Entry Twenty-Six: Humongous (1982)

Humongous (1982)

Dir: Paul Lynch

"Here are the monster's little toys...Once, they were little girls and boys!"

Let me get this (obligatory Road Warrior reference) out of my system first: "Greetings from the Humongous!  The Lord Humongous!  The warrior of the wastelands!  The ayatollah of rock-n-rolla!"
  
In 1946, virginal Ida is deflowered in a super sleazy, full-frontal rape scene by a drunken, bug-eyed creep during her parents' cocktail party.  Afterwards, her family dogs tear the deserving POS to pieces and she brains him to finish the job.  Cue credits, set to some TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE soft jazz riffs (some real Kenny G shit!).  

36 years later, we're introduced to our cast of teenaged stock characters: alpha asshole Nick (mulleted John Wildman, who has a penchant for wearing wife beaters and too-short cuttoffs), skanky Donna (Joy Boushel, Goldblum's arm-wrestling trophy from The Fly), Nick's nerdy sister Carla (Janit Baldwin, Phantom of the Paradise, Where the Buffalo Roam) and good-guy brother, Eric (David Wallace, Mazes and Monsters, Mortuary) and Eric's model girlfriend, Sandy (Janet Julian, King of New York, the Swamp Thing television series).  Out on a nautical weekend adventure, our adolescent adventurers happen upon shipwrecked Ed, who warns them against journeying onto a nearby island, which is said to be inhabited only by vicious dogs and a mysterious old woman.  After an incident incited by douche-baggy Nick, they end up stranded upon said island and are systematically hunted down and slaughtered by an unseen, heavy-breathing (and sometimes roaring) assailant.  Fuckwit Nick is first to go, when he wanders off by himself, full of bravado and bluster and in search of help.  Donna has her neck broken (while topless) as she cares for the incapacitated Ed; meanwhile, the others discover a mansion containing an old-looking baby nursery filled with broken toys and housing a mummified corpse.  They then find Nick's and Donna's corpses hung on meat-hooks in the basement and, upon escaping the house, find Ed's severed head bobbing around at the beach.  They also find a diary that reveals that dear ol' Ida from the prologue gave birth to a brain-damaged son and moved, with her loyal dogs, to this secluded island to raise him.  Now that she's died and he's run out of dogs to kill for food, he's been hunting our heroes/heroines for sustenance.  After Eric gets folded in half and Carla has her face smashed in, lone survivor Sandy impersonates the creature's mother (shades of Friday the 13th and Psycho II) and manages to escape, using fire and a sharpened "no trespassing" sign.

This movie has a very negative reputation, but fuck it, I'll tell you it's actually one of the better entries in the post-Michael/Jason/Freddy oeuvre.  It dispenses with the typical "masked killer" trope and it's foggy island locales are genuinely unnerving and creepy.  It's Texas Chainsaw-but-less-visually-arty atmosphere reminds me a lot of early Wes Craven (or post-Chainsaw Hooper).  This Canadian production features art direction by Carol Spier, who's performed that duty on nearly all of Cronenberg's films.