Pumpkinhead should be approached like a dark fairy
tale. It’s a simple story of revenge, of
a father who loses it all and makes a deal with the devil, but realizes too
late that nobody makes it out alive when Pumpkinhead is summoned; he will eventually
consume your soul. The set pieces are
excellent, the creature FX spot on; this was Stan Winston’s directorial debut,
so it’s no surprise that the creature FX stand the test of time. The lighting and foggy wooded backdrop
certainly adds to that dark fairy tale quality of the movie.
Lance Hendrickson plays the father of a son who is callously
ran over by a dirt biker who seems more concerned about saving his own ass from
jail than helping the kid. His gang
promptly leaves the scene to call an ambulance, leaving one guy behind to tend
to the farmer’s son, but when Lance shows up he is hearing none of it, and
gives one of the best death stares in all cinematic history. His son was his world, and they took it away
from him, left him to die….but Pumpkinhead will set things right. Or so he believes, and in a fury he sets out
to discover an old back woods hag that is said to have strange powers. He knows Pumpkinhead is real enough, he saw
him as a kid, it terrified him and stuck with him all his life, but poor Lance (aka
Joe Harley) doesn’t know the steep price the witch demands for such a
summoning; she wants nothing less than his immortal soul. When Pumpkinhead is finally brought back to
life after being dug up from a foggy grave, Joe Harley begins experiencing
terrible bouts of pain and terror. He suffers
a vision of his son returning to life, asking him “what have you done daddy”. He sees through Pumpkinhead’s eyes as he
slowly tortures the teenagers involved in the death of his son, and it’s too
much for his simple mind to take. He
knows he has unleashed something worse than revenge, and it’s his Christian
duty to put an end to this madness.
Pumpkinhead’s design is grim and iconic; I remember always
wanting to rent the VHS at the local grocery store for the striking cover art
alone, same goes for the sequels. When
he does capture the target of his revenge he seems to toy with them for a while
before eventually releasing them from their torture through the final embrace
of death. He seems to love tossing
people around and dragging them over the ground, it’s not the quick death you’d
expect from the giant lanky creature.
One girl he really takes his time with, using his nails to gouge deep
rivets in her face, then tosses her through a window when he’s bored, it’s
awesome.
The movie is so very 80’s, two characters in particular
really stand out for their over-the top performances; Joel and Maggie. Joel is the alpha male cock-bag that runs over
the little kid with his dirt bike after guzzling beer and trying to show off,
then refuses to help and tries covering it up like a coward, turning on friends
at the drop of a dime. There’s something
horrible and entertaining about these over the top asshole types in 80’s
movies; they really came off as complete psycho-paths often worse and more
nerve grinding than the monster they would eventually meet their well-deserved
end to. He has an uncharacteristic turn
of heart later, but it comes too little, too late, after holding his friends
hostage at gun point to ensure they don’t rat him out to the police for a few
hours he decides to give himself up.
Maggie is just hysterical.
The way she spit fires her lines about “Only God can save us” really
tickles me every time I watch this. Her
self-induced hysteria after the bike accident is almost as funny as how she
comes out of it by looking at a Catholic cross that her boyfriend dangles in
front of her. She definitely gets it the
worse of the bunch, which was unfortunate because I could have used a few more
laughs on the way to the end, but this is a dark fairy tale, and there is
plenty of Velveeta to be had in the sequels.
Joe Harley figures out that Pumpkinhead is taking over his
soul with each victim he claims, in regret for his decision to release the
demon of revenge, and to save the remaining teens, he puts a bullet through his
own head, killing the creature as well, as it was tied to his own flesh. The carcass of Pumpkinhead lights on fire,
removing all traces of the nightmare.
I’d definitely recommend Pumpkinhead as a mood setter for
the Halloween season to come. It has
some of the best creature FX work I’ve ever seen, from Pumpkinhead to the Swamp
Hag; it all looks very well crafted and lit impressively in hues of orange and
blue. The atmosphere and mood more than
make up for any bad acting or technical gaffs, certainly a movie I plan on
revisiting time and time again for it’s simple pleasures.
