hand too early, giving the audience too much information in the prologue that some may grow frustrated with the efforts of Sandy, Eric and the others to finally catch up. Thus, the central mystery might’ve been better served if the prologue had been removed altogether --  or better yet, made into a flashback instead, which could’ve played out as Sandy read from the diary to finally cement things.

Others, of course, will be sorely disappointed as Lynch once again pulls in the reins when it comes to the grue FX in his murder set-pieces. I’ll assume in an effort to “child proof” the island, Ida removed any kind of sharp instruments as the killer’s modus operandi is using his bare hands and brute strength. But this really didn’t matter because, as with Prom Night, the camera tends to cut away before the deathblow can be delivered; with the only notable exception being Carla’s death, where the camera lingers on her skull being crushed.

But even that isn’t all that graphic. (I honestly half-expected for one of her eyeballs to pop out.) Nor is the killer’s impalement during the climax. And so, beyond a few morbidly gruesome scenes involving the discovery of several corpses and rendered canine remains, Humongous fails to deliver on this front, too, for those who tune into these kinds of films for that kind of thing.

Another legitimate beef folks have with this film -- and Prom Night, too, for that matter, is the fact you can’t even see what’s going on half the time. By my eye there are at least two egregious continuity errors in Humongous, where we switch from day to night and back again. Then again, it's hard to tell what time of day it is during most scenes because the 'day for night' filtering and improper lighting by Lynch and cinematographer Brian Hebb is downright unconscionable. 

And since the majority of the film takes place at night or in a darkened room, you can’t see a damned thing. The fact that the lights sometimes work and sometimes they don’t at the lodge, depending on the scene, I’ll let slide and chalk up to neglect and burnt-out bulbs, but this is just ridiculous.

Even reading through the reviews of the theatrical releases shows folks were already complaining about how dark these films were -- and I’m not talking about content, but foot-candles. Yeah, both Prom Night and Humongous are a couple of features that I can dubiously claim to have watched for the first time twice as the VHS releases on first encounter were basically unwatchable with everything lost in the murk. 

Luckily, this has been remedied somewhat when both films were remastered and released digitally -- Synapse Films for Prom Night, and Scorpion Releasing for Humongous. It’s a distinct improvement on both films, but it’s still skewed way too dark. Again, that’s on Lynch. 

And now that I think about it, I've watched Prom Night for the first time FOUR times. First the censored broadcast TV version; then on VHS; then the Anchor Bay DVD, which restored the proper aspect ratio but wasn't much of an improvement on the transfer; then the Synapse release. For Humongous, it was just Embassy's VHS release, who also butchered the release of Rituals (1977), making it even more unwatchable, if memory serves.

I mean, it’s hard enough already to get invested in this kind of movie when the characters are that unlikable. Seriously. The only character that manages to muster a dry fart of sympathy is the giant, and that’s mostly because of his discombobulated shoes that are barely holding together. The poor guy. And that’s another thing. Is Ida’s son killing those dogs for sustenance, or is he killing them because they got the love and empathy from his mother that he never got? Interesting questions that could’ve been asked but are instead left lingering in the ether.

And we never do get a good look at the “monster” in Humongous, another tactical error by my thinking; unless you want to count the final reveal after he dies, where his face looks like a burnt tater tot that someone plugged a few Mr. Potato Head appliances onto.

In the director’s commentary, Lynch was asked by the moderator why he never bothered to show the monster. And while he waffled a bit, saying less is more, and it's better to leave such things to the imagination, he would eventually admit that he didn’t think the monster makeup effects provided by Brenda Kirk and Maureen Sweeney were good enough to shoot and would prove counterproductive.

Meanwhile, Garry Robbins was discovered while working as a bouncer at a Toronto bar and was cast to play Ida’s acromegalic son. He stood over seven feet tall and would later become a professional wrestler for a spell, competing under the name of Paul Bunyan and the Canadian Giant. Sadly, I can’t comment too much on his performance because aside from a few fleeting glimpses, silhouetted outlines, and closeups of his eyeball, Lynch kept his monster off camera or out of frame and just let the POV-shot do the heavy lifting -- though I will say Robbins sold the hell out of being burned alive during the climax. (More on this in a sec.) Robbins would later reprise his role, sort of, playing one of the backwood inbred hillbillies in Wrong Turn (2003).

Garry Robbins

Also overheard during the DVD commentary, Lynch commenting on how Robbins would drink between takes, a lot; and how he had a tendency to wander off, while still in makeup, until someone would finally track him down, out scaring the locals or trying to hitch a ride, presumably to find more beer. In fact, Robbins was so intoxicated while filming the climax, he didn’t even realize how badly he'd been singed and scorched until the gas-jets were turned off.

A similar onset accident occurred with the dog-handler, Marc Conway, who didn’t realize one of his dogs had gotten a little too over-aggressive. Seems Conway, who doubled for Page Fletcher in the opening attack, assured Lynch that he was in full control of his dogs. But when the scene wrapped and they started washing off the fake blood, it was quickly replaced with real blood as the dogs apparently tagged Conway in the leg and arm, requiring a trip to the hospital and several stitches. And if Fletcher looked familiar to you, he played the host on the horror anthology series, The Hitchhiker, which aired on HBO from 1983 to 1987, and was then revived by the USA Network from 1989 to 1991.

As for the rest of the cast, again, all of the actors do the best they can with these characters as (shallowly) written -- even Nick the Asshole, explaining why John Wildman never had a chance. However, once the film finds a groove things improve considerably. David Wallace and Janit Baldwin were a couple of genre vets as the other two Simmons siblings. 1982 was a bit of a zenith for Wallace, who would also appear in Mortuary (1982), another Slasher, and the notorious Made for TV Movie, Mazes and Monsters (1982), another sad, "slippery slope" entry in the Satanic Panic of the early 1980s, which warned against the evils of Dungeons, Dragons and RPGs.

Baldwin, meanwhile, had appeared in another somewhat notorious telefilm, Born Innocent (1974), co-starring with Linda Blair in a “shocking” expose on the corruption of the juvenile justice system. She also appeared in the Hicksploitation classic Gator Bait (1973) with Claudia Jennings, and a strange little bugaboo of a movie called Ruby (1977), which was sort of a mash-up of Guys and Dolls (1955) and The Exorcist (1973).

As our Final Girl, Janet Julian comes off as the best of the lot, and she gets exponentially better as the film goes along. A lot of folks might remember Julian as Janet Louise Johnson, the ill-fated replacement for Pamela Sue Martin on The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977-1979) just as the female sleuth was slowly squeezed-out of the series. She also had recurring roles on Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979) and B.J. and the Bear (1979-1981). 

She would also appear in Smokey Bites the Dust (1981), her first credited role as Janet Julian, before tackling Humongous. And the only regret I think she had was wearing those super tight jeans, which made it nearly impossible to dig those matches back out when she really needed them.

And then there’s poor Joy Boushel. Boushel had appeared in Terror Train and the teenage boner comedy, Pick-Up Summer (1980). She would also score a bit part in the caveman epic Quest for Fire (1981), and later a more sizeable role in Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly (1986). And like with Julian, she and her character get better once her jack-ass of a boyfriend is out of the picture. 

Alas, this wasn’t enough for some critics -- most notably Eric Dawson of The Calgary Herald (September 20, 1982), who went a little too far in his savage review of Humongous, saying Boushel's actions as the extrovert bad girl “would embarrass a 9th Avenue whore.” And that's a direct quote. Wow. Sounds like a man with some “9th Avenue” experience to me. Stay classy, my dude.

Anyhoo, the film had a 20-day shooting schedule, which split time between Sparrow Lake in northern Ontario and several interiors in Toronto for Ida’s lodge, which were shot in an actual house and a converted warehouse atop a functioning antique store. 

Kudos to production designers Carol Spier and Barbara Dunphy for adding some much needed atmosphere. The best gag in the whole movie might just be when Sandy discovers and subsequently gets tangled up in the skeletal remains of Ida Parsons. That was kinda great. It just wasn’t enough.

Unlike Prom Night, Humongous failed to find an audience and fizzled at the box-office. Lynch blamed the odd promotional campaign of the mutant baby in the crib. (It definitely wasn’t the trailer’s fault, though. Hell no. That, as the kids say, Slaps!. Behold its glory!) Gray thought it needed a better and less confusing title. The producers felt it didn’t deliver the shocks and gore required of the genre. And turns out John Mills-Cockell was a poor substitute for Paul Zaza on the film’s score. 

And while all of that probably didn’t help, along with the litany of other complaints I’ve already lodged, what would ultimately prove to be Humongous’ doom would be bad timing. 

Said Lynch, “AVCO-Embassy had stood solidly behind Prom Night, and that’s why it did well. They didn’t back Humongous and there was no secret about it.” For you see, like I talked about in our review of The Ice Pirates (1984), Humongous also had the misfortune of being in production during a studio regime change. 

“When it was made, Bob Rehme and Frank Capra Jr. were behind it,” explained Lynch. “They were the heads of the company at the time and they stood behind the film and they liked it a lot. But just as it was finished and about to be released, the company got bought out by Gerry Perenchino and Norman Lear.” And neither of them liked horror movies or wanted to be associated with them, at all, according to Lynch; and Lear did his best to spike the film altogether.

But the film did manage to eke out a theatrical release, with two distinct print campaigns as it rolled out around the country, and then Humongous quietly disappeared. And from there, with that horrible Home Video transfer, the film kinda sat in limbo for nearly 30 years before it finally made the digital leap and was opened to rediscovery and, perhaps, reevaluation.

Because frankly, for those who have only seen this on VHS or Beta might owe the film a second watch. It kinda grows on you with repeated viewings. Again, the problem isn’t what happens on the island, it's just getting to the island where the film fails miserably. But once you get past that crucible, and Nick the Asshole is taken off the board, Humongous isn’t THAT terrible. Honest.

Look, I wanna like this movie more than I do. I freely admit that it ultimately doesn’t work, but it has worked better with each viewing -- especially on this latest rewatch. There’s a germ of an idea here; and if it had just been nurtured along properly, who knows how good Humongous could’ve really been? But! As Lynch himself so eloquently put it, “Prom Night had all the luck. Humongous had no luck at all.” 

Published on October 16, 2022 at Confirmed, Alan_01.

Humungous (1982) Humongous Films :: Manesco Films :: Astral Films :: AVCO Embassy / EP: Michael Stevenson / P Anthony Kramreither / D: Paul Lynch / W: William Gray / C: Brian R.R. Hebb / E: Nick Rotundo / M: John Mills-Cockell / S: Janet Julian, David Wallace, John Wildman, Janit Baldwin, Joy Boushel, Layne Coleman, Shay Garner, Page Fletcher, John McFadyen, Garry Robbins