A Labor Day slasher!
BACKGROUND
Directed by Paul Lynch from a screenplay by William Gray, the Canadian production slasher movie Prom Night had been a financial success when it was released in 1980, earning $14.8 million at the box office on a budget of $1.5 million. In response that success, Lynch received offers to direct two different projects. One was exactly what you would expect: another Canadian production slasher movie.
The other project came out of left field: Lynch was offered the chance to direct Charlton Heston in an adventure thriller called Mother Lode, working from a script by Heston’s son, Fraser C. Heston. The elder Heston having a dual role in the film, playing brothers caught up in a search for a mother lode of gold in the remote high country of British Columbia. Lynch decided to stick with horror... so Charlton Heston and Fraser C. Heston directed the movie together. Mother Lode got a very limited theatrical release and has largely been forgotten.
Lynch and Gray reteamed to deliver a slasher movie for producer Anthony Kramreither, and Gray wrote a script that allegedly had a very simple moment of inspiration: Lynch heard a child use the word “humongous” and thought that would make a good title for a horror movie about a hulking murderer.
There are many awesome things about horror movies from the 1970s and ‘80s, and one of my favorite items on that list is the fact that filmmaker gave horror fans special ways to celebrate various holidays and special events. We know what we’re going to watch on the likes of Valentine’s Day, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Mother’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other dates because there are horror movies to go along with those dates. Lynch gave us one that was set on Prom Night – and as a teenager, I would have much rather stayed home and watched Prom Night than actually attend a prom. (I skipped prom, but did attend an all-night after party.)
With this collaboration, Lynch and Gray decided to give us something to watch on Labor Day.
SETTING
The story begins during Labor Day weekend in 1946, when a party was being held on Dog Island, which is owned by the Parsons lumber empire and sits somewhere out on an unnamed lake. It won’t take viewers long to deduce that filming took place in Canada. (In Ontario, to be exact.) There’s reference to a St. Martin being nearby, but it’s clearly not the St. Martin Island in the Caribbean. This is some fictional, Canadian location.
Young Ida Parsons (Shay Garner) spent the party outside of her family’s home, visiting her German Shepherd dogs, which are kept in a fenced-in area. A drunken houseguest (Page Fletcher, with a strong Canadian accent) comes stumbling out and confronts Ida about her “virgin princess” behavior. This leads to a sexual assault that goes on for way too long, with close-ups of the man’s thrusting face.
The dogs escape from their enclosure and attack the man – unfortunately, not arriving until after the physical assault has ended. He is, deservedly, torn to pieces.
Jump ahead 36 years. A group of youths on a weekend boat trip end up stranded on Dog Island – and by this time, the idyllic island has truly crumbled into a horror movie setting. It’s rundown and dirty, with the skulls of long-dead dogs scattered throughout the forest. The house is frozen in time, as Ida turned the place into a compound and lived in seclusion there for decades. The home, boathouse, and surrounding wilderness become a slaughterhouse.
It’s a great setting for a slasher; a chunk of land that’s completely isolated. Without a boat, there’s no way to escape.
KILLER
The killer is Ida Parsons' son (Garry Robbins), a hulking, physically powerful man who has spent his entire life isolated from the outside world. Ida raised her son, afflicted with brain damage and acromegaly, in complete seclusion, believing she could keep him "sinless" by shielding him from the evils of society. With nothing to do except learn from his mother and explore the island, he became immensely strong and developed into a skilled hunter. He came to view all outsiders as threats.
After Ida died, he was left without his mother's influence or any connection to reality. He survived by eating the island's dogs and began killing stranded visitors.
He is the “humongous” being of the title. Deformed, wearing raggedy clothes, non-verbal, but doing a lot of grunting and scoring most of his kills not with bladed weapons but with his bare hands. He’s not a very interesting character, and he’s a bit of a Jason Voorhees knock-off, but he’s imposing and gets the job done as a killer.
FINAL GIRL
Sandy Ralston (Janet Julian) is the final girl, and one of her standout moments is lifted directly out of Friday the 13th Part 2.
After witnessing the deaths of her friends, Sandy realizes that Ida's son can be manipulated through his obsession with his mother. When he chases her into Ida's bedroom, where he has stored his mother’s skeletal remains, Sandy wraps a blanket around her head and pretends to be Ida, convincing him to leave the room. She has already been said to resemble Ida, so the killer falls for the trick. It’s just like heroine Ginny tricking Jason by putting on his mother’s sweater and pretending to be her in F13 Part 2. (And the mom’s corpse still being in her bedroom is also reminiscent of Psycho.)
Sandy ultimately survives the final confrontation, proving to be quite proactive and resilient, even if the ordeal breaks her mind. The film ends with Sandy sitting alone on Ida's dock, traumatized by what she has experienced and resembling the scarred and isolated woman Ida had become.
VICTIMS
Brothers Eric Simmons (David Wallace) and Nick Simmons (John Wildman) take their girlfriends Sandy Ralston and Donna Blake (Joy Boushel), along with their sister Carla Simmons (Janit Baldwin), on a weekend yacht trip. After their boat wrecks, they become stranded on Dog Island along with fisherman Bert Defoe (Layne Coleman)... and then the horror begins, with five victims and a final girl for Ida’s humongous son to terrorize.
Bert, another character with a strong Canadian accent, is the person who knows the history of Dog Island and gives the others some information on the Parsons family, Ida’s isolation, and the dogs. Donna is the “experienced girl” of the bunch, while Sandy is low-key and, going just by appearances, the bespectacled Carla might be the character that many viewers expect to become the final girl.
Eric is the sensible brother, while Nick is an unbalanced, wild douchebag who drinks heavily, points his rifle at people, and is fully responsible for what happens to his traveling companions (and himself). He’s the one who flips out, drives the boat recklessly, fights with his brother, and manages to get them stranded. When Nick exits the picture, it’s a relief.
DEATHS
Humongous features a good handful of deaths, although most of them are not particularly dazzling sights. It starts with the rapist getting torn apart by the dogs. Once the young people get stranded on the island, the most deserving of the bunch, Nick, gets killed off-screen.
One character dies simply from being tossed aside. Another is decapitated with an axe, but all you see is a bloodless shot of the axe swinging into their neck.
The killer shows off his physical strength by breaking one character’s back while holding them in a bear hug. (A kill that Jason Voorhees would replicate in Jason Goes to Hell – and good for him for stealing something from Humongous after this movie stole from him!)
The bloodiest death is saved for poor Carla, who gets her head crushed in the killer’s hands.
CLICHÉS
Here’s the line-up: The isolated island, the mysterious local legend, the creepy old recluse, the abandoned compound, some diary exposition, the characters splitting up, the final girl discovering the bodies of her friends, the hulking and deformed killer, some sexually-minded characters, gratuitous nudity, and the wild jerk who causes the deaths of innocent people with idiotic behavior.
POSTMORTEM
Humongous isn’t a well-known slasher movie. It seems to have come and went without many people taking notice, and it has sort of faded into obscurity. But it does have a cult following, like all slasher movies of the 1980s. Horror fans don’t let movies like this just get completely forgotten. In that regard, Paul Lynch definitely made the right choice when deciding between making another slasher movie or making Mother Lode with Charlton Heston. Underwhelming adventure movies like Mother Lode can disappear with very few people remembering them. Horror movies endure. As obscure as Humongous may be, it definitely has a large cult following now, more than forty years later, than Mother Lode ever did.
This movie wasn’t able to replicate the success of Prom Night, but that doesn’t appear to have had any impact on Lynch’s directing career. He had many more credits ahead of him. Even within the next five years after the release of Humongous, Lynch had earned directing credits on 14 more projects, including the thriller Bullies (a movie that stuck with me for decades after a single childhood viewing) and episodes of the TV shows Moonlighting and Murder, She Wrote. And that’s just a small slice of what Lynch did post-Humongous.
One thing that probably held Humongous back a bit over the years is the low quality of its home video release. The VHS of this movie was so dark and murky, you could barely see anything. Thankfully, the movie has been cleaned up in the digital age, and now horror fans who seek it out actually have a chance to properly see what occurs on Dog Island. It’s not a pretty sight, but it’s worth watching.
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