Pumpkinhead

Pumpkinhead, a gnarled, horrible-looking monster, used to stare at me from the video-store aisle, daring me to get over my fear and rent the tape. Along with the Ghoulies cover art (which also gave me nightmares as a kid), Pumpkinhead is one of the few VHS boxes seared into my memory from Kent Photo and Video’s horror section. In high school, the film became a regular Halloween-season rental and a way to celebrate effects wizard Stan Winston’s solid directorial debut, which unsurprisingly features exceptional practical effects. Now, years later, I appreciate the quieter moments and smart filmmaking choices that underscore this tale of loss and all-consuming vengeance.  

Pumpkinhead is a late-’80s low-budget horror offering with a fairly simple plot following Ed Harley (played by Lance Henriksen at a level above everyone else in the film), a single father who raises a demon straight out of backwoods folklore to take revenge on the meddlesome group of city teens who accidentally kill his son in a freak dirt-bike accident. Winston’s sharp, economical direction and Henriksen’s legendary presence elevate the film way above its production scale, and because of Winston’s background, he knows exactly how to actualize Pumpkinhead. He turned the creature design over to artists at his studio: Alec Gillis, Shane Mahan, John Rosengrant, and the man who would end up playing Pumpkinhead, Tom Woodruff Jr. Together, they concocted an organic demon with dead eyes and corpse skin, for a fraction of the already small budget, and ended up with one of the most memorable horror creations of all time.

Despite the pressure of making his film debut and the movie’s heavy themes, Winston apparently kept the set light and fun. And Henriksen put his all into this rare leading role, even supplying his own wardrobe and helping dress the set. Pumpkinhead moves quickly but also knows when to slow down for moments like Harley helping to wash his son’s hands; the loss hits even harder due to its poignancy. Harley is a man blinded by grief and anger at the outsiders who took everything from him. The first act of the film has the audience siding with him, even if the depiction of what I guess is supposed to be the South and of the rural poor falls short (it is clearly shot in the L.A., hills and some poor acting and costume design of the townsfolk lean too much into stereotype). Henriksen sells his heartache so well that even as the killing spree continues, you still sympathize. But the teens aren’t all evil, and the film creates an interesting conflict between these sympathies, as Harley’s growing anguish and the changes in both himself and Pumpkinhead illuminate the terrible toll of vengeance.

While the budget definitely shows around the edges, the film’s clever cinematography (by Bojan Bazelli) and lighting tricks give the creature effects a weight and substance rarely found in today’s cookie-cutter CGI monsters. It is a damn shame that the collapse of distribution company De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, which fell into a financial crisis right before the movie’s release, forced Pumpkinhead to sit on a shelf for about a year. United Artists came to the rescue but gave the film an extremely limited theatrical run with almost no marketing support, and it didn’t really find an audience until the video store, where it scared and enticed kids like me and inspired a whole generation of horror fans. Flaws aside, it’s a strangely beautiful, transfixing work that’s well worth your time; just be sure to avoid the terribly unnecessary non-theatrical sequels.