I usually have some reservations when it comes to talented people who work behind the scenes taking on the role of the director. After all, their craft is one thing but telling an effective story is another. Jumping from cinematographer to helming a feature has be done of course, but I'm always wary. However in the case of Stan Winston, his calibre is so high that it's impossible to resist seeing something he made personally instead of just being the monster guy for once. After all he worked with so many greats and was responsible for numerous iconic designs, he must have learned a lot over time with other directors and in the second unit of several classics. So is this effort an example of amazing visuals and lacklustre plot, or is it a true cult classic? I'm happy to report it's the latter.
Pumpkinhead is essentially a revenge story, a pretty standard driving force for any number of films. It's got a real nuts and bolts feeling to it in the first act, as tragedy strikes and countryside store owner Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) looks for a way to get back at a bunch of big city hoodlums. Luckily for him he saw some sort of monster when he was a boy, and there are still supernatural forces lying in wait somewhere in the nearby woods. It's all pretty clunky but it gets the job done, there are scenes of obnoxious teenagers causing trouble, kids singing rhymes to scare each other, and a local farmer Wallace (Buck Flower) warning Ed about meddling with dark forces. Which of course he does anyway.
After things go bad he goes in search of a way to invite the eponymous creature to wreak havoc on those pesky teenagers, and Ed soon discovers a spooky cabin on a swamp where a witch resides. The sudden transition into a supernatural world is really effective, with lots of fog and eerie lighting. The cabin seems to reside in a kind of ethereal twilight so that it can always emit a dramatic orange light in the darkness. It's owner is exactly what you expect, a scary horror hag that knows what Ed is looking for, as well as what it will cost him. This whole section looks great and it's probably my favourite part as he goes through a spooky ritual, bringing a freaky shrivelled corpse of some kind back from a graveyard covered with twisted roots and pumpkins.
This will become the creature itself as it's some sort of demon, brought to life by blood and hate. The title is a little misleading, as it describes the location where the thing can be found rather than it's facial features. This isn't like that one guy from Return to Oz on a killing spree or anything. The best part is how it grows and changes through the story, starting as a dessicated husk that gradually gets meaner as things develop. It looks a little too much like the title monster in Alien at times, particularly the more agile version from Aliens, but these are minor complaints. The way it walks, the limbs, and the facial movements are all really great. It has a certain kind of malice and personality, and it seems to be enjoying the carnage it causes.
The most interesting part of this is how it's connected to Ed himself, since he resurrected the thing despite being warned of the price. I don't think that the Forbidden Planet comparison is totally warranted, but there are at least some ideas that push this beyond slasher territory. It keeps things from becoming stale when there are the usual teenagers hiding in cabins, a series of gruesome deaths and a lot of running around in a misty forest. Mixing up creature feature tropes and ideas about the toll of vengeance on the human spirit is a nice touch. It's not groundbreaking, but it looks amazing and is certainly a perfect practical effects feature.
In terms of the human aspect it's all pretty serviceable, with Lance Henriksen as the troubled father living away from city folk who rile him up even before his life takes a horrible turn. Florence Schauffer as the witch is the most memorable secondary character, while the victims of Pumpkinhead itself are all your basic movie stock teenagers with some being more surly than others. The country bumpkin types living elsewhere in the forest seem a little cartoony but at least they have some personality to them, and it all falls on the side of horror fantasy by the end anyway. Ultimately it's just interesting enough, it's consistently entertaining, and everything works. Fans of slashers or actor-in-suit creations will find a lot to like, and while most of it is unoriginal it's a lot of fun anyway.
4/5
