Exploitation Nation

Starting today I am going to watch at least one horror movie I have not seen, counting down to Halloween night. I should have started this Sunday night, but I had Episodes of The Shield to catch up on, so sue me. So I started today off with…

HUMUNGOUS (1981) *1/2
D. PAUL LYNCH
VHS OOP

When David Fincher decided to make the film Panic Room he toyed with the idea of shooting it entirely in the dark. Apparently he had never seen this 1981 Canadian lensed terror trip that is without a doubt the darkest movie ever made. When I say darkest, I don’t mean mood, I mean without lights. As in whole stretches of the movie are literally just blank screen with sounds. You cannot see characters, backgrounds or what the hell is going on. Granted I watched a rip from the good old analog days of VHS (it is not on DVD)  so it is not up to the crispy, crystal clearl digital beauty that we have all come to know and love, but this is ridiculous as my friend Nick would say. The smeary sub par film to video transfer takes already muddy and too dark cinematography and renders it unwatchable.

But I stuck it out and watched the whole damn thing anyways. It wasn’t really worth the trouble. The movie opens with a rape scene, not usually a good sign! In the late 1940’s this prim and proper girl is raped by a guy who is pissed off she wont give him the time of day. Her dogs manage to jump the fence and rip the guy apart before she brains him with a rock. Now this whole scene is lit fine and is visible. So a muddy transfer cannot be blamed for all the visual problems. Cut to 36 years later and a group of horribly obnoxious (and one borderline psychopath) group of teens going out on their Dad’s yact for a weekend. The kids are strangely reminiscent of the Scooby Doo gang with the leader being just like Fred (Blond, good looking, sporty, even wears white and blue), His girl like Daphne (A Model, Plucky, gets the job done, even wears purple) His sister is like Velma (Has glasses, is a tag along, very smart, sometimes a smart ass) The Psycho is a little like if Shaggy had gone bad (Joker, smokes dope, always stoned!). There’s an extra girl in here too though that takes her shirt off a lot. The Scooby gang never had that, though Velma in the tight sweater in the Scooby Doo movie was a very GOOD idea. On with the review… They pick up a stranded boater who tells them the island they are approaching is filled with dogs that protect the old lady who lives there. They can hear the dogs howling. Then the psycho boy commandeers to the boat, wrecks it and causes it to explode! Thus shipwrecking them all on the island of pissed off rape victims and something aparently Humungous! Oh shit! Naturally as they all wander around the island they get picked off one by one until the last girl (the model naturally) faces off with the monster (who is a retarded dude that has acromegalee we are told!) and does him in. Yep, I just told you the whole movie. You’d have figured it all out long before it was over anyways. There is no gore to speak of, and what little violence there is, is obscured in the damn awful darkness. You NEVER see the monster, not because they don’t show him, but once again, because it is too dark.

A few years later director Paul Lynch would go on to do the superior Hicksploitation/Action/Rape/Revenge potboiler Bullies that is also not available on DVD currently. Previous to Humungous he did the vastly overrated, rather tepid and silly slasher Prom Night.

Here is a scene somebody posted on youtube. thanks to them for doing so. You can see (well not see actually) how dark the movie is.

Come by tomorrow to see what I watch next!

Andy Copp
2008-10-29
02:08:12

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