Pumpkinhead

It seems entirely appropriate in a decade where horror became driven almost entirely by gooey makeup and creature effects that the makeup men themselves should eventually become the creative forces behind films – in the 1980s and 90s, Chris Walas, Tom Savini, John Carl Buechler, Tom Burman, Screaming Mad George, Bob Keen, Gary J. Tunnicliffe and others all took up the directorial reins to varying effect. In this potentially interesting effort, Oscar-winning makeup man Stan Winston takes the director’s seat. Co-written by Gary Gerani, the author of several books on fantastic cinema (albeit mediocre ones), Pumpkinhead/Vengenace: The Demon certainly promised to be better than the average monster movie.

The central three-metre tall title creature is amazing. Stan Winston allows his lighting cameraman to go overboard on the mood lighting, transforming the forest into a realm saturated in perpetual blue mist – it is like Ridley Scott’s lighting scheme for Alien (1979) transformed into some demented outdoor disco. On the minus side, there is surprisingly little effect to all this atmosphere. The teen victims are entirely faceless and their dispatches are conducted with frustratingly little ceremony or surprise. Pumpkinhead is a noble attempt to create a new type of monster movie, but placing a new monster in old surroundings is not enough for that to work and the film as a whole is disappointingly routine.

Stan Winston’s greatest successes come from his cast. Florence Schauffler, in old age makeup that makes her look around 110 and with a creaky backwoods accent that reveals a disturbing intelligence cackling inside, is terrifying. Lance Henriksen maintains a fine grasp of regional accent and creates a good deal of conviction in what should have been a role of considerable moral ambiguity. Unfortunately it never is and the film displays little affinity for the tapping of Henriksen’s wrath and hurt. The journey to the graveyard and revival of the creature should be emotionally wrought scenes – after all, they do involve Lance Henriksen’s selling his soul to the Devil – but instead are routine.

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings/The Revenge of Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1994) was a sequel. In the 00s, the franchise was revived for a series of further sequels with Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes (2006) and Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud (2007). Lance Henriksen does not appear in Blood Wings but returned for the subsequent two sequels. (Moria)