REVIEW: Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings (1994)

This movie has hurt me. It has hurt me so deeply that I can think of only one course of action! I will summon the ancient vengeance demon known as PUMPKINHEAD to wreak havoc on everyone involved in this movie. He will tear their arms from their sockets and tear their heads off! Revenge will be mine even if I have to suffer all the pain upon myself for it…well, on second thought, that doesn’t sound so good. Why don’t I look over this film again before such a drastic conclusion?

Director: Jeff Burr

Starring: Andrew Robinson, Ami Dolenz

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110913/

“This beats the hell out of delivering mail!”

-A guy clearly not talking about the movie at hand

It kicks off with a flashback to the 50s, which, as we all know, was the decade where everything was actually sepia-toned. An old lady in a bonnet cooks something out of a cauldron – well, I guess George Foreman grills weren’t around yet so they needed something – and feeds it to her mentally deformed mutant crack baby. Maybe he and Jason should have a play-date sometime.

So then a group of kids with 50s style hair, led by a guy that could probably stunt-double for Ray Liotta, drive up and decide to have their daily party-on-the-side-of-the-road party. Oh what fun it will be! They chase down the mutant crack baby through the woods, mugging to the camera all the while, and kill him brutally. This whole scene could easily be improved by adding the Benny Hill theme.

We then switch to the modern day where some doofus is getting ready for his first day as town sheriff, a position which he got even though he has apparently been gone from the town for years. He says it’s the perfect job because there’s no crime or gangs or anything in the town. But then he also says that he hopes their rebellious teenage daughter won’t get into any trouble. Did he just…magically forget what he just said?

He gets a shot for some reason, as I guess all sheriffs need rabies shots in this town (a fact I came to find more sensible after seeing the rest of this stupid film), and the mayor comes in. The mayor is a ridiculous looking 90s caricature with a bizarre suit/mullet combination that just makes him look like…well, a character in a horrible 90s film. Some guy says that he's ready to come in now...he walks in...asks for a guitar…they give it to him…and he leaves. WTF? That’s about all I can say. The mayor needs a guitar, so he stores it in the police station? He had to make a special appointment with the sheriff just to come in and get it before leaving again? Why?

"My mullet is so big it EATS all the answers to those questions!"

Then of course we see the daughter herself as she gets into a car with a bunch of morons and goes to hang out at every teenager’s favorite hot spot: the exact place where that mutant crack baby was murdered in the sepia-toned flashback just moments ago! DUN DUN DUN. This one guy just starts making out with her unprecedented, and of course she’s totally OK with it, being an idiot and all. I guess she always just goes with the first guy who sexually harasses her as long as he’s good looking! That’s truly the path to a good relationship.

So after her dad tells her NEVER to see the kids she was hanging out with again (because even though there’s no danger in town, he can apparently TELL they're up to no good by just looking at them...maybe that's why he was given the sheriff job), she sneaks out and sees them anyway. This time, they show her another one of their hobbies, driving down the road at night and screaming like lunatics for no reason. And here we see a true example of their worth as human beings as they TURN OFF THEIR HEADLIGHTS while driving on a dark road at like 70 miles an hour, at least. Why? Does it really enhance the thrill that much? I mean, they could seriously hurt someone…don't they have any consideration for those around them?

OK, OK, stupid question...

And that’s exactly what does happen. They end up hurting the crazy old witch-lady that apparently lives nearby. Why was she outside in the middle of the road at night? Because the movie’s plot demanded it for convenience. After the idiot boyfriend agonizes over the damage done to his car – isn't this guy such a stand-up, model citizen? – they finally decide to go to the witch-lady’s house, as she has disappeared (how?!) and they want to go apologize.

Inside, they find some spooky voodoo witchcraft junk, taken from the Closet of Cliché Horror Movie Props, and as convenience has it, one of the girls in their group knows about witchcraft and can show them what to do with it. The old lady kicks them out, but not before they take a bunch of crap used for an occult ritual that they don’t even know what it does. Why are these kids so bent on performing an occult ritual anyway? I just love how readily they accept it, without even questioning it at all. You'd think they'd just shrug it off and go back to being delinquents, but nope; the next scene is them in the graveyard reading the spell out loud. But hey. Anything to move the plot forward, right?

So their meddling somehow sets the house on fire! Fine, fine, just go with it, even if it is monumentally ridiculous. They all go home. The next day, cops investigate the scene and determine that there was a fire! What geniuses they are! Then some hick gets murdered and is found with his arms and head cut off quite cleanly, with bloody markings all over the walls, so naturally the cops suspect that that and the fire are connected. OF COURSE!

Truly an astute deduction!

But the real cincher for their brilliance in the detective field comes when they have a conference at the sheriff’s house about this baffling case, and the FIRST THING THE SHERIFF SAYS is that it must be the ancient legend of Pumpkinhead behind the whole thing. Oh yeah! Couldn’t just be a serial murderer, right? Has to be supernatural folklore behind the whole thing. There’s no other plausible explanation! That would just be silly.

So then we see a fat guy having sex with a blonde lady. As she leaves to go to the bathroom or something, he calls after her: “This beats the hell out of delivering mail!” Well, thank you, stock character. Thank you for providing us with that Eureka moment, that having sex is better than delivering mail. Although I can’t say it speaks much for your companion’s, erm, skills when you have to weigh those two options against one another.

Anyway, Pumpkinhead kills him, to a riveting soundtrack of 80s bubblegum pop. The worthlessness just astounds, doesn’t it?

"This does NOT beat the hell out of delivering mail!" 

OK, so our next pair of stock characters to be killed are a pair of brothers who have a deaf-mute sister. One of them likes to pick on her and the other likes to, apparently, sleep with her. Well, those two are complete wastes of life and deserve whatever death they get, so I’ll just skip this one.

The movie then decides to provide us with some important exposition from the burnt witch lady, who dies but then resurrects herself magically to make sure the viewers are not too confused - although what she says mostly just creates even more questions, and not all of them good ones. Apparently the mutant crack baby from the opening was actually called Tommy, and he was the lovechild of the old woman and Pumpkinhead. That’s…so wrong on so many levels that it would take DAYS to fully go into it! How would Pumpkinhead even do that…? WHY would the woman even…ugh! That’s just too creepy to consider! I think this movie’s going to give me nightmares.

Apparently Tommy must have…inherited Pumpkinhead’s superpowers in the gene pool, or something, because yeah, he’s back for revenge now after 35 long years. And there’s some trite plot about how the sheriff saved him from dying once as a kid, and the Judge of the town is actually the bad guy now, and yadda yadda yadda, who cares? He kills a lot of people but is stopped, again, by the Judge, and the movie ends. What did we learn from this, kids? That having sex is definitely better than delivering mail.

But seriously, this has to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen that probably didn’t mean to be. It’s just so…silly! It’s absolutely priceless, and if you have a chance to see it, do so for the unintentional comedy. The movie itself is crap, but it’s the kind of crap that makes you laugh. It's stupid, there are tons of plot holes, but it is also pretty hilarious at times. And I guess I want to take back that stuff I was saying at the beginning of the review. Heh. I think such a revenge might be a little harsh. Heh. I can do that, right? RIGHT?

*Gulps*

REVIEW: Pumpkinhead (1988)

Director: Stan Winston

Starring: Lance Henriksen, John D'Aquino, Brian Bremer

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095925/

In the 80s, horror movies liked to take somber situations and just spruce them up, adding supernatural characters and freakshow-esque monsters to make sure each story lodged in your brain like a terrible urban legend, a cautionary warning not to do anything dumb – lest the monster come after YOU next. And nothing exemplifies that more than Pumpkinhead, the 1988 slasher that taught us never to commit a hit-and-run, or else we’d be hunted down by a supernatural vengeance demon bent on tearing us to shreds. Sound cheerful enough yet? Let’s dig in.

The story starts off showing us the epitome of neighborly love – a love so great that one farmer won’t even open the door when his fellow man is clawing at it outside, screaming in pain as an unseen monster attacks. All the movie’s hallmarks are already in place: the wild blues and oranges of the lighting, the strong winds and the desolate country atmosphere. All awesome things, for sure.

The main story, though, centers on a shop owner on the side of a desert road played by Lance Henriksen. He and his son live rather ideally and have a simple life, with no real troubles. The first few minutes are just him and his son enjoying their morning – which surprisingly works to establish character and make us care about these people. Imagine that. A horror film actually playing to our emotions.

But then a bunch of teenagers on their way to a cabin in the woods, because that was all teenagers had to do back in the 80s, stop at the shop to get some stuff and also show off their motorcycles. Here we also see a bunch of country kids playing around, and they give us our first real explanation of the movie’s monster – if you’re wronged, you can summon Pumpkinhead and he’ll get revenge for you.

During the motorcycle showing-off, the typical 80s badass of the group, complete with leather jacket and mullet, accidentally hits the kid while flying off a dune and kills him. They decide to just leave to go to their cabin and call for help there, except the mullet-guy is worried because he already has two prior offenses and can’t go to jail for a third. So the logical solution is naturally to cut the phone lines in the cabin and go ax-crazy, holding anyone who wants to do the right thing and help the kid hostage in the closet.

Meanwhile the father is grief-stricken, and I have to say this is the first bit where we really see why Lance Henriksen was the right choice for this movie. He really brings out the sadness and rage a parent would feel for his child, and the earlier scenes with the two of them bonding together really drive it home that this man has lost the shining light of his life. He takes a drastic action and gets one of the country kids to help him find an old witch who may be able to help him.

This is another reason why this movie is cool – shamelessly cheesy horror cliché. I mean, it’s an old witch lady who lives on a mountain and has a house full of burning candles, skulls, animal skins and other stuff that you’d expect to find in a haunted house, and it’s all just so awesome, setting a great atmosphere for what’s to come. You really feel the grief that Henriksen’s going through, adding a lot of raw power to the proceedings.

She tells him she can’t bring his son back, but she does give him the opportunity to get revenge, which he takes quite readily. And so the creature is unleashed. Whenever it kills, Henriksen feels it on his own body – because that’s the price of vengeance, you see; it hurts you as well as whoever you’re inflicting it upon.

The movie goes on as all of the kids are eventually killed off. Henriksen realizes that what he did was a mistake, and tries to help the kids defeat him. There are some really great shots like one where you see Pumpkinhead up in this huge tree, with the girl he killed dangling down from its longest branch. The atmosphere is always really occult and seedy. The lighting and special effects are great, which is no surprise, as director Stan Winston has done special effects for movies like Avatar and Terminator 2.

The end of the film builds up tension to a boiling point. Lots of people die and lots of blood is spilled, but the terror, unlike many slasher films, comes more from the idea that these kids are being killed off by a completely alien, unstoppable, ancient force all for a MISUNDERSTANDING (albeit a very tragic one). They were trying to go get help, but because the one guy didn’t want to get caught, he stopped them, and Henrikson’s character thought they were all a bunch of hit-and-run scumbags. And he cast an ancient evil curse on them for it. Essentially, these kids were damned to Hell for no good reason, for a misunderstanding by a fellow human being. Thus is the fallacy of all men. That is the horror of Pumpkinhead. This is one of the great 80s horror flicks, definitely a cut above the average. Go see it.