18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Beauty is in the eye.., September 25, 2005
This review is from: Humongous [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Not all horror movies are classics, let's get that straight. But for those of you who appreciate monstrous killers, moody settings, and Janet Julian, Humongous is the flick for you. Yes it is typical of the genre. Idiot kids destroy thier boat, wash ashore on what they believe to be a deserted island, and run afoul of death. What seperates this movie from others of its ilk is the mood created by this film. Dark, well scored, and of decent acting, Humongous may be considered a hidden gem.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Anti-climatic..., January 3, 2006
This review is from: Humongous [VHS] (VHS Tape)
[brief plot synopsis]
In 1948 a teenage girl is raped by her boyfriend, and in revenge is killed for the act. Years later after she gave birth to his bastard retarded son, she secludes herself on a desolate island to raise him. After she died he is left to defend for himself, not knowing how to take care of himself he preys on the islands animals and his own guard dogs for food. Late one Summer evening, a group of teens out for a summer boating ride breaks down aside the island, looking for help they stumble onto his territory, and just in time-- he is hungry and hunts the teens like they were wild animals for food.
[good things]
First off, the movie's first kill was the bloodiest, a dog attack and pretty well done, in my opinion. I liked the setting. Of course, it being an 80's slasher flick it took a lot from movies like Friday The 13th. The movie was set in the middle of nowhere, it had a potentially menacing villain, beautiful heroine to be, a nice backstory, and a nice body count. I also liked the stalking nature of the killer, very similar to the P.O.V. shots in Friday The 13th. The movie was set over the course of a few days, and seemed to have nods to movies like Friday The 13th, Psycho and even Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The movie's killer was Garry Robbins, who played Saw Tooth on Wrong Turn.
[the bad]
The movie was old, and I had a DVDr sourced from VHS. The movie was too dark at times to see anything. The killer went unseen because of this, the lighting in the movie also sucked. Directing was lack lustre' and the movie in general was very anti-climatic. So much could have been done with the ending, and it completely fell limp. The movie I saw lacked blood, the kills seemed to be cut out all together. The teens would see the killer, and it would cut to another scene and later on they would be found mutilated. That was one of my biggest complaints with the movie.
[final thoughts]
In certain areas the movie was tense, it had a couple good scares, but all in all the movie was flat. The killer could have been so much meaner, and there could have been more blood. Some of the kills were pretty brutal, but let's thank the MPAA for the cuts. The movie seemed to have a lot taken from Friday The 13th Part 2. first off the concept for the killer; no father, retarded/deformed, killing people in mourning of his dead mother. Second, the killer had his dead mother displayed in his home for a memorial and third, in one scene one of the girls stumbles onto the memorial and acts like his mother to try and get away from him. There were a lot of other similarities, but these were the ones that seemed almost blatant to me.
Finally, this movie is a good addition to any slasher collection, the movie stands neck to neck with slasher movies like Madman and The Final Terror, but lacks blood and it lacks the scares that movies like Friday The 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Burning gave us.
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