PumpkinheadThose who turn to hatred in their grief give rise to monsters. Pumpkinhead is a horror movie about a man named Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen), who lives in the country with his son, Billy (Matthew Hurley), and runs a roadside produce stand. Billy is slain following a motorcycle accident caused by an arrogant man from the city named Joel (John D'Aquino), who subsequently tries to evade responsibility by fleeing the scene. The distraught Ed seeks out the diabolical services of a witch (Madeleine Taylor Holmes) who channels Ed's hatred into conjuring a local boogeyman called "Pumpkinhead" (Tom Woodruff, Jr.) to take vengeance on Ed's behalf.
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Pumpkinhead deals with themes of loss and revenge, and how failing to manage these emotions turns us into monsters like the eponymous demon. A prologue shows Ed as a child, seeing the creature for the first time prowling the night for its marked victim. Like the young Ed, the audience doesn't yet comprehend what drives Pumpkinhead to kill or why Ed's family refuses to help. Pumpkinhead is a taboo legend among the residents of the backwater community Ed lives near, and their children use creepy nursery rhymes about him to scare their siblings. The demon and the witch who summons him are a stigma on the community, and Ed's attempts to find the witch are dismissed--most of them know that this path can only lead to damnation and bloodshed. Ed is blinded to reason by his suffering--his son's body was virtually abandoned by the city folk, and he blames them all for the slaughter of his child. Ed is so blinded by grief that he refuses to listen to the stammering excuses of one of Joel's brothers, Steve (Joel Hoffman), who stayed behind to explain the accident. When Ed summons Pumpkinhead, the demon pursues the six townies with an indiscriminate urge to kill, as blind in its mission as Ed is in his pain. Joel is a royal jerk from the start, driving recklessly in his Corvette while drinking, and disrespecting Billy to his face; yet the others are generally decent people--if somewhat impotent to curtail Joel's behavior before it gets out of hand. While Joel acts with total disregard for Billy's welfare, his other companions still try to figure out how to alert the authorities and get help for the wounded boy. None of this matters to Ed, who sees all of them as the killers of his child. Only after summoning Pumpkinhead does Ed begin to understand the murderous horror his anger has wrought. His body begins to feel a sympathetic response to the killings of each of the marked victims, compelling him to seek out Pumpkinhead and end the beast's reign of terror before any more lives are lost in this escalating tragedy.
Pumpkinhead embraces many tropes (and cliches) of Eighties-era horror movies, yet deliberately sidesteps others. The demonic monstrosity is resurrected from a corpse buried within a raised pumpkin patch deep in the woods near the witch's cabin, and makes insect-like buzzing sounds as it hunts its prey. (It also has a predilection for lifting them up into the air by their head and then dropping them from a great height, despite having razor-sharp talons and what appears to be a prehensile tail.) The monster is conjured because Ed yields to anger in his moment of darkness, even though Ed is not a hateful man. Consider the scene where he washes the Billy's hands and recalls how his grandmother used to do the same for him--this emphasizes that Ed is a loving father. When Billy fashions a crude pendant for him, it is a gift that touches Ed so much that he promises to always wear it, and he does. The young people from the city are literally going to a cabin in the woods, as seen in films like The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even though Joel (and Steve to an extent) shows disdain for the rural population, the others are kind and even decent toward them--not the kind of people who deserve the fate which befalls them. Billy's tragic death is virtually telegraphed from the moment Joel takes one of the dirt bikes down from the trailer of their truck, and recklessly starts doing stunts on the hills of the badlands with it. To their defense, it was Billy's recklessness in walking out where Joel and Steve were riding the motorcycles that really caused the tragedy. From this perspective, Ed's decision to invoke the witch's dark pact makes him appear to be the most irresponsible character of all, and the ending underscores that the demon is a manifestation of Ed's fury. (Pumpkinhead also happens to bear a striking resemblance to the Xenomorphs from Aliens, which also featured Lance Henriksen's iconic turn as Bishop.) What happens to Ed after Pumpkinhead begins killing is a metaphor for how his rage consumes him--his inability to acknowledge the truth of his son's tragic death drives him to abandon rationality for revenge.
Recommended for: Fans of a horror film that combines myths about an esoteric boogeyman with themes of grief and the too-high cost of vengeance. Pumpkinhead falls squarely into the camp of Eighties-era horror/slasher films with a straightforward plot that makes for familiar monster movie fare, complete with an elaborate rubber costume for the creature.
Pumpkinhead embraces many tropes (and cliches) of Eighties-era horror movies, yet deliberately sidesteps others. The demonic monstrosity is resurrected from a corpse buried within a raised pumpkin patch deep in the woods near the witch's cabin, and makes insect-like buzzing sounds as it hunts its prey. (It also has a predilection for lifting them up into the air by their head and then dropping them from a great height, despite having razor-sharp talons and what appears to be a prehensile tail.) The monster is conjured because Ed yields to anger in his moment of darkness, even though Ed is not a hateful man. Consider the scene where he washes the Billy's hands and recalls how his grandmother used to do the same for him--this emphasizes that Ed is a loving father. When Billy fashions a crude pendant for him, it is a gift that touches Ed so much that he promises to always wear it, and he does. The young people from the city are literally going to a cabin in the woods, as seen in films like The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even though Joel (and Steve to an extent) shows disdain for the rural population, the others are kind and even decent toward them--not the kind of people who deserve the fate which befalls them. Billy's tragic death is virtually telegraphed from the moment Joel takes one of the dirt bikes down from the trailer of their truck, and recklessly starts doing stunts on the hills of the badlands with it. To their defense, it was Billy's recklessness in walking out where Joel and Steve were riding the motorcycles that really caused the tragedy. From this perspective, Ed's decision to invoke the witch's dark pact makes him appear to be the most irresponsible character of all, and the ending underscores that the demon is a manifestation of Ed's fury. (Pumpkinhead also happens to bear a striking resemblance to the Xenomorphs from Aliens, which also featured Lance Henriksen's iconic turn as Bishop.) What happens to Ed after Pumpkinhead begins killing is a metaphor for how his rage consumes him--his inability to acknowledge the truth of his son's tragic death drives him to abandon rationality for revenge.
Recommended for: Fans of a horror film that combines myths about an esoteric boogeyman with themes of grief and the too-high cost of vengeance. Pumpkinhead falls squarely into the camp of Eighties-era horror/slasher films with a straightforward plot that makes for familiar monster movie fare, complete with an elaborate rubber costume for the creature.