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Pumpkinhead
Smart heroine, smart monster, smart little story
1989
Review: March 21, 2006
Director: Stan Winston
Starring: Lance Henriksen, Jeff East, John D'Aquino, Joel Hoffman, Cynthia Bain
Helps.
THE SETUP:
Man sics a vengeance demon on a buncha stupid teens after they kill his beloved son.
DISCUSSION:
I saw this movie when it was out in theaters when I was 20, and I remember taking other people back to see it because I liked it so much. I haven’t seen it since, but when I saw it on the streetcorner in a box of discs from the defunct Wal-Mart DVD rental service for $5, I bought my own personal copy.
This is famed creature and make-up effect designer Stan Winston’s directorial debut, but I read in IMDb trivia that he was so busy working on preparing the movie that he didn’t work on the actual creature much. I also see that some of the earliest films he worked on were Get Christie Love, The Wiz, and spiritual molestation movie The Entity.
Anyway, so Lance Heinriksen and his blond, bespeckled little darling of a perfect boy enjoy an idyllic father / son relationship in which they wash hands together, daddy tells stories, and they race to see who can get into the house first. It would make you vomit if the talented Heinriksen didn’t make it work with his grizzled sweetie routine and considerable acting talent. Plus, you can buy more of it since you know the kid’s going to die a gruesome death real soon. Anyway, the two of them run this rural gas station / convenience store somewhere out west.
Enter the requisite idiotic teens. They have rented this nasty cottage in the middle of a swamp as a base for their dirt-biking expeditions. Why or how a SWAMP exists so close to a very dry, desert environment is not explained. Anyway, Joel, the obnoxious one in the leather jacket who drives a sports car and has a hot chick ladyfriend on his arm, decides he needs to ride his dirt bike, and do it RIGHT NOW. He is joined by this other guy with a headband [Loverboy and Footloose must share equal responsibility]. By the way, one of these guys [not sure which one] played teenage Clark Kent in Superman. We’re also introduced to our good girl, Tracy, played by the very genuinely pretty Cynthia Bain. Her goodness and moral sense stay very consistent throughout the movie, in contrast to newer things like the House of Wax remake wherein the smart heroine goes along with every terrible and immoral plan until suddenly she has to do an abrupt turn and start bitching and lecturing everyone else. Tracy also reaches for the giant CLEAVER at the first sign of trouble, instead of just standing around going “Oh my God… Oh my God…,” which makes her aces with me, as well.
Anyway, in the long tradition of kids who are told to stay put and who disobey and are then justifiably killed [see also: Grizzly], little whoever is cut down by Joel the asshole with his dirt bike. Joel, who, it seems, has a history of accidents, takes off with his girlfriend, because he “can’t go to jail, man.” There’s a lot of hugger-mugger, but ultimately no one calls for help, and Lance comes home and finds the kid dead, and is pretty fuckin’ pissed. He holds the corpse on a bed in this big shaft of sunlight positioned to make you say: “SOMEONE’S been studying Flemish painting!”
Anyway, when Lance was but a child he caught a glimpse of the Pumpkinhead, after a man came to their door begging to be let in, and his father said “there’s nothing we can do for you now.” So Lance finds out that you go see the creepy swamp witch [and any movie with a creepy swamp witch gets my vote] and she tells him that vengeance has “a powerful price,” but you know they never listen, so he digs up this desiccated corpse and she brings it back to life and it transforms into the Pumpkinhead, this big nasty thing that’s sort of like Alien with wrinkly skin. And it takes off to kill the dumb teens in short order.
The awesome thing about Pumpkinhead and what totally sets him apart in my book is his wicked sense of humor. He likes to stalk and taunt and play with his victims like a cat. When two survivors are in the cabin, he holds of the head of a dead friend and smears it around against the window. He lets a guy crawl away for a little bit, then steps on him and drags him back. He removes the chain from a dirt bike [he’s mechanically gifted, dude!] and swings it tauntingly after one of the teens tries to escape on it. It’s so refreshing to have a monster with a personality, and after the film has set up what terrible people the teens are, it’s fun to see them tormented in this smart and sadistic way.
SPOILERS > > >
Anyway, it would seem that Lance feels a great deal of pain whenever Pumpkinhead kills someone, and he realizes that vengeance is wrong, so, so very wrong. But alas, too late! So he goes out to kill Pumpkinhead. It’s not long before we realize that the only way to hurt Pumpkinhead is to hurt Lance, and eventually the heroine just finishes him off. Then, in a little coda, we see a desiccated corpse being put back in the grave, and we can see that it’s Lance! So the guy who hired the Pumpkinhead becomes the next Pumpkinhead, and so on, which I really dug, because it makes the entire thing into this old-style folk tale and gives a kind a kind of bedtime story aspect to it. Not to mention opening it up to any number of equally viable sequels, which promise they immediately squandered as apparently Pumpkinhead II jettisons the legend set up here and just starts anew.
< < < SPOILERS END
Overall a fun watch, with a heroine who isn’t stupid, a villain who’s really evil and sadistic, some good blood, and a nicely-nuanced story to wrap it all in. Apparently this was inspired by a poem, and I was thinking “Well, it would have been a wonderful DVD extra if they had included the poem that it came from,” but apparently [as I just found out] the "poem" is an 8-line children’s round that is recited by the hillbilly kids in the film. Eh, so much for that, then.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Yes! It’s fun and has a good story.
