D. Richard Gardner
TROMA
16mm (??)
This super weird, no budget Troma negative pick up rotgut starts off this year's October 31 day Halloween Horror movie challenge with a bang. Or a wimper actually. The pre-credits sequence has a long bit of narration featuring Jack Palance explaining the title and some voodoo legend bullshit explaining the word Hungan. This leads to a guy and gal in the woods who are chased by the cheapest monster this side of my friend's backyard werewolf movies. The monster doesn't rip out the guy's guts, he just lightly pats them. The gal knocks off his Halloween monster mask head and the cheapskate graveyard of dimestore props goes up in flames. Then...
She wakes up cause it is all a dream. Yawn.
After a pretty decent Pantera rip off song over the credits the real story jump starts with a medical dorm being haunted by a voodoo "Hungan" with a dumass Security gaurd, a giant black Janitor and some weirdo Lab guys doing top secrety experiments. Turns out the yahoos at this place have ressurected the Hungan from the pretitle sequence Frankenstein style in hopes to do their bidding ("We took a federal grant to cure cancer but you used it to create a BEAST!") . Meanwhile the local kids are having a house party with a band called "Cry Wolf" where the camera sits at the back of the room or cuts the the lone black guy in the crowd but never actually focuses on the craptacular band. The Hungan lays on the medical bed for a while, gets injected and rip off John Carpenter music plays.
Then we are back to our teens, the bimbo who keeps dreaming o fhte Hungan and her boyfriend who sounds like he would rather be in bed with any of the male cast members then with her. In her dreams the Hungan murder her again, but we can his voice echo inside his mask.
Before long the gang are in the woods camping, which they have been talking about for the first half of the movie. The hungan has followed them there and is picking them off in long protacted stalking scenes in braod daylight. The Hungan looks like a wrinkled, haggered Rick Astley. Some unseen woman is using voodoo to control the Hungan, but is clearly not making all the guys take off their shirts and hang out together by the tents and talk endlessly about the crappy band. It all climaxes in the Hunky shirtless guy and the Hungan fist fighting in a bought of fisticuffs that rivals the excitement found in the final minutes of THE GUY FROM HARLEM'S kung fu. And in a clear nod to the Oscar worhty films of Hal Needham it all ends with a reel of goofy outtakes and bloopers!
If Rhonda Shear's UP ALL NIGHT was still on the air this would be perfect fodder for the 3:00 am time slot. I am not sure if this means if it is worth watching or not.
Review © Andrew Copp
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