Don’t Make a Bad Deal

Every genre has its highs, lows, and forgotten cult films. One film will launch a series of copycats and pretenders, and then these will spin out other films trying to leap onto the genre, all because some films were making money and Hollywood is loath to ignore a trend. We saw that recently with the glut of superhero cinematic universes, all kicked off by Marvel and their seeming ability to print money consistently for an entire decade during the height of the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe., but other genres have done this as well. Slashers had their big moment in the 1980s, all thanks to Black Christmas and Halloween. For an entire decade, every studio had to try and get their own slasher franchise off the ground.

The success of HalloweenThe franchise that both set the standard for Slasher horror and, at the same time, defied every convention it created, Halloween has seen multiple time lines and reboots in its history, but one thing has remained: Michael Myers, the Shape that stalks Haddonfield. of course led to the rise of Friday the 13thOne of the most famous Slasher film franchises, the Friday the 13th series saw multiple twists and turn before finally settling on the formula everyone knows and loves: Jason Voorhees killing campers 'round Camp Crystal Lake. and Nightmare on Elm StreetThe brain-child of director Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street was his answer to the glut of Slasher films that were populating the multiplex. His movie featured an immortal character, Freedy, with a powerset like none other, reshaping the expectations for Slasher movies to come.. Many lesser works came along to try and capitalize as well, like My Bloody Valentine and Maniac Cop. And then, way down in the weeds, you got to the films that tried very hard but failed to make any connection with audiences, getting condemned to the dustbin of Blockbuster shelves where people walking past could say, “wait, they made a film called Pumpkinhead?” They did indeed, and, after watching the film, it’s pretty clear why no one really talks about this movie much anymore.

Pumpkinhead is the kind of low budget horror that you feel could have been good if it had just had a little more time, a little more money, a little more skill behind the camera to bring it together. There are interesting ideas at play in the film, good moments and a lot of creepy atmosphere, that all tie together in a way that, if the film had been better overall, really could have made this a solid hit. But due to a number of factors, and bad decisions in the story, the film eventually falls apart. There’s potential to Pumpkinhead, which I’m sure is why it’s a cult classic now, but the film just can’t get out of its own way and be a good horror film. It tries, but fails, over and over again.

The film stars Lance Henriksen as Ed Harley, a man taking care of his young son, Billy (Matthew Hurley), all on his own. Ed runs a little market and vegetable stand out in the sticks, with his son hanging out at his side during the day. It’s a quiet, happy life for the two of them, which all sadly comes crashing down when a group of teens, led by Joel (John D'Aquino), come passing through. The kids are on their way to a cabin out in the woods to have a nice weekend, but Joel is a bit of a hot head who just had to get out and rolling on his motorbike, and that’s when the trouble starts.

When Ed is called away to make a delivery over at the Wallace farm, he leaves his son behind to mind the store. But their dog gets out and Billy goes chasing after it, getting caught in the path of Joel on his bike. The collision gravely injures Billy, and though some of the kids stay behind to try and help the little kid, Joel goes driving off, afraid of what could happen next. He expects the cops would come calling, but instead Ed, grieving after his boy succumbs to his wounds, calls on the magic of an old witch, Haggis (Florence Schauffler), to help him get his revenge. Following her instructions, Ed digs up a strange body from an old cemetery and this lets Haggis resurrect the demonic Pumpkinhead. Now the demon is on the loose, and the kids may not be able to survive the night.

There’s a lot going on in Pumpkinhead, and the film spends a ton of time setting all its pieces in motion. It takes a while during the first act to show us Ed and Billy, illustrating their life together and how much Ed cares for his boy. It’s not bad, giving us time to see how much he cares for Billy, but it lacks urgency. This act starts to feel like it drags as it slowly goes about a day for Ed and Billy, their life on the farm, at the store, and so much more. Even once we get into the inciting incident that we know has to lead to future carnage, the film feels a decided lack of urgency about any of its storytelling.

The first act is about Ed and Billy, and then the second act is about Ed setting up his revenge. Once again it’s slowly paced, with Ed having to go on what is, effectively, a long side quest just to learn where the witch lives, and then to dig up the body of the demon, all so it can be resurrected to go after the kids. This act could have been severely trimmed down. Instead of Ed going to the Wallace farm, getting the information about Haggis, driving over there, then driving to the grave, then digging up the body, and then watching the ritual, we could have simply gone from Ed grieving his boy to showing up at Haggis’s cabin out in the swamps. “Legends say you can help me…” and that explains all we need to know. It’s an entire second act where the titular monster still hasn’t arrived and we’re waiting for anything interesting to happen.

That’s not to diminish what the actors are doing, mind you. Henricksen is a great actor and we never doubt his character’s love and devotion for his boy. There are solid character actors surrounding him, like Buck Flower as Mr. Wallace, Brian Bremmer as Bunt Wallace, and Florence Schauffler as Haggis, and they give life and color to their scenes. But that doesn’t change the fact that the film wastes a lot of time setting up this whole movie only to then have to dispense with all the horror action in a very truncated third act that really needed more time to build its scares.

The scares, to be quite frank, are lacking in Pumpkinhead. Once the demon is awake we get a very short version of The Evil Dead, in effect, with a demon coming for the kids and killing them, one by one. The comparison to that movie, though, does no favors for Pumpkinhead because while it feels like the makers of this film really wanted to make their own The Evil Dead, they lacked the skill or ability to do so. There’s none of the gleeful carnage, none of the over-the-top gore and scares, none of the thrill. It’s all very staid, simple, and kind of boring.

The real issue for this third act, aside from the fact that it’s too short and barely has time to spend on anything, is that the kills are all pretty bloodless. The film feels tame, almost neutered, like the production team was too afraid to make a scary horror movie. Too many characters die off screen, with just a scream, or a body left afterwards, to let us know something happened. There are all kinds of decent deaths set up, and we have a pretty gnarly looking demon doing the work, but the film never commits to the kills. It needs more blood in its veins but there’s none to be found on screen.

Honestly, the film needed a rewrite and a lot of editing to be good. We needed far less time spent on Ed and Billy; Henricksen is a good actor and he could have conveyed his love for his son in far less time. We didn’t need all the elaborate setup for the demon. We could easily have shaved 30 minutes here, minimum, which would have given us more time with the cast of teens. These are threadbare, cardboard characters we barely know before they die, so we don’t care about them at all. And more time with the characters also means more time spent on the kills, which would have helped this film a lot.

Pieces of this film work, which is what makes Pumpkinhead frustrating. You can feel the film grasping for what it wants to be, but the team working on it simply couldn’t get it there. This is a film that could have been great in the right hands, but that’s not the film we got. Pumpkinhead is a boring, almost tedious film in a genre that can’t stand being anything less than shocking and over-the-top. Its consignment to third rate status is entirely deserved.