Pumpkinhead (1988)

Starring - Lance Henriksen; Jeff East; Cynthia Bain; John D'Aquino & Kimberly Ross Director - Stan Winston MPAA - R Lance Henriksen plays a country bumpkin living out in the middle of nowhere. Some reckless city teenagers who are staying in the area kill his son. He vows revenge, and seeks out a very sinister old lady who lives in the nearby woods. He has her summon the demon Pumpkinhead -- who got his name because his body rests in an old graveyard which doubles as a pumpkin patch. When Pumpkinhead awakens, he sets out to get the man's revenge in blood. When Henriksen's character realizes just how horrible the demon is, he has second thoughts, and tries in vain to help Pumpkinhead's targets get away with their lives. Pumpkinhead has other plans. This movie is your typical b-grade horror flick. Just about everything about it says cheese. The performances are substandard -- including Lance Henriksen. And the young teens are mostly there just to fulfill the victims-in-waiting quota that is so crucial to a movie such as this. The writing doesn't add too much to the movie to take your mind off the bloody awful (no pun intended) acting. The monster, while looking pretty good, isn't particularly scary. This is due as much to the writing as anything else. It's hard to be real scared when you know who is going to get it next. No suspense whatsoever. The only surprise was method of death. Perhaps the only thing that saved the creature from being completely laughable was the fact that the fog was quite thick in woods where the creature appears, so it makes the creature look slightly more ominous. This is a movie that actually appears to have tried, just not succeeded all that well. Pumpkinhead had a good premise with a lot of potential; it just wasn't executed properly. It's the typical horror film that you will find collecting dust in the dark recesses of your local video stores' horror section, or populating late night cable TV on some b-movie horror marathon. It's not unwatchable, just nowhere near the top of my list for horror (even cheesy horror) flicks. It doesn't even have the virtue of the old "It's so bad, it's good" phenomenon. There just isn't much to it. It's better than a late night infomercial on TV though. 5/10 Reviewed July 14, 1999 by Joe Chamberlain