HUMONGOUS

Canada, 1982, 94 minutes, Colour.
Janet Julian, David Wallace.
Directed by Paul Lynch.

Humungous is a Canadian horror thriller. It is technically stylish - but is derivative in content.

The film opens with echoes of Halloween and Friday the 13th., with a party in 1946. A wealthy frigid girl is savagely raped and the rapist is attacked by savage dogs. There is a transition to the present by an excellent credits collage of photos of the girl and her family. The film then transfers to the routine Friday the 13th style - a group of glamorous (in this case actually some of them are models for commercials) teenagers aboard a yacht with their clashes, sexuality - and a fair amount of adolescent tedious behaviour. When they clash and their boat runs aground and bursts into flame they are cast on the island where the lady, now a very old woman, is alleged to live. Expectations are thwarted. Audiences would expect animal menace with the dogs pursuing the teenagers and killing them. The teenagers are killed - but the dogs are dead, the lady is dead and her retarded humungous son is the assailant. The film is exciting enough in its way, although contrived, and the teenagers are killed in the expected
manner. The hero goes, perhaps suddenly, towards the end - and the heroine, as usual, has her full effect of screaming and survives.

The film is a Canadian production and has great technical qualities which can be admired - even though we have seen the material many times before. Only an average example of the multiple-killing horror of the late 1970s early 1980s.