Astoundingly derivative and completely lacking in both production quality and acting ability, the only good thing about 1982's Humongous are that its climactic scenes are filled with spooky atmosphere, which can probably be chalked up to luck more than anything else.
We open sometime in the late 1940's where a rich family who lives on a small island is having a party of some sort. The daughter is being pretty well molested by a drunken suitor, and instead of just turning around and saying "hey, could someone get this drunkard off of me", to any one of the dozens of party goers, she instead runs helplessly into the woods where he proceeds to have his way with her. Now of course rape is never funny, but this scene is the first heads up that the quality of this movie might not be quite up to par. The audio is clearly post production, and to say that it is laughable would be a mild understatement. Imagine being in one room, while in the room to your left a man is struggling to lift very heavy boxes, and in the room to your right a woman is standing on a chair screeching at a mouse on the floor. That's an kind of what this scene sounds like.
Fast forward to today when the cast of Scooby Doo, siblings Eric (Fred), Nick (Shaggy), and Carla (Velma), along with 2 female friends (Daphne & I dunno, they just needed another pair of boobs I guess), are about to engage on a boating trip to somewhere. The acting is so bad that a lot of the dialog has to be dubbed over in post production.
The script gives the characters about as much depth as most porno movies give their characters. After dropping anchor and deciding to wait till morning to navigate the lakes channels, Nick decides that he doesn't want to wait till morning, or he wants to drive a boat, or something stupid. He and his brother Eric fight at the boats helm while Nick proclaims "I got as much right as you" and "you're not the only one who can do things", all of this is interspersed with thrilling shots of a boat wheel turning. So of course Nick crashes the boat, which causes it to explode. The stunt budget for this explosion had to have been in the tens of dollars.
Once on the island, the group is obviously picked off in usual horror movie fashion, only we really don't to see any of the kills. That boat blowing up must have really wiped out their budget. The action doesn't even try to be good. Poor Nick forgoes the usual trope of falling while running and instead ops for the less exhaustive falling while standing perfectly still.
The characters that don't die find an abandoned house, and some clues, which they use to explain the plot in meticulous detail, in case this rivetingly intricate mystery went over the viewers head.
The ending sequence is not bad, but that's mainly due to its liberal borrowing from the main plot point of Friday The 13th Part 2, and the fact that a lot of it is very darkly shot. Still, the psychopath at times sounds more like a fat man being denied pork chops than a maniacal killer, but what can ya do.
Worth a watch for comedic purposes and the somewhat intriguing final act, but that's about it. The only thing Humongous about this movie is its incompetence.
No comments:
Post a Comment