Pumpkinhead

Pumpkinhead (1988)

The movie opens with a young Ed Harley watching as a man is chased to the porch of his parents house. When he asks his mother why they won’t let the panicked man in she just responds, “We can’t”. Ed then sees a terrible creature catch up to and kill the man they wouldn’t let in the house. The creature is a demon of revenge called Pumpkinhead, who was summoned by someone that was wronged. Years later Ed is raising his young son and running a rural store. A group of kids from the city stop by his store and while he is away delivering feed accidentally kill his son. Harley goes off for revenge and with the help of an old witch named Haggis summons the demon for revenge against the kids. But after the first couple of them are killed Harley has second thoughts and tries to stop the demon. But can it be stopped before it has run it’s course and the rest of the kids are dead?

For what should be a simple creature feature this is a surprisingly entertaining and well written movie. The story is tight, but does take enough time to establish the bond between Harley and his son, so when the boy dies you can understand Harley’s pain and why he summons Pumpkinhead. The movie even does a good job in establishing personalities for the soon to be victims of the demon. Even the stereotypical obnoxious creep that causes the accident and escalation eventually is shown to be a decent guy, which is an unusual amount of character development for a movie like this. A good script is only helped by decent performances from the cast. The actors that portray the victims are all good in their roles, but the real heart of the movie is Lance Henriksen as Ed Harley. He is able to show the characters heartbreak over losing his boy more with his body language, which allows him to deliver the dialogue without being overly angry. This kind of reaction just seems more realistic to me and made the movie even better. Henriksen has been in so many great movies, but I think this might just be his best performance.

Pumpkinhead boasts one of the coolest looking movie monsters I’ve ever seen. The design looks very scary and is able to move around the sets and really interact with the cast in a way you could never get out of CGI (which of course wasn’t around when they made this movie). Toss in a wonderful job with the Haggis makeup and you have a couple of creatures here that make this movie a real treat for an effects fan to watch. But I’m not done talking about the effects yet. There are a couple of transformation scenes as Pumpkinhead is being brought back to life that are awesome and the kills are cool too. I’m especially fond of the face being jammed thru the kitchen window, which might not have been the most elaborate but was still a great kill scene. I was also impressed with the camerawork, lightning, and sound on the movie. Scenes are framed with objects in the foreground like window frames or shot from odd angles to give some of the scenes a strange feel to them. Also lighting, especially the liberal use of red lights, helps to set the scenes in Haggis’ shack.

Before I finish I wanted to talk a bit about the special features that are on the new DVD of Pumpkinhead. There is a neat documentary on the disc that covers where the original idea for Pumpkinhead came from and how it was eventually developed into a movie. Some of the surviving cast (Cynthia Bain, Kerry Remsen, Brian Bremer, and old Haggis herself Florence Schauffler) are interviewed and discuss how they got the parts, as well as what it was like shooting the movie. I especially enjoyed hearing Schauffler discuss the makeup that she wore to get into the Haggis character. Separate from these is a longer interview with Lance Henriksen that covers not only how he got the job and what it was like filming, but also his approach to the character of Ed Harley. Special effects and location scouting/production design features follow the cast interviews. They are very informative, especially the stuff on the special effects that goes into the creatures design. Lastly there is a Stan Winston tribute that I kind of wished was a bit longer.

This is a perfect movie that for the first time is presented on a DVD that is worthy of the name Pumpkinhead. This is a must have for all horror fans collections. I highly recommend Pumpkinhead.

4 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer