As the hallowed month of Spooktober approaches, and as I'll be spending those 31 days reviewing 2024 movies that I've not yet caught up with, I thought I'd get a bit ahead of myself with a look back at the four films that comprise the Pumpkinhead franchise.
Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen, enjoying one of many genre roles post being cast in 1986’s Aliens) is a simple chap, scratching a living, widowed with a young son Billy (Matthew Hurley). When a group of young people rock up, intent on partying and biking, Ed is wary. Leaving Billy alone while he runs an errand, the little boy is fatally injured in a motorcycle accident, the rider being a wrong ‘un who, with a previous charge hanging over him, is keen not to hand himself over to the authorities.
Ed, riven with grief, visits an old woman, Haggis (Florence Schauffler) who has knowledge of the dark forces; namely the ability to conjure up a vengeance demon (the ‘Pumpkinhead’ of the title). Ed has prior knowledge of the beast’s power; as a young boy he witnessed the demon tearing apart a victim.
While the partying bikers hole up in a house, scared out of their wits, Ed carries out the old woman’s request; an exchange of blood between him, his dead son and a strange dirt covered homunculus he digs up, on request, in a pumpkin patch. The spell cast, the dug up body assumes the size of a horned creature; but the price of vengeance is pain, as Ed, psychically connected to Pumpkinhead, acutely feels the impact of each of the demon’s kills, as it seeks out and despatches all those responsible for Billy’s death, directly or indirectly. The creature is basically a riff on the legend of the Golem, a revenge being from Jewish folklore.
Pumpkinhead revels in its backwoods setting, all dappled moonlight and moody reds and oranges. And the demon itself is, for the time, an impressive feat of prosthetics, hydraulics and, in the shape of Tom Woodruff Jr, a big guy in a suit (the movie would open the doors for Woodruff’s subsequent career both in front of and behind the camera).
For a film based on a rather brief poem, it’s perhaps no surprise that Pumpkinhead isn’t plot or character heavy (although Henriksen’s haunted Ed is suitably tortured and believable). As pointed out by others, the psychic link between Ed and the creature is never fully explored, and this would have given the film an added level of involvement. But overall Pumpkinhead succeeds because of its general sketchiness of vision, and an open ended final shot made it more susceptible for a sequel (or series of sequels; read on).
In 1993 Pumpkinhead appeared in two issues of the comic book series "Pumpkinhead: The Rites of Exorcism" published by Dark Horse Comics. A third issue was originally going to include the appearance of a winged version of the creature, but it was never officially released.
A 1950s flashback (in B&W obvs) shows a deformed young boy, Tommy (J.P. Manoux), looked after by an old woman, being harassed and then killed by a group of nasty college boys. We move to the present day, now in full colour, with a policeman, Sean Braddock (Andrew Hellraiser Robinson) and his wife returning to a job in his home town of Ferren Woods, handily relocating his daughter Jenny (Amy Dolenz, Micky’s daughter) away from a heap of trouble in their previous city.
No sooner has he arrived than Jenny falls in with the town bad boys, all of them children of the group of guys that murdered Tommy, some of whom now, somewhat predictably, have positions of power in Ferren Woods. Looking for kicks, Danny and the gang come across the cottage where Tommy’s guardian, Miss Osie (French actress Lilyan Chauvin, no Haggis character in this one) lives and discover she’s been planning to bring back the dead. Stealing the witchy accoutrements the kids dig up a patch of land and pour stolen blood on it, but bottle it before they can see that the spell has been successful: Pumpkinhead has risen again! However this time it’s actually a monster/human hybrid, half Tommy, half Pumpkinhead (PumpkinTommy then), the result of a union between the monster and a human.
PumpkinTommy stalks the land, first despatching those who caused Tommy’s death, then their kids, to complete his vengeance; only Braddock, whose connection with Tommy reaches back into their childhoods, has the ability to put an end to the mayhem.
Silly though it clearly is, PII moves at a pretty good pace and doesn’t stint on the gore once PumpkinTommy comes back to life. As a guy in a suit, Mark McCracken as the monster lacks the sheer heft of Stan Winston’s original, but judicious upshooting and editing covers the deficiencies pretty well. In keeping with the times, PumpkinTommy’s POV shots have a distinctly Predator feel about them, and there are cameos from scream queen Linnea Quigley and, taking a break from being Jason Vorhees, Kane Hodder, to keep things interesting. Dumb but fun.
One year after the release of the movie, a first person shooter computer game 'Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge' was developed by American studio BAP Interactive. With a storyline loosely based on the film, the game was poorly received and has been criticised as a "Doom rip-off".
Filmed for the Sci Fi channel (hence Pumpkinhead turning up in the first five minutes of the movie, a company requirement) this feels like one of the later 'Hellraiser' sequels, with its tentative nod to the original (in fact one of the effects team on this one, British born Gary J Tunnicliffe, wrote and directed the most recent addition to that franchise, Hellraiser: Judgment).
So here we have the town’s doctor, Doc Fraser (Doug Bradley, another Hellraiser connection) who, in addition to his usual services, offers a lucrative organ harvesting sideline. The resulting dumped bodies, deposited by Bunt (Douglas Roberts), a survivor character from the first movie, are chucked into the local swamp. This activity is witnessed by a passing hiker who also ends up dead but not before being picked up by Molly Sue Allen (Tess Panzer) who alerts the police. Sadly the uncovering of the bodies also reveals the corpse of Molly Sue’s own child; she swears vengeance on all those involved in the deaths, and visits local witch Haggis (the character, not the actor, returning from the first movie; here she's played by Lynne Verrall) who resurrects Pumpkinhead.
The creature isn’t much different from the suited chap in PII – here played by two actors; well three if you include Lance Henriksen, persuaded to return to the role of Ed Harley and who turns out to be the beast in human form. It’s a relatively bloodless affair, befitting its made for TV status, rather heavy on the expository chat; it probably shouldn’t have included some flashbacks from the first two movies as they look much better than this one. I’ve always been of the opinion that Jake West is a far better documentary maker than feature film director, and sadly this film didn’t change my mind. A bit of a slog, then.
A long term feud has taken place between two families, the McCoys and the Hatfields, which often spills over into brawls, in true Montague and Capulet style. Our Romeo and Juliet here are Jodie Hartfield (Scottish actor Amy Manson), who is secretly seeing Ricky McCoy (English actor Bradley Taylor); on one of their evening trysts Ricky’s sister Sara (US actor Maria Roman) plays lookout, but to little effect: two of the McCoy clan intervene, and in the process Sara hits her head and dies. Ricky finds Sara’s body and, furious for vengeance, visits the witch Haggis (Lynne Verrall, reprising her role). Warning Ricky about the consequences, Haggis summons Pumpkinhead from his grave, and the slaughter of the Hatfields begins. As the bodies pile high, Jodie is powerless to stop the slaughter; until she realises that the creature and her boyfriend are connected.
Despite the fact that half the cast are either Romanians playing mid Westerners, or UK actors with southern accents, P4 hangs together pretty well. For a made for TV movie it’s pretty gory; entrails spill, heads are detached, a guy saws off his own leg, and the claret flows. This time the CGI has largely been ditched, so while P-head is just a guy in a suit (well guys – Bob Gunter and Mike J. Regan again – who also donned the suit in the last movie), he’s sufficiently vicious and flexible; a long way from the creature vision in the original.
Best of all, Lance Henriksen returns, a sort of ghostlike figure floating around the set, dispensing Hallmark card style advice like “we are what we do”, causing cast members to consider their actions even if they don’t ultimately listen to him. P4 is probably the best of the three sequels; the Romanian woods don’t really convince as American ones and the buildings feel very un-townlike, but it’s quite tense and unhampered by an unnecessarily complicated story.
However, the fact that there have been no P-head sequels since 2007 indicate that this vegetable may have exceeded its sell by date. The last I heard was a 2021 story regarding Paramount Players (who had recently rejuvenated the Paranormal Activity franchise and were behind Orphan: First Kill), in which Pumpkinhead was one of a number of intellectual properties being worked up by the company. Nothing has been heard of this since though.
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