So, here I was, looking for a movie to watch, preferably one that I have both never seen before and can scratch off my Fill-In Filmography poster. Well, why not 1988’s Pumpkinhead? If nothing else, it stars actor Lance Henriksen, and I tend to like that guy. I seem to recall a movie review that referred to him as a “professional scary guy”. Henriksen can play roles that don’t need him to be scary, but when he is scary, he’s pretty good at it. So yeah, I was onboard for that.
Besides, there was some demon thing called “Pumpkinhead”. That has to mean something.
Rural single father Ed Harley (Henriksen) is living a quiet life. He’s got an adorable small boy named Billy (Matthew Hurley), runs a general store off a highway, and everything seems to be good. OK, that group of young city folks are kinda obnoxious, but that comes mostly from the bad boy of the group, Scratch (Joel Hoffman). He accidentally runs over Billy and leaves the boy to die. While Scratch’s friends react in horror at his actions and with sympathy for Ed and Billy, it doesn’t really help that Scratch pulls a rifle on most of the group to keep them from calling the cops. As it is, Billy dies, and Ed wants revenge. He seeks out a witch (Madeleine Taylor Holmes) who can summon the local legend Pumpkinhead to get revenge for Ed. Ed saw Pumpkinhead in action as a child himself, and he knows the thing can do the job.
However, Ed soon changes his mind. Pumpkinhead is cruel and violent. Ed sees the deaths through the monster’s eyes, and he realizes most of these people don’t really deserve to die. The witch says the monster can’t be stopped without Ed’s own death. But Ed, well, he’s going to try anyway as the shrinking group of young people do their best to escape the thing that seems to be killing them at will. Can Pumpkinhead be stopped?
This was a fun one. Stan Winston directed, and he made his career as a special effects guy first. As such, he really knows how to use the Pumpkinhead figure to maximum effect. Pumpkinhead is like a fleshy scarecrow, able to shrug off most injuries, massively strong, and with a few other magical abilities to help himself out. He’s a creature of rage, but he’s also crafty, playing with his victims in ways to make their deaths more horrifying. The name doesn’t make that much sense in the grand scheme of things, but for a creature like Pumpkinhead, maybe it doesn’t have to.
It helps that Henriksen makes a good lead. The movie takes its time before bringing the title monster in, all so the audience can get to know the human characters a bit first, especially Ed Harley. The early scenes show a man who is a good, caring father while the later ones show someone with what may be a demonic version of buyer’s remorse. The movie spends quite a bit of time with Ed long before Pumpkinhead gets called in, and it helps that the victims, while not particularly noteworthy individually, aren’t also just callous jerks. Pumpkinhead is just bad news for everybody that nobody realizes until it’s too late…except for the audience. Like I said, this was fun, and it looks like everyone involved knew exactly what kind of movie they were making.
Grade: B
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