Login
Ed Hardy (Lance Henriksen) is a simple man, but when a group of city folks bring death into his midst revenge devours him. Luckily (or unluckily), memories from his childhood point him in the direction of a crone that wields the dark secret to an unstoppable vehicle of vengeance. A creature known to the locals as...PUMPKINHEAD!
Even long after his passing, Stan Winston remains renown for his outstanding work in special effects. The multitude of wonders that he brought to life will forever be lauded in the annals of film history. Unfortunately, his directorial efforts were not as numerous as his achievements in effects work. Pumpkinhead is his feature length directorial debut and the strongest of his two efforts in that field. While his subsequent feature is best forgotten, Pumpkinhead remains a worthy entry into a genre that, despite initially being overlooked, has since garnered a well-earned cult following.
Released in the waning days of the 80's (when effects and gore heavy horror was all the rage), you can almost run a checklist on the film. Yes, an impressive special effect lurks about. Yes, the urban/rural clash thematic abounds. Yes, youths meet their ghoulish doom at the hands of some gruesome evil. And yet, Pumpkinhead defies the a lot of the standards of the era despite openly flirting with them.
Our lead character is a grown man, not the seemingly requisite teenager of most 80's genre fare. In turn, the youths are nuanced instead of outright good or evil. There is also little fondness for slasher tropes and the film carries with it an almost southern fried fairy tale structure that fits very well with the morality tale vibes. It also is quiet restrained in its scenes feature the titular creature, where most pictures of the time would of reveled in excessive violence. The results are a delightful mixture of visual exuberance and dirty, Southern gothic.
Pumpkinhead evokes something of a forbidden mood with its setting but it never alienates the audience. Instead it invites them into the journey the heartstricken Ed Hardy and the tragic group that afflicts his life. They are bound by a moment and what that moment unleashes into the world and, once again defying normalcy, populate the world with sympathetic characters all around.
Where lines between human protagonists and antagonists are blurred, evil is very clearly defined in the form of the otherwordly Pumpkinhead and the backwoods crone that summons him. So much so that there will be no mistaking that this is a morality play of the oldest sort but played for an American audience. Yet another way Pumpkinhead flirts with standards and yet carves a path of its own.
We'll never know if Stan Winston could of churned out more work of this caliber if he'd continued to haunt the director's chair but what remains true is that Pumpkinhead stands out as a clear sign that his talent transcended his field of expertise. It remains a cult classic that feels every bit the definition of the term.
