It's so sad seeing how much stick this film gets when it doesn't deserve it. People complain that there's not enough lighting and you can't see the monster half of the time...when in fact the film was intentionally made that way. I watched Humongous recently and it is already one of my favourite horror films. The reason you don't see much of the monster is because if you did, it would take away the sense of mystery surrounding it. We actually only get to see the monster fully after his face has been disfigured from fire, which I think is quite clever. There's enough silly monster films out there of men wearing masks, so we don't exactly need another one!

The story starts off very well with the rape scene, and then the title screen with photographs in the background. I think it's great how they use photographs of the woman to explain her back-story rather than flashbacks as most films do. The photograph of her with blank eyes and a scar on her face after the rape tells more than any flashback ever could. Next thing we know, it's 36 years later and a group of good-looking teenagers crash their boat on the island where the woman once lived. We find out that she got pregnant after the rape and gave birth to a deformed son. The son has become a wild monster, having been shut off from civilisation on the island. The monster stalks the stranded teenagers and slowly kills them off.

There are some amazingly tense moments such as when the girl is pretending to be the monsters mother, you can see her hand shaking from fear. And also when one of the guys looks through a keyhole and sees the monsters eye peering back at him. The story of the woman and her anguish from giving birth to her deformed son is very well explored - one of the girls finds the woman's diary which is how she knows how to calm him down. When the 'monster' is finally killed, the grunts and noises he makes are very realistic and emotional, and you know that he doesn't want to die. This scene made me feel rather sad. You can also tell that the girl is upset by the fact that she had to kill him.

I can't believe that no one is giving Humongous the credit it deserves, this is one of the better horror films I have seen recently, and I've seen loads! Most films rely on special effects, cheese or gore to make them good, but Humongous relies on mood and atmosphere. That's not to say that it doesn't have any gore, but it's not exactly a gore-fest. If you're a horror fan I strongly urge you to see Humongous and draw your own conclusions, don't dismiss it because of other peoples comments, for it is a great film.

Director Paul Lynch also brought us the Canadian cutter Prom Night and here, he starts the action off with a bang: on Labor Day weekend 1946, a drunk (Page Fletcher, the title character from HBO's The Hitchhiker) rapes Ida Parsons at a party her rich father is throwing. She is saved by her dogs, who attack the man before she smashes his brains out with a rock.

36 years later, preppy bros Eric (David Wallace, Mazes and Monsters, Mortuary) and Nick are taking their father's yacht on a weekend getaway with their girlfriends, Sandy (Janet Julian, who was TV's Nancy Drew when Pamela Sue Martin left the series) and Donna (Joy Boushel, Terror Train) and their sister, Carla (Janit Baldwin, Gatorbait, Phantom of the Paradise).

After a day of staring at girl's asses while feeling up other asses (this movie has more nudity in the first 11 minutes than nearly every movie that will come out this year),fog comes in and teh boys save a shipwrecked fisherman named Bert. As he recovers from hypothermia, he tells them of Dog Island, the home of lumber baroness Ida Parsons (remember her?) who lives on the island with only her wild dogs for company. It's at that point that Nick wrecks the boat into - DA DA NA - Dog Island!

Bert gets wounded. Carla gets lost. Nick walks into the woods and gets killed by a gigantic shadowy character. Meanwhile, Sandy and Eric attempt to find Ida Parsons.

While all this is going on, Bert goes into shock so Donna tries to warm him up by stripping nude. As you do. As she lies across his frozen body, the shadowy thing tosses her into the rocks and then rips off Bert's head.

In the middle of all this, Sandy and Eric discover not only Ida's house, but Carla, who is alive. You know who isn't? The dogs of Dog Island, who are all skeletons inside cages.

Our protagonists find a nursery full of dusty toys and a cobwebbed crib, as well as Ida's diary, filled with frightening photos and insane scribblings of her sick child, who she intended to keep free from sin. And oh yeah - they also find her skeleton.

Everyone wises up and decides to leave Dog Island. They gather some supplies and make their way to the basement, where they find the bodies of Nick and Donna.

So the story everyone decides to go with is that this shadowy monster is Ida's son, who somehow lived, and has been driven insane by his mother's death. He's incredibly strong, an amazing tracker and sees any outsiders as a threat. You'd think they'd get the hell away from the house, but no, they go back to get matches and Eric gets killed. His back gets broken all Bane style and Sandy runs to Ida's room to hide.

When the shadowy man gets there, she wraps a blanket around her head and acts as if she is Ida. I love this scene so much, as we never see the monster and only a brightly lit Sandy. Her words are measured and forceful, but as we look at her face, we can tell she's never been more afraid in her life.

Just when Sandy thinks she's safe, she tries to leave the room. However, the mutated man-child realizes her ruse and chases her to the boathouse, where he crushes Carla's head along the way. Even setting this maniac on fire won't stop him, because it's 1982 and this is a Canadian slasher film.

You know what does stop him? A big signpost that impales him. Usually, slashers get stopped by impalement, have you ever realized that?

At the end, Sandy is left alone on the dock, decimated by the fact that she's had to kill a human being and feeling the loss of her friends. And we notice - she now looks a lot like Ida.

Humongous is sleazy and bloody fun, with a unique killer and plenty of atmosphere. Sure, it's a slasher, but it has a way better premise than kids stuck at a summer camp or a cursed calendar date. I've heard comparisons to Joe D'Amoto and George Eastman's Antropophagus, but this has none of the over the top gore of that film. That's not to say that there isn't plenty here.

There's also a minimalist score by John Mills-Cockell, which really sets the tone and amps up the mood. He also worked on Terror Train and was one of the first people to purchase a Moog synthesizer.

A hulking, brain-damaged beast stalks teens trapped on a remote island: not exactly the most original of plots, for sure, but it sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? Unfortunately, despite this one having many of the raw ingredients necessary for a hugely enjoyable slice of trashy 80s horror, it screws matters up with mundane direction, very dark photography, virtually no decent gore, and a creature that is hidden away in the shadows for most of the film.

Humongous begins with a promising pre-credits sequence set in the 1940s, in which a young woman is raped on Labour Day by a drunken party-goer, who immediately gets his comeuppance when a dog rips him to shreds.

The action then moves to the present day (ie., the early 80s),and sees five teenagers—Eric (David Wallace),his girlfriend Sandy (Janet Julian),nerdy sister Carla (Janit Baldwin),hot-headed brother Nick (John Wildman),and Nick's slutty squeeze Donna (Joy Boushel)—taking a trip on a lake in a motor cruiser.

After becoming lost in a bank of fog, the group happens across a man named Bert stranded in a lifeboat, who warns them that they are approaching some dangerous rocks. Nick seizes control of the boat, but crashes it, and the friends are forced to leap for safety and make for a nearby island, which according to Bert is home to a crazy woman and her pack of dogs. Bert's info, however, is not entirely correct: the old woman, who turns out to be the rape victim from the prologue, has recently died, and her dogs have been devoured by her hideously deformed son, who is on the loose on the island and still very hungry!

The rest of the film sees the teens, and an injured Bert, being hunted and killed one-by-one by the ravenous monster; it's all par for the course, with the expected false scares, sudden deaths, the discovery of the creature's lair, and a scene blatantly cribbed from Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) in which final survivor Sandy tries to confuse the killer by masquerading as his mother.

Although director Paul Lynch seems content to to deliver a by-the numbers product, the film does boast two marvellously tacky scenes that I feel are worthy of note: Donna the slut tries to warm up a shivering Bert by taking off her top and pressing her breasts against him; and Sandy falls backwards onto a mouldy corpse, which somehow becomes attached to her. If only Lynch had included more trash of this calibre, or just gone for a higher level of blood and guts, I might have thought more highly of it. As it is, it's just another title in a long list of instantly forgettable backwoods horrors.