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"Pumpkinhead" : My 20th Favorite Horror Movie

Welcome once again to my countdown of my top 25 favorite horror movies. With 5 installments under our belts, we're ready to get into my top 20. With my next choice, we move away from the horror/comedy subgenre we explored with Piranha 3D and Hatchet

and turn our attention towards an older film which bills itself as a "a grim fairy tale." I know this film has other fans on this te bedes just me, so it gives me great pleasure to present to you my 20th favorite horror film of all time: PumpkinheadReleased during the same decade that gave rise to such immortal franchises as A Nightmare On Elm Street

and Friday the 13th, director Stan Winston's Pumpkinhead dared to be something just a little bit different. Inspired by a creepy poem written by Ed Justin and set in the deep south, Pumpkinhead features a towering monster with a masve head, razor sharp talons and teeth, milky white eyes and a vaguely skeletal looking body. Unlike Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger, this monster could obviously not be brought to the screen mply by putting a guy in a costume, creating a challenge for the special effects team. After all, this was the 1980s, before the advent of CGI, which if you ask me, is overused in modern times. The monster that effects wizards Shane Mahan, Richard Landon, Tom Woodruff, Jr. and Alec Gillis came up with was an unqualified success, appearing more realistic than the vast majority of creatures created for film before or nce. Genuinely fearsome to behold, the Pumpkinhead beast lifts this film to great heights on its spindly, protruding shoulders, inspiring a level of dread that just might have been enough to make Pumpkinhead an all time favorite of mine even if it hadn't gotten anything else right.

Fortunately for horror fans everywhere, it did get other things right. Stan Winston elicited surpringly intense performances from his cast of mostly unknown young actors who, for the most part, are able to go toe to toe with veteran actor Lance Henriksen (in a time before he'd been cast in every horror franchise under the sun), who turns in one of the best performances of his long career as the grieving and revenge-minded Ed Harley. The ominous mood of the film is artfully reinforced by the set degns, with fog rolling through the forest and lightning splitting the sky at the perfect times, and good use of flickering firelight which reveals creepy, half-seen visuals while suggesting that even scarier ghts probably await in the shadows. This movie is so visually lush and stunning that I almost want to call it "beautiful", as out of place as that adjective might seem when describing a horror flick.Pumpkinhead's story is bacally a revenge parable. When Ed Harley's young son (Matthew Hurley) is accidentally killed due to the reckless antics of carefree teenagers from out of town, the devoted and loving father mply cannot reconcile himself with letting them get away with it. The teens retreat from the scene of the crime and go back to their cabin, where they war with one another over whether or not to go to the police. Meanwhile, Ed seeks out Haggis (Florence Schauffler, nearly as creepy here as Pumpkinhead himself), an old crone who local legend claims is a powerful witch. It's something of an open secret in this superstitious, backwoods locale that Haggis is the keeper of Pumpkinhead, a monster straight out of your worst nightmares that exists only to claim vengeance for those who have been wronged. Pumpkinhead first comes for the teens in their cabin, and those who survive his initial attack are soon fleeing through the dark and unfamiliar woods, seeking help at any home they pass, only to find that no one except for one young man (Brian Bremer) is willing to involve themselves in Pumpkinhead's affairs. But revenge is more complicated for Ed Harley than he initially expects. Part of the deal with Haggis is that Ed feels every ngle injury the monster inflicts within his own being. These traumas gradually shock him out of the unfettered rage he felt towards the teenagers, turning him into an unexpected ally as he comes to his senses and begins trying to help them take down the creature that he himself released.

Although it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate to refer to Pumpkinhead as a "dead teenager movie", even the teens that are summarily killed off are graced with more character development than you'll get with most movies of the kind. Kerry Remsen is especially strong here with her sentive portrayal of Maggie, the character who tries the hardest to save Ed's young son in the moments leading up to his death, and who becomes convinced that Pumpkinhead was sent after them by God Himself, because they deserve to be punished. The death scenes themselves might seem somewhat tame to those horror fans who are always clamoring for more blood and guts, but what they lack in all-out gore, they more than make up for in style and imagination.Further development of the surviving teens does eventually fall by the wayde to some extent as the movie becomes a prolonged chase scene. However, by the time that happened, I was already irrevocably invested in these characters, and the satisfying story arcs provided to Ed Harley and Bunt (Bremer) are enough to help smooth over that fairly minor flaw. It also helps that the lengthy chase sequence is a damn good one, and that the monster doing the chang is one of the scariest there has ever been. The whole thing ends in a fiery showdown between Pumpkinhead, his surviving targets, and the man who summoned him that I still conder to be one of the best grand finales any horror film has ever boasted.

Especially condering that this was Stan Winston's directorial debut, it's impresve how much Pumpkinhead

accomplishes. It's certainly not the most sophisticated horror movie ever made, but it is more mature, and presented with a more elegant touch, than most slasher films of any era. It never stoops to lowest-common-denominator tactics, and it gives us a passel of extremely memorable characters, not the least of which is Pumpkinhead himself. Last but not least, it takes place in a setting that is so fully realized that it becomes a character in its own right. Although several inferior sequels have diluted the franchise and seemingly ran it into the ground, I remain hopeful that a talented filmmaker might eventually summon Pumpkinhead from his resting place once more, dust him off, and send him on another brutal mison of revenge in a theatrical release that does the original justice. Until that time comes, the first Pumpkinhead will always be one of the films I turn to over and over again whenever I'm craving the comfort of an old favorite.Stay tuned for my next installment!