HUMONGOUS (1982) - stop your snickering, it's a movie about survival

Here is the Humongous trailer again. I guess I'm doing a tribute to Janet Julian, since no one else will.

Sometime in the forties, a woman named Ida resists the drunken advances of some asshole at an island party, so naturally he rapes her in the woods. Her pet dogs take umbrage with this rather unenlightened behavior and rip his ass to shreds, canine style. Over the opening credits, some sultry sax accompanies what looks to be colorized B&W photos of Ida, hanging out with family and friends (especially her trusty, rapist stomping dogs).

In the modern age (1982), some “teens” decide to head out on an island trip, trying to broaden their horizons and maybe horizon their broads. This group includes the nerd girl in glasses, the slutty redhead, and the blonde hero jock. They would seem to be modeled after Velma, Daphne, and Freddy, respectively (from Scooby Doo fame), but Shaggy is nowhere to be found. I guess by this point he was probably serving time for possession of marijuana with intent to sell. Instead, we get the uber cute Ali MacGraw look alike (but hotter) played by Janet Julian. At one point, her boyfriend shows her ass to the camera, declaring it “the 7th wonder of the world”. I thought Andre the Giant was the 7th wonder of the world, but has since died, so maybe her ass slid into his spot. Either way, I'm not going to argue. Oh yeah, there's also some gun toting asshole with a mullet tagging along.

Their boating trip is interrupted by some guy stranded at sea with a non-functioning boat, and some asshole running a fog machine off shore doesn’t help matters. In his super Canadian accent, he tells them about that Ida chick, who lives on the island with a bunch of dogs (I presume relatives of the original canines). All of a sudden, the shotgun mullet fuck goes off his rocker for no reason, deciding to take over the boat, despite not knowing how it works. The resulting tussle leaves the boat in fiery ruins, with the crew having to abandon ship and head for the creepy island (brilliantly creating a Scooby Doo/Gilligan’s Island double homage). The nerd ends up falling overboard, and the Canadian boater breaks his leg. Say what you want about Shaggy and his lack of job prospects and personal drive; at least he doesn’t destroy vacations with violent, nonsensical rage.

The mulleted rat face runs off on his own, getting stalked through the woods and into a boat house by some mongoloid retard. He screams loudly, in aural range of the others, and is presumably ripped several additional assholes (literally speaking, that is). The next morning, the group decides to split up and explore the island for their better-off-dead compadre. They find the nerd girl in good health, and notice that the boat house is probably the lair of the mongoloid, what with the dead animal carcasses littered about. Meanwhile, the redhead hunts for fresh blueberries while being stalked, carrying them in her tits and returning them to the useless sixth wheel (the Canadian with the busted spoke) before finally washing her milk cans off. The guy appears to be getting sick, so she straddles him and rubs her tits on his chest as some sort of rudimentary slut therapy. This doesn’t impress the no doubt impotent mongoloid, who very quickly chucks her off like a rag doll and snaps the guy’s neck.

(spoilers here on out)

The other group of three happens upon the house in prime Texas Chainsaw Massacre style. They try the phone to no avail, and happen upon a creepy nursery with broken toys and what not. Rummaging through some photo albums, they notice that the last picture, dated 1949, shows Ida holding her new baby with a disturbed look on her face. This might have been an effective reveal had it not already been telegraphed several times over. Janet later reads Ida’s diary out loud, spelling everything out for the dumbasses in the audience. She also apparently absorbs some psychological insights from the diary (as well as from watching Friday the 13th Part 2), and, when confronted, pretends to be the mongoloid’s mother, commanding him to leave her the fuck alone. It works (surprisingly, this strategy always seems to works), but once she drops the act and goes into escape mode, the mongoloid follows suit. She heads to the boat house, only to bump into the nerd girl, who promptly gets her head squeezed like someone was juicing a giant tomato (a tomato wearing glasses that is).

Janet eventually stabs the mongoloid with a “no trespassing” sign, which could feasibly be construed as irony. She cries a bit, but it is unclear as to whether she feels sympathy for the beast or is just sad about her vacation going to shit. The sax and piano ballad kicks in, and we see her temptingly lounging on the pier, bruised and bloody, moping about being all alone on an island with no way to get home. I guess the lesson here is that no amount of trauma that results from a mongoloidal rampage can keep a girl like her from looking super hot.

image courtesy of Psychostasy of the Film