Pumpkinhead Blu-ray Review
Revenge is a dish best served with pumpkins, evidently.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, September 6, 2014
There are only a very few individuals in the annals of film history who have had such a singular impact on their chosen field (or fields) of work
as
Stan WInston did in the interlinked arenas of visual effects and makeup. Winston arrived on the Hollywood scene with a bang, winning an
Emmy
for his first official assignment, a 1972 made for television film called
Gargoyles. A number of high profile television outings ensued,
including such iconic entries as
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (for which WInston won a second Emmy) and
Roots,
before WInston matriculated to the world of feature films, focusing mostly again on makeup effects for films like
W.C. Fields and Me
and
The Wiz. Even with this ever growing and impressive body of work, including an Academy Award nomination for his makeup in 1982's
Heartbeeps, Winston still wasn't
quite at the top tier of his profession, and he continued to provide uncredited assists for a
variety
of projects throughout the early 1980s, until Winston began what would turn out to be a long and fruitful collaboration with James Cameron,
starting with 1984's
The Terminator. Over the next
several years Winston's star rose inexorably, with seemingly annual Oscar nominations and/or wins for both Cameron films (
Aliens,
Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and films by directors as disparate as John McTiernan (
Predator) and Tim Burton (
Edward Scissorhands,
Batman Returns). Perhaps giving into that time honored phrase usually uttered by actors, what
Winston
evidently
really wanted to to do was direct, and in 1988 he helmed his first feature film (of only two),
Pumpkinhead. The
slasher
craze of that era was already showing signs of desanguination (sorry), and
Pumpkinhead returned to a more traditional marauding
monster approach, albeit one with a more or less clearly defined mythology which tied it to the very human need for vengeance. Winston's
special
effects mastery is nicely on display here, even if a lot of the monster sequences take place in shrouded environments, but his directorial hand
is a
bit more uncertain, leading to an unevenness in the pacing and chills that
Pumpkinhead ends up delivering.
In 1957 a young boy named Ed is terrified by an incident where a neighbor of his farming parents is refused entry into his parents' home one
stormy night, after which Ed spies the hapless—if not exactly innocent—man getting vivisected by
some kind of monster. The man's
panicked confession to Ed's father that he isn't
that guilty of having murdered a child gives the first clue that
Pumpkinhead
will
deal largely with retribution, albeit hardly divine and instead more demonic in nature. Segue forward several years and Ed (Lance Henriksen)
is
now an adult with an adorable little boy of his own named Billy (Matthew Hurley).
After the film establishes the sweetly loving and nuturing relationship between Ed and Billy (without providing a whole lot of information
about
why they're without a wife and mother or how they ended up where they are), a group of marauding teenagers shows up at Ed's general
store
out in the country. While Ed is gone, an intended innocent frolic with some dirt bikes goes horribly wrong and Billy is left mortally injured.
When
Ed returns, he is obviously bereft and decides to turn for help to some backwoods folks who might have a little magic up their frayed sleeves.
That introduces one of the signature makeup effects in the film, as an ancient witch named Haggis (Florence Schauffer) shows up looking like
the long lost grandmother (or perhaps
great-grandmother) of Freddy Krueger from
A Nightmare on Elm Street (abeit without any scissorhands).
Haggis reveals that while she can't bring Billy back to life, she can perhaps do the next best thing—summon the titular monster, who will be
hell bent on revenge on those who killed (or even participated as bystanders) little Billy. A mixture of blood from both Billy and Ed is
combined with a corpse
dug up from a graveyard pumpkin patch, and thus Pumpkinhead is born. While the monster's title is of course evocative of Halloween
(and/or Frank L. Baum's
Oz characters), it instead turns out to be more like the
Alien creature than anything.
Up to this point Winston has crafted a competent but derivative piece that has at least a baseline of human emotion making the horror
elements (still more or less nascent at that point) quite effective. But once the film tips over into a pure revenge fantasy, things start to go
at least relatively awry. Part of this is due to a somewhat haphazard screenplay that never provides enough backstory for Pumpkinhead or
even clarifies that the beast feeds on vengeance. There's also little knitting the prologue to the bulk of the story, something that may beg
the question as to why it was even placed in the film to begin with.
Instead, the film attempts to work up a supposedly noble thesis that
seeking revenge is the monster in us all (or at least Ed), as it becomes apparent that Ed and Pumpkinhead have become inexorably linked
together. If we cared more about Ed by that point, it might have made a difference, but the film has already glossed over his past and
whatever brought him and little Billy to that point, and so there's really no "hook" here other than the scare scenes, which Winston manages
effectively enough. Perhaps if the film had detoured briefly into some memories of Ed in happier days, his current plight would have had
more emotional heft; as it stands, he's simply one of several generally unlikable people who kind of deserve to be snatched away and made
mincemeat out of.
Pumpkinhead Blu-ray, Video Quality
Pumpkinhead is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory (an imprint of Shout! Factory) with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in
1.85:1. It's probably helpful to keep several things in mind when analyzing the image quality of this film. Probably around 4/5 or so of
Pumpkinhead is cast in
very low light, an aspect further skewed with two primary tints, one kind of orange-red and the other cool
blue. All of these tendencies can be seen quite clearly in many if not most of the screenshots accompanying this review. Therefore, it's
unrealistic to expect huge amounts of fine detail or even much shadow detail in some of these scenes. That's why the fine detail and shadow
detail that
are on display
here are so generally commendable. When Winston and DP Bojan Bazelli backlight Haggis, for instance, though the entire scene is drenched in
that odd orange-red hue, there's still rather remarkable fine detail where virtually every scraggly hair on the witch's head can be clearly seen.
The outdoor daylight footage in the film shows off what a nicely saturated and clear image is actually here, with an accurate looking palette and
commendable amounts of detail. It's clear Winston didn't really want to show
too much of the titular beast, and so it's actually rather
difficult to catch more than a passing glimpse throughout the film. While elements have occasional very minor blips like little white flecks, overall
things are in great shape. Grain is always evident, and in fact spikes appreciably in some of the tinted sequences especially. But here there's
good news again—there's no problematic noise or compression artifacts. Yes,
Pumpkinhead is generally a fairly soft looking film and, yes,
there's not mindblowing amounts of detail in some of the darkest sequences, but this is a nicely organic looking image that should please most
fans.
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
flag icon to the right of the quick search at the top-middle.
[hide this message]
Use the thumbs up and thumbs down icons to agree or disagree that the title is similar to Pumpkinhead. You can also suggest completely new similar titles to Pumpkinhead in the search box below.
