Scary Movies: Pumpkinhead

As usual, I’m running behind in my reviews of movies I watched during the Halloween season. But we’ve come to the final movie in our theme this year, which was Halloween itself, for which I think Pumpkinhead was quite fitting. I was a little skeptical this would be a good or fun movie, fearing B-movie schlock, but was pleasantly surprised. I mean, it’s definitely a B-movie, but there’s enough care put into its production and originality in its story, or at least the monster, to provide some entertainment. It was directed by Stan Winston, a special effects wizard in the 1980s (he worked on The Thing and the Terminator movies, among many others) who was making his directorial debut, and did quite a credible job.

The movie opens thirty years in the past, when young Ed Harley, who lives in a cabin with his family deep in the woods, is awoken by screaming and a man desperately trying to get in the cabin’s front door. Ed’s father refuses to let the man in, and from his bedroom window, Ed witnesses a horrible creature attack and kill the man.

Fast forward to the present (well, at least the late 1980s), and now Ed is a father himself to an eight- or nine-year-old boy named Billy, living in apparently the same cabin he grew up in. Ed loves Billy dearly and treats him with great gentleness and affection. During the day, Ed runs a bait stand down by the highway. He leaves Billy in charge of the store while he drives off for a short errand. Unfortunately, it’s at that time that a group of rowdy teenagers pulls up in a sports car and a truck hauling off-road motor bikes. The teen-agers decide to ride the motor bikes right there on the hill behind the bait store and one of them, Joel, who’s been drinking, hits Billy with his motor bike and terribly injures him. Because Joel is already on probation for a similar drunken incident a few months prior, he swears the other teens to secrecy.

Joel and the other teens continue to the vacation house the’ve rented for the weekend. However, two of the teens, Steve and his girlfriend Maggie, feel bad about the incident and stay with Billy until Ed returns. Unfortunately, they’re not able to explain to Ed how the incident happened because of their vow to Joel. Later that evening, Billy dies in Ed’s arms and Ed swears revenge on the teens.

Ed pays a visit to an impoverished local family with lots of dirty kids who live very deep in the woods, seeking directions to an old witch rumored to live even deeper in the forest. The paterfamilias of the clan refuses to tell Ed what he wants to know, but as Ed is driving away, one of the kids approaches Ed’s truck and gives him the information in exchange for some money.

Armed with the directions, Ed arrives at the ramshackle house of the witch, named Haggis, who tells him how to effect his revenge. He is to visit a hidden country cemetery and dig up a disfigured corpse buried in a certain mound, then bring both that body and his son’s dead body back to her. Ed does so, and when he returns to Haggis, she mixes some blood from both Ed and Billy and sprinkles it on the corpse, which comes to life in the shape of a monster called Pumpkinhead.

At the vacation house, Joel feels guilty about the accident earlier in the day and decides he will turn himself into the police. He’s too late, however, as Pumpkinhead arrives at the cabin and starts hunting the teen-agers one by one. The teens flee and hide in the woods trying to escape the fearsome creature, only to each be killed horribly. Every time a teen is killed, Ed goes into a sort of trance and experiences the killing as if he’s committing the murders himself.

Horrified at the curse he’s released, Ed returns to Haggis and asks her to call off the monster. However, she says that the monster can’t be stopped until it’s finished with the revenge it’s been called upon to perform. If Ed tries to interfere, he will die. Undeterred, Ed drives to the vacation home, trying to save the teens who haven’t yet been killed.

Will Ed succeed in stopping Pumpkinhead before it slices through all the teens? And how will he keep from falling victim to that fate himself? Will he realize that his own urge for revenge may be what’s powering the creature’s rage, and that therein might be the key to ending Pumpkinhead’s killing spree?

Pumpkinhead (1988)
Story/Plot/Characters— Not a masterpiece, but some surprisingly good character work by Lance Henriksen (who plays Ed), decent enough dialogue, and a plot that’s somewhat by-the-numbers but well-executed and well-paced. (1.5 points)
Special Effects— Clearly director Stan Winston was working with a limited budget here, but considering that he was primarily a horror special effects artist, the effects are unsurprisingly good, featuring a truly original monster. (1.5 points)
Scariness— Too predictable to be truly scary, but it certainly has its moments. (1 point)
Atmosphere/Freakiness— Some great freaky backwoods atmosphere as we follow Ed deeper and deeper into a pagan rural milieu that reflects his own retreat from ordered rationality into lust for revenge. (1.5 points)
Total=5.5 points (Okay)

Pumpkinhead is a bit better than your average B-grade horror movie, featuring a truly original monster that’s earned the movie a minor reputation as a cult classic. I don’t see any need to go out of your way to see this, but it’s a fun way for a horror fan to pass a couple hours.