The first thing we need to recognize about Pumpkinhead is that in no significant way does he actually resemble a pumpkin.
Ultimately this matters less than it should, but it’s still one of the many odd choices that come to define this would-be franchise, and this monster of the iconic name but curiously nonexistent stature in the overall horror movie mythos.
I mean, let’s look at the facts on the ground here: there is a movie out there that not only stars beloved B-movie icon Lance Henrikssen, but is directed by equally iconic special effects master Stan Winston… and we simply do not talk about it.
And as yet another spooky season winds its way to a close, I found myself wondering ‘why’?; a question that gnawed at me until, really, there was only one option: watch every movie in the series and report my findings.
Pumpkinhead, as it turns out, is something of a literary adaptation; based on a poem by one Ed Justin, parts of which eventually work their way into the series itself. Having read it, it is… difficult to see just what Stan Winston saw in this particular work. But once you find out the truth of its origins its actually much easier to account for its unique tone. There’s a certain fairy tale quality to the proceedings, but not in a Disney Princess sort of way; no, this rather harkens back to the original fairy tales, a harsh realm of byzantine moral consequences and inescapable fates.
After an appetite whetting opening set in the 1950s (which at first I mistook for the 1800s), we join Lance Henriksen as Ed Harley, general store owner and deeply loving Pa as he goes about his day, doting on undeniably adorable moppet Eddie (Chance Micahel Corbitt). And if the movie succeeds at nothing else, within five minute it immediately makes one realize just how massively Hollywood screwed the pooch by relegating him to brooding tough guy roles. Now, obviously, not a man among us can doubt that he exceeds at that sort of thing. But the rareness with which he’s allowed to portray emotions like warmth and joy does feel like a net loss.
Also… he was, like an objectively attractive man. I’m not going to put too fine a point on this because the late 80s was not a period where this sort of rugged handsomeness was the look du jour. But… look: Hollywood spent a whole lot of time and effort trying to convince us that Tom Cruise was the sexiest man alive when the reality was he just had really good posture. Undeniably, mistakes were made. But there’s a world where Lance Henriksen took his shirt off way more, and we all probably would have been better off for it. You know… as a society.
Though the film spends a decent amount of time on the setup, there’s no real reason for us to do the same; suffice it to say, a bunch of youths show up to do a little off-road dirt biking, things take an unfortunate turn for certain towheaded child actors, and certain hellish retributions become inevitable. Ed finds his way to a witch (the hilariously named Haggis, portrayed here by Florence Schauffler, who promises him the vengeance he seeks, but at the cost of his soul. From there, the film unfolds more or less how you’d expect, though there are some mildly unexpected twists that reinforce the general zero sum morality play of it all. The most important one, and the element that most distinguishes Pumpkinhead from similar creatures/franchises, is just how thoroughly it indicts both Harley, and to a lesser extent, the audience, for its bloodthirst.
For those not raised in the era, it’s important to understand one thing about the horror movie franchises of the 80s: the bad guys were, for all intents and purposes, our protagonists. We as the audience were meant to cheer on Jason, and Freddy, and all the rest, as they went about their gruesome business. What makes Pumpkinhead an outlier, then, is the toll that the summoning inflicts on Poor Ed Harley: to literally feel the pain and suffering of Pumpkinheads victims. Which serves to give Henriksen something more to play than just a man consumed with vengeance till it erodes his very soul, the typical arc of these things. Instead, he experiences almost immediate regret and spends the rest of the film desperate to call the whole thing off.
This, as it turns out, is not the only interesting tweak in the tale; Joel (John D’Aquino), the one most responsible for setting these events in motion, has priors and freaks out at the possibility of a third strike. And, predictably, goes to extremes to try and save his ass.
Now, we’ve all seen this sort of thing before; Joel has been marked as The Hateable One, the selfish, awful character who the audience can’t wait to see get his. But here, in a decidedly unusual turn of events for the genre, he eventually recognizes the damage he’s doing and chooses to face up to his actions and do the right thing. But it’s already too late.
These are, perhaps, small touches, but they are appreciated. There was a certain misanthropy, a nihilism to the horror of that era. It can still be fun to revisit at times, but sometimes the ugliness can stick in your throat. Not so here. It’s a film with at least some sense of compassion… which may very well be the reason it didn’t take off the way its pedigree would seem to all but guarantee.
Which brings us to the two questions everyone is dying to know: how did Winston do as a director and does Pumpkinhead have the juice as a movie monster?
The answer to the first question is… more or less fine. Certainly, Winston doesn’t embarrass himself. He may not be a particularly inspired stylist but he has the fundamentals down, which, as we will soon learn, is not a thing to be taken for granted. But with an assist from cinematographer Bojan Bazelli (whose eclectic and impressive resume covers everything from Boxing Helena to The Ring to Hairspray), he instill a sense of eerie atmosphere in the night scenes, with exquisite shafts of moonlight almost worthy of framing.
But what Winston gets right (and this is key)… he really knows how to frame his creation.
The film is not shy about showing its monster in all its glory, and the actual design is strong enough to hold up to that level of scrutiny. And Tom Woodruff Jr, the man in the costume, lends him an almost slinky sense of menace, a trait that will be lost in the subsequent films where Pumpkinhead becomes more of a blunt force threat. Which is another place that Winston shines: his imaginative stagings of the stalking scenes; not for nothing is one of Winston’s go-to staging techniques to have Pumpkinheads’ arm shoot down from the top of the frame, grab an actor by their skull and puill them up and out of said frame. It makes no sense from either a logical standpoint or just our current understanding of dynamic physics, but in the context of the reality Winston has built, it works pretty much every time he tries it.
So, yes: Pumpkinhead has the look down well enough. But, unfortunately, for all its merits, there’s still something missing. Some X factor that just didn’t shake out. He’s an impressive beast, and yet for all that impressiveness, he fails to instill the same sense of fear in viewers that Henriksen manages in a single rage-filled glance
Honestly? Not bad for a human.
It took six years for the next chapter of the Pumpkinhead series to come out, an eternity in horror movie terms. And when it did it was, perhaps predictably, no longer considered fit for theatrical consumption. The kind of gleefully trashy popcorn horror pic was well into its decline at this point, replaced by classier, bigger budgeted semi-prestige star vehicles like Interview With The Vampire, Wolf, and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. There was some refuge on video store shelves, an avalanche of cash-in sequels that (if we were lucky) delivered the gruesome goods at budget conscious prices.
One thing that can certainly be said about Pumpkinhead: Blood Wings that the original can’t claim is a welcome upgrade in B-movie casting. Though no one in the first film embarrassed themselves, with the possible exception of vet George “Buck” Flower, nobody really stood out either. Mostly they hit their marks and got the job done. Which, to be fair, is nothing to sneeze at.
But here? We’ve got the Scorpio Killer (on the side of the angels no less!), Punky Brewster, a straight-up Bond Girl, Linnea Quigley, and, in a stunt casting coup that could not be more “1994” if it had involved Nancy Kerrigan singing Ace of Base in a White Bronco… Roger Clinton as Mayor Bubba.
This, as it turns out, is destined be the wisest choice in a film that is otherwise comprised of a series of choices, each one just a little more baffling than the one before.
Our story begins just as the first one did, with a flashback to the 1950s. But, weirdly, a 1950s that looks nothing like the 1950s as represented in the first film, which resembled the 1800s. Here we have a pack of greaser-type motorcycle punks, picking on a deformed young boy in a manner that, in true DTV fashion, bypasses ‘boys will be boys’ antic bullying and lunges face first into ‘full blown psychopathy’.
You might wonder what any of this has to do with Pumpkinhead, though if you’re even halfway aware of how movies work, you will probably already have a creeping suspicion.
We are indeed watching the secret origin of Pumpkinhead.
It is… difficult to articulate just how misguided a creative decision this is. Any mystique, any aura, any sense of fear that the image of the creature might have induced is immediately dissipated the moment you learn he started out as a cross between Eric Stoltz in Mask and a Cabbage Patch Kid. And sure, yes, I get it, the film is an attempt to reframe Pumpkinhead as a tragic monster, a thing of pathos and righteous retribution. But it’s a choice that is pretty much the exact opposite of what made it interesting in the first place. Just a bizarre thing to do, and not really is a positive way.
In the present day, we meet Sheriff Sean Braddock (Andrew Robinson), a hometown boy moving back from the big city after some sort of situation involving his troubled teen daughter Jenny (Ami Dolenz). She almost immediately falls in with the wrong crowd, led by Danny Dixon (J. Trevor Edmond), son of the local judge (Steve Kanaly). In a series of events that escalates with fever dream intensity, an illicit late night drive leads to a hit and run, which, perhaps inexorably, leads to an occult ritual, which of course, leads to the return of Pumpkinhead.
Which leads to the films second bizarre choice…making the teen characters almost an afterthought when it comes to Pumpkinheads rampage. While the kids get a fair enough amount of screen time, they seem almost incidental to the actual plot of the film; with an unreal frequency the film cuts away from their drama to Pumpkinhead stalking and murdering some randos we’ve never seen before. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the truth behind these seemingly random murders, but the curious result is a bunch of kills of characters we have zero investment in, that don’t even deliver the gory goods to make up for it. And by the time Pumpkinhead turns his attentions on the characters we’re intended to have a rooting interest in, it’s become a case of ‘Too Little, Too Late’. And the whole thing culminates in a deeplly silly ending that’s supposed to be turn Pumpkinhead into a tragic figure; instead it reminds me of a famous line delievered by LL Cool J in the film Mindhunters. But there, it was supposed to be a joke.
It’s a confused film that arguably does no small amount of damage to any hopes of having Pumpkinhead be any kind of horror movie icon; for fucks’ sake, his real name is Tommy.
Which is not to say it doesn’t have its charms regardless. Most of the actors ham it up admirably; Roger Clinton in particular is a delight in his five or so minutes of absolutely superfluous screentime. And while the character makes basically no sense and his cartoonish shittiness is a reversal of the nuances that made the original stand out, you cannot argue that Edmond doesn’t create in bad boy Danny a villain you want to see get his. Also, the weird chemistry between Robinson and Gloria Hendry as his ally in trying to get to the bottom of the all murdering. It’s not romantic, but it’s weirdly domestic. A bizarre amount of scenes revolve around them doing expostiton while making coffee in his kitchem. And it’s made all the weirder by his wife (Caren Kaye) just standing around in the background the whole time. Curious.
Another thing to the films credit: Pumpkinhead still looks good. Mark McCracken, the teplacement for Tom Woodruff Jr, cuts a similarly imposing figure in the suit. And while it’s not shot with quite the deftness of Winstons’ gaze, director Jeff Burr stages the attacks with a certain grubby efficacy. All in all, the movie works well enough as its own thing; it’s pacy and more or less gets the job done. But if Pumpkinhead was going to be a going concern, this was absolutely the wrong path to take. And the recpetion, it seems, bore that out.
Also: that is, uhh… not a subtitle I would have gone with. IYKYK.
It was another thirteen years before we had another Pumpkinhead, which was… not a great sign; in a DTV era where a new Children of the Corn felt like an annual tradition, that Pumpkinhead laid fallow for that long implies a particularly cold reception. But what had changed in the time since Blood Wings was the horror revival was in full swing. Between Scream, the J-Horror craze, the ascendancy of Saw and Platinum Dunes’ remake-a-palooza (and, some might argue, the bleak implications of the Bush era and the national 9/11 hangover) audiences once again found their taste for terror. And the beast must be fed, by any profit motives necessary.
Clearly, a return to the pumpkin patch was not inevitable. Or, perhaps, even particularly desired. But it was possible. And sometimes, that has to be enough.
With all that in mind, then, the thing that makes Pumpkinhead: Ashes To Ashes fascinating among all of this is how, in a perverse way, it actually feels ahead of its time.
It was the legacy sequel before legacy sequels were actually a thing.
This time the inciting incident is the discovery of a mass grave and the arrest of those deemed responsible, the Wallaces. But what the citizens, heartbroken to find their departed loved ones in horrific, mutilated condition, don’t realize is that they were working on behalf of the local mortician/doctor (which seems like a conflict of interest, but never mind), who has secretly been using the corpses to further his research and selling the viable organs for profit.
One particularly incensed townsperson is Tess Panzer as Molly Sue Allen. Considered mentally unwell following the death of her child, the discovery of his corpse among the bodies sends her right to Haggis (now played by Lynne Verrall, in makeup that makes her look weirdly like Darryl Hannah crossed with a raisin). She sets Pumpkinhead after the Wallaces, and havoc, predictably, ensues.
I make no secret of the fact I think the 2000s was a low point for American culture, and cinema in particular. Certainly thematically, but absolutely aesthetically. And the opening moments of Ashes To Ashes didn’t do a hell of a lot to sway my opinion. Even considering the general chintziness of Blood Wings, it still retained a certain floor of quality, just from the more classically derived filmmaking style. But in its washed out tones, snapjaw editing techniques and generally dour lighting schemes, this second sequel is pretty much indistinguishable from all the other Platinum Dune wannabes trying to eke out a bit of dirty cash in an oversaturated Unrated Edition market.
Which is not to say there aren’t certain very notable improvements over Blood Wings.
For starters, they ignored the existence of Blood Wings.
Past that, the smartest thing the film does is bring back Lance Henriksen as a kind of Haunted Hayride Force Ghost. His presence doesn’t make a lick of sense, but his natural gravitas does manage to elevate the movie every time he’s onscreen.
Likewise, it’s nice to see Doug Bradley out of makeup and hamming it up, even if the role doesn’t give him all that much to work with. The rest of the cast is… fine. They’re at least professional enough to treat the proceedings as an excuse for scenery chewing, and in the absence of genuine quality, I can at least appreciate the energy. Special shout-out to Lisa McAllister as Dalia Wallace, an accomplice (and lover to whose level of remorse in terms of her part in things wavers depending on the amount of meth she currently has running through her system.
Earlier I mentioned Ashes To Ashes was most interesting as a precursor to the legacy sequel phenomenon, which is true; the very presence of Lance Henriksen is as sure a sign as you can come by. But it actually goes deeper than that: the Wallaces were indeed a minor but integral part of the original movie. And without going too far into spoilers, one of the major runners in this film is how a key decision by one of the characters in the original haunts them and has direct, if long-delayed, consequences here.
Sequels of this era basically never operated with this level of continuity, which is now essentially de rigueur.It is still a film of its time (nowadays you would cast the same actor as the original to play the role), but it’s fascinating to see something that has since become almost a tiresome cliche in such a nascent form.
(Which does bring up a rather notable failing of the script, co-written by director Jake West and Barbara Werner; it does a frankly terrible job of establishing the character dynamics; it’s never really explained why the Wallace kids, who were a perfectly normal family in the original, have gone all Burke and Hare. And until way later in the film than it should be, it feels weirdly unclear whether the relationship between Molly Sue and Oliver is brother or sister or ex-spouses. Though, to be fair to the way the series treats its backwoods setting, I suppose those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive)
Director West clearly lacks the resources of either Stan Winston or Jeff Burr, so there is a notable downgrade in the quality of the costume, though not as precipitous as it could have been. Still, the movie has gotten low budget enough that the occasional CGI shot has become necessary, and they stick put like a particularly unpleasant sore thumb here.
In the end, Pumpkinhead: Ashes To Ashes is a step down from Blood Wings, which was a step down from the original; the trajectory is inarguably a downward one. But some enjoyable performances and the novelty of the connection to the first film at least show the potential for more interesting endeavors in the future. You do kind of wonder where they might go from here.
And we didn’t have to wait long; the third sequel was out the very next year.
Bit of a monkey’s paw situation, turns out: if this is what such a quick turnaround got us… maybe letting absence make the heart grow fonder would have been the wiser path.
Say this for Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud; for all its flaws, there’s at least an amusing bit of novelty in the way writer-director Michael Hurst stages the opening as if it were the conclusion to a terrible sequel. Granted, it’s only a fleeting sense of self-awareness, but sometimes we just have to take what we can get. We open on a Pumpkinhead attack on Dallas (Rob Freeman), which is averted in a way which confirms Pumpkinhead to officially be one of the most eminently stoppable villains in all of horror cinema.
This is merely the first sign of something that was increasingly clear in the third film, but becomes all but undeniable in this final installment: they very animating principles of this franchise are an albatross around its neck.
This time to doomed summoner is one Ricky McCoy (Bradley Taylor, bad), who has a Romeo and Juliet situation going with one Jodie Hatfield (Amy Manson, not as bad but still pretty bad). The only one who knows about their forbidden love is Ricky’s little sister Sara (Maria Roman, decent if only by default), and acts as their facilitator. Alas, when a particularly loathsome pair of Hatfield brothers catch wind of a tryst, Sara proves a piss-poor lookout and winds up an inadvertent casualty, setting off the requisite bloodbath.
Sound uninspired? Well, let’s put it this way: the rival families in question are literally named the Hatfields and the McCoys and one of them is actually named Billy Bob.
This isn’t even first draft stuff. This is like… the Cliff Notes to a first draft.
Whatever scant charms the third film managed to squeeze out by fidelity to the original have all but dried out. And whats left is a deeply stupid movie full of deeply stupid and unlikable characters, performed terribly.
Lance Henriksen, ever the trooper, does his best to lend the film any sense of substance, but it’s extremely telling that his role in the movie essentially boils down to ‘Guy Who Is Practically Begging People Not To Let The Movie Happen’.
And even that, as it turns out isn’t enough: this time even ol’ Haggis herself (a returning Lynne Verrall) seems over this shit.
And who can blame either of them? They must’ve came to the exact same conclusion I did by now: Pumpkinhead simply does not work as a horror movie franchise. It’s lore is a trap. Pumpkinhead will never take Manhattan, or go to space, let alone The Hood. He’s never getting out of Beaver Taint, AL or wherever the fuck. Some idiot is always going to have to go to Haggis, like it’s the first time, despite there being dozens upon dozens dead by his hand by now. And despite a not insignificant number of survivors being fully aware of Pumpkinheads’ Kryptonite, which by the transitive property is still basically bullets. Every actor is going to be forced to put on a terrible hick accent (and the ones here are some of the worst I’ve ever heard, truly horrendous).
And he will never, ever look like a fucking pumpkin.
And so, with little pomp and even less circumstance, we find ourselves in the present day. It’s been 18 years since last we checked in, and the IP Death Drive is in full effect. A world where somebody somewhere is willing to throw 18,000,000 down a money pit labeled I Know What You Did Last Summer is a world in which the return of Pumpkinhead was pretty much an inevitability. But for once, the lessons of the past were actually learned: Pumpkinhead, as he once existed, simply did not work. To find out what Pumpkinhead looks like in the post-Obama era, we would need a new voice. Someone fresh, but tested. Forged in the fires of genre. Someone who knows the game and can play it well but isn’t intimidated by what came before. Someone who can create a new Pumpkinhead… the Pumpkinhead we truly deserve.
…we would need R.L. Stine.
…I mean, Jem Garrad.
Look, I don’t know what to tell you. The name on the tin is R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead but it was written and directed by Jem Garrad. As far as I can tell, Stine isn’t even a producer.
Why, if this wasn’t the best of the Pumpkinhead movies, I’d almost be tempted to accuse someone of fraud.
Brothers Sam (Bean Reid), Finn (Seth Isaac Johnson) and their mother Cassie (Kendra Anderson) move to the small farming town of Redhaven from New York City. Sam, still smarting from the death of their father and his own sense of young adult powerlessness, resents the move and responds in the eternal way of youth, being a sullen little shit. Despite the efforts of the Sheriff (Bob Frazer) and his daughter Becka (Adeline Lo) to welcome the newcomers, Sam is incapable of responding to anyone or anything with anything but sulky dismissal. An unwanted trip to the annual harvest festival ends with him stealing a prize pumpkin from Farmer Palmer (Kevin McNulty), the eccentric whom the town all treats a sort of benefactor. Finn, taking it upon himself to return said pumpkin to the farmer on Sams behalf, subsequently goes missing. Worse, no one except Sam seems to have any memory of Finn even having existed in the first place. Sam and Becka join forces to get to the bottom of things, but the path to the awful truth… runs right through Pumpkinhead.
Not that Pumpkinhead.
Different guy entirely.
Now it may not surprise you to discover that I am not exactly an expert in the works of R.L. Stine. I was a bit too old for Goosebumps, both on the page and especially on television: frankly, if I was going to lower myself to watching non-animated syndicated fare, it was going to be Power Rangers.
(Now, some might argue, I was too old to be watching Power Rangers as well. But this is the argument of a fool: when one is too old for stuntmen dressed up as skyscraper-sized robots, they are too old for joy itself. But I digress)
So I can’t speak to how this stacks up in the overall hierarchy of his oeuvre. Hell, I can’t even confirm that he had anything to do with this movie at all, aside from slapping his name on it like he was Andy freakin’ Warhol. No, pretty much all I can tell you is that the movie wasn’t necessarily great, but was at least an fairly fun and entertaining 90 minutes… which is more than I can say for the last two Pumpkinhead films I watched.
This is no small accomplishment, considering its protagonist is my quite possibly my least favorite archetype in all of fiction, the moody petulant pre-teen. The filmmaker does not exist who can create one of these dinks that the average viewer doesn’t want to drop kick out a window within two minutes of screentime. And even if they could… no child actor has the charisma to pull it off. Luckily for Bean Reid, the film moves at a fast enough pace that we don’t have to wallow in the moroseness for too long before Sam goes from brooding drag to pint-size protagonist we can actually get behind. And he’s aided in earnest by Lo as Becka, who has a way with a wisecrack and whose ball-busting chemistry with Reid does a lot to make Sam tolerable before the fireworks truly kick in.
But the real scene stealer (besides Pumpkinhead himself, who we’ll get to in a moment) is Matty Finochio as Rusty, the town outcast who knows what’s really going on. Finochio tears into the requisite infodump with a goofily self-aware zeal. His comic energy gooses the proceeedings, threatening to overwhelm the stakes (and in an extended scene where he distracts Farmer Palmer so the kids can do some investigating, he nearly does) but just as his shtick starts to curdle his backstory is revealed and Finochio invests his incredibly broad character with an unanticipated depth. It’s not a star making performance, exactly. But the scene stealer trophy is definitely on the table.
And while moms are by and large superfluous to this sort of story, credit where credit is due to Kendra Anderson, who genuinely does seem like a cool mom; any mom who suggests they watch The Long Kiss Good Night as a family is a keeper.
Of course, in the end, there’s only one star of a Pumpkinhead movie, and that’s Pumpkinhead.
Except, funny thing: the monster in this movie isn’t actually Pumpkinhead.
The monster is listed in the credits as Scarecrow, and the man in the suit is Troy James, who is described in his imdb profile as freakishly bendy. Which, having watched the movie… yes, can confirm. Scarecrow (who, for what it’s worth, does have a head that more closely resembles a pumpkin that Stan Winston even came close to) has a decidedly more generic design than his predecessor, but what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in
(There is a Pumpkinhead in this movie, for the record. But that’s a revelation for the viewer to discover on their own)
Look, let’s not mince words here: this is not a scary movie for adults. I am far from the target demo. But that doesn’t make me immune to its pleasures, simple as they might be. Or, for that matter, blind to the fact that at a certain age I would have eaten this right up. This may lack the gore or the existential terror of a horror movie for grown up, but that’s not the same as treating the target audience with kid gloves: to the extent she can without invoking the ire of a million angry parents, Gerrard shoots this like an actual horror film, which means the scares and the chase scenes have genuine tension. The secret of childhood that people seem to forget when they grow up and become parents is that kids love to be scared; if it’s done in the right way, it’s some of the most fun they can have. Halloween is not just a beloved holiday on account of the candy, after all.
Even better, it doesn’t pull punches in the ending, either. It’s not really a spoiler in a horror movie aimed at kids to reveal that our heroes survive and manage to save the day. But what was unexpected was the actual cost of the victory. It is not a clean victory, and not an entirely happy ending, either. But it is not an ending without hope. And in this, we can actually draw a parallel between this movie and all the other Pumpkinheads, which at heart are a treatise on regret and consequences. Every version of Pumpkinhead is a variation on the idea that one selfish choice, be it stealing a pumpkin, or asking a witch to summon a demon to murder a bunch of kids, can have unexpected, terrible repercussions that rebound on you and the people you care about. It’s an important lesson, and one that society could benefit from learning.
And if Pumpkinhead is to have a legacy, perhaps there’s none better than that.
Except maybe shirtless Lance Henriksen. That’s good too.
