"Pumpkinhead", or How My Favorite Revenge Film Isn't About Revenge

PART I: TALES TO GIVE YOU THE SHUDDERING SHITS

So before we get too far into this (or any distance really, since I'm starting with it) it's story time!

I got this bad boy on dvd a few years back, stocked up with tasty special features and all that jazz. To watch it for the first time in a while (it was a favorite of mine from our local video store, back when that was a thing) I went to my best friend Neal's place. For those of you who don't know this brother from another mother of mine, he has himself a case of the ol' Irritable Bowels. It was not uncommon back then for him to just cut you off mid-sentence saying "Hold that thought." and walking awkwardly to the bathroom. He's since gotten it more under control, but back then it was a lot more common of an occurrence.

"This guy better start talkin' about me pretty soon..."

Don't worry, I'm getting to ya, bud.

The apartment Neal had back when I got this movie was... cozy. Snug, even.

Bitch was tiny.

It was basically converted attic space with a kitchenette, a living room, and a bedroom. and that was it. The bathroom was directly off the living room. This is where Pumpkinhead more directly re-enters our story again. See, when he was staying at this place it was not uncommon for him to go just suddenly in there and since things were so...snug, he'd just continue whatever conversation you were having. While loudly accompanied by the merry, chortling farts of a lower digestive system with a pranksters sense of humor. But we just kept on, business as usual.

Y'know, guy stuff. Some people got it. Others were wrong.

And this happened when we had just put on the directorial debut of the legendary Stan Winston.
 We had several other friends over that night and suddenly it was just me and them while Neal dashed into the WC while telling us there was no need to pause it, since he'd also seen it many a time.

Now the beginning of the film is set somewhere in the deep Gothic South in the mid 1950s, on a dark and foreboding night. A little boy is being told to go to bed and say his prayers while his parents stare meaningfully outside, his father locking the door and loading his gun. Something wicked this way comes, and they know it.

Out of the darkness, a harried man careens through the night. Something is after him, something that isn't human. A creature from the darkest bowels of Hell.

SO, speaking of bowels... While this man pounded on the door of the house in the film, begging to please be let in, Neal was about five feet away from the rest of us, shitting his brains out. So for us, the sequence had suddenly gone from creepy mood-setter to MST3K skit.

"Dear god, pleeeease let me in!!!"
*explosive shitting noise*
"Oh god, please open the door!!!"
*shitting intensifies*
"What kind of a Christian are you?"
*Loooooong fart*

SO the rest of us were just dying outside, and very nearly needed to use the restroom ourselves... and one of my favorite stories to tell in conjunction with this film was born. And though I can never take the opening seriously EVER again, it remains a special favorite of mine.

Now, let's get to the actual movie.
Plus, enjoy this image from back when movies had real posters.

Yes, we are talking about yet another film I love and could ONLY give a good review of, so this one isn't a review, but a discussion of theme and how this movie is so unique from the series it spawned and from basically any other film in its genre. And I don't mean Horror. I mean the Revenge Film.

Here's lookin' at you, Bronson.

The Revenge movie is not uncommon in horror as a sub-genre, though it's more of a staple in action. Usually when it shows up in horror, the act of revenge itself tends to be more gruesome than the act that was perpetrated, and the avenged party (sometimes the person who was hurt like in I Spit On Your Grave, sometimes a third party like the parents in Last House on the Left) gains some catharsis along with the audience, feeling some cosmic wrong has been righted. This is very basic, speaking to a human need for balance and retribution. And it just plain goes against many of my values and sensibilities.  Yeah, great you killed a bunch of folks for the person they killed. That'll show 'em not to... do that again. Being dead and all.

So I always appreciate when the burden and awfulness of revenge is brought into focus. Good revenge films do this, bad ones don't and that's the key difference between action specimens and the horror counterparts, though some horror revenge films still do it. Charlie Bronson struts off into the sunset, secure in his status as a large-penised hero, morality be damned.

Because my main problem with revenge films is that they are abut revenge and not grief. Why grieve when you have a shotgun? Why sort out your feelings on how to carry on without your loved ones when you can splatter some folks across a wall? So the films just become about the Big Man being Too Manly to cry, so he has to go kill people. It's so macho, not to mention misogynistic since most of the time the hero is perfectly willing to let evil roam around until evil kills his girlfriend (which says a lot about our 'hero' in my opinion).

 And because these narratives get glorified in media, our response is to sometimes take pride in our supposed capacity for vengeance, talking about the lengths we'd go to if someone were ever to harm us or our loved ones, as if they are anxiously looking forward to the day someone assaults their child or murders their spouse...

Pumpkinhead could have just been a film about a guy who summons a monster to kill the teenagers that took his son from him. It could have been that dumbly simple, just a set-up to get the monster on screen and get those heads rolling. But it isn't. That's mostly down to the story being but more than that synopsis. It's a movie about grief and how actions taken in tht clouded state can have permanent consequences, how grief can consume you until you aren't yourself anymore. And as such, Pumpkinhead should have a slightly different name...

PART II: THE TRAGEDY OF EDWARD HARLEY

Lance Henriksen is the literal soul of this movie and without him the whole enterprise would just fall apart. His performance grounds a very strange tale in the emotion that needs to be at the forefront of the story at all times so you understand why he undertakes the actions he does and why he feels it is necessary to so viciously unleash Hell on our hapless victims. His physicality as Ed, the little boy from the prologue now grown into a man and a father, is one of a practical salt-of-the-Earth type, his weathered face and hard lines making it obvious we have here a man who works for his living. But tall that drops away when we see him with his son. He's a spritely little tyke, with a mop of blonde hair and Coke-bottle glasses that make you wonder if he's adopted or something. But it becomes obvious through the performance that the child takes after his departed mother and that he is all Ed has left of her. As such, he's incredibly tender with his son and the heart of the film is planted in these first interactions with them.

And to drive home just what kind of story we're telling here, little Billy asks his daddy for a story after breakfast and he of course begins it with "Once Upon A Time..". Because Pumpkinhead isn't a horror movie. It's a Grimm Fairy Tale for the modern age. And what do fairy-tales always have? Well, I'll get back to that

The story moves along. Things inevitably happen. A gaggle of City Kids come through Ed's store and while Ed is running a quick errand, the City Kids leader, the brash and slightly drunk Joel, accidentally runs Billy down with his dirt-bike. Billy is pretty badly injured, but not killed outright. But check this screen-cap from the scene and tell me if you notice something.

See that guy waaaaay in the background, running away from all this?
Yeah, that's Joel.

Leaving his shit-head brother to explain what happened so any authorities that get involved won't know he's been drinking, Joel runs for it, at first with the excuse they need to find a phone.

But yeah, Ed returns to find his world shattered, and the sorrow he's been carrying in his performance begins to boil over into a rage that refuses to be sated.

The actual death scene of Billy is very profoundly heart-breaking to me because the scene is just smart enough to give you hope for a second as he seems to wake up, calls for his Daddy, then just slumps. The shot composition and lighting couple perfectly with the music here and the soul of Henriksen as his hope turns to fear, grief, then quiet rage and revenge. He's had everything taken from him, and he's going to get his.

And when you want some revenge, know the police won't do anything to those slick City Folk, and personally saw a demon kill a guy when yiu were a little boy, where do you go?
Answer: to a witch named Mother Haggis.

Well it is a fairy tale after all....

With a name like Haggis, you know it's-
 OH HOLY BATSHIT, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?

And though the witch warns him of all the consequences of this act, that his soul will be damned to Hell for all eternity, Ed doesn't care. As far as he is concerned he's already in hell. But though there appear to be other caveats in the bargain, Ed is already committed, it's done.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY SOUL!!!

And with that, the kindly but sad hero of the narrative becomes it's doomed tragic center. Because the price for summoning the Demon of Revenge is more than just your soul. You don't just sit back and take it easy while your pet monster chipper-shreds whoever has wronged you.

No, you get to see the death through the monster's eyes and feel the pain of their victims. Just to be sure you're getting your money's worth. And that's where a big part of the tragic nature of this story comes in for Ed. Only one of the group is directly responsible for the accident that killed his boy. Some of the others are in shock, but at least two of the group turn against him and try to make him take responsibility (something he never does). In fact, the City Folk come out of this movie the worst because on top of having very thinly sketched characters, they also don't show a terrible lot of moral backbone in the face of a tragedy, instead just kind of running around going into histrionics as they are picked off one by one by the Devil's Xenomorph outside. The only one that ever left an impression with me was Jeff East's character, and that's mostly because he played the young Clark in the Richard Donner Superman movie.

There's a lot of metaphor and stuff under the surface on this movie, because it does just kinda run headlong once it gets going and is really fun and a gory nasty good time with a monster picking off teenagers if you're here for that.And mostly, I am. But where the film shines is the reveal that while the demon is utterly invincible (even popping right back up ready for round 2 after taking a direct shotgun blast to the dome), Ed Harley can be harmed... and his pain hurts the beast.

Because revenge turns inward and consumes the host, and soon you can't tell where you end and it begins, as demon and man begin to undergo a strange eldritch symbiosis that can only end in a final, self-destructive clash between man and monster to help spare the people who haven't wronged Ed, because the creature doesn't care. They're all guilty by association and it will not stop until all of them are sent to Hell before it.

And then a pitchfork features heavily in the final clash with
an emissary from Hell, because Symbolism. 

Because in the end, it isn't about getting revenge for Ed Harley. It's about making the pain stop. And when he realizes he's just creating more pain, becoming a monster that his sweet little boy would never recognize, he wakes to the truth that revenge doesn't fix anything. It doesn't raise the dead. It doesn't mend broken hearts. It doesn't make the bad things not happen.

Once this is gone, there's no getting it back.

And the tragedy of Ed Harley is he learns this so soon after summoning his demon, but still light-years too late for it to make any difference.

The one thing every Fairy-Tale has (beyond witches, monsters, curses, or magic frogs) is a moral, a message of warning. And ours has a very simple one: Revenge is never worth it. It can only ensure your own destruction along with your target. There are no angels with revenge. Only more demons.



PART III: STAY AWAY FROM PUMPKINHEAD, UNLESS YOU'RE TIRED OF LIVIN'

So like I usually do, I'm gonna talk about the guys who made this movie for a bit, and how their contributions to it are part of what made it special. As I mentioned earlier, this was the first feature from legendary effects god Stan Winston (Famous from....so much stuff, but The Terminator, Aliens, Jurassic Park, Small Soldiers, Lake Placid, Avatar, and Iron Man to name a highlight reel that might catch the eye). Stan only directed two feature films: Pumpkinhead and A Gnome Named Gnorm. One was Pumpkinhead, the other was...not, to put it bluntly. I remember seeing Gnome when I was kid, and hating it. And as a kid, I liked just about everything, I had absolutely no standards. And it surprised me to learn that this was the other film Stan directed and that it was his second. Everything about it screams amateur, first-time production, but it had largely the same crew.
But that second film doesn't have the script of this one, and the cast is mostly TV regulars, giving it all a made-for-tv feel. So the one real jewel in his directing career is this one, and it's a lulu.

The script was written by Mark Patrick Carducci and Gary Gerani. Gerani is mostly known for this, but Carducci was also a regular contributor to an old favorite of mine, the tv series Tales from the Darkside, so his efficiency at crafting a solid creature yarn with great visuals, a fun mythology and setting, and a moral lesson rings solid from experience. The story itself was inspired by a poem by Ed Justin, which goes a little something like this:

Stay away from Pumpkinhead, unless you're tired of livin',

His enemies are mostly dead, he's mean and unforgivin'.

Bolted doors and windows barred,

Guard dogs prowling in the yard.

Won't protect you in your bed.

Nothing will,

From Pumpkinhead.

"Dis MF spittin'..."

The poem features in the film, chanted by the children who reside on a nearby farm that are so numerous I always assumed the scenes that took place there were in a small shanty town as a kid. But it's all one big, happy, genetically questionable family headed by the patriarch Wallace,  played by B-Movie stand-by Buck Flower, playing a rare stand-up guy instead of a hobo or minion.

And even while posting this caption I can hear you all yelling, "Oh, THAT GUY!"

Now the script is great,as I've mentioned, so no need to make bricks without straw for Stanny W, and that's where his real expertise comes through. See, he wanted to make this film because he was tired of having to teach directors how to properly use his creations on screen. Directing a practical effect is hard work, one of the reasons they fell out of fashion with the rise of CGI that never needed to be reset, didn't break down and could be shot from a different angle without exposing all the pipes or pulleys that make it work. But the results speak for themselves, with the best results coming when the two art forms help each other make something that truly can be called a special effect, like in our previous article about HOWL.

So Stan Winston knows how his effects work, and that allows him to direct some absolutely wonderful scenes with his titular monster, my personal favorite being the scene where Mother Haggis summons him. All the scenes with the witch are lit hellish red and the infernal atmosphere only swells with the presence of an actual demon in the room.

"OK, fine, I'm up- but I'm not doing this without coffee..."
"oh ...Uhh."
"Dammit, Haggis- every time..."

And the make-up and creature designs are of course amazing. In latter day practical effects showpieces, there's a tendency to over-reach ending up with a movie that's over stuffed with lots of medium quality effects that have a hard time wowing, like the mediocre effort of Harbinger Down that could have used the focus this script had.

In this though, we are treated to each effect and costume being a part of the story and given the utmost detail and attention possible at the time. Not all of it has aged perfectly, and it's always a guy in a suit. But I love me a guy in a suit. Knowing that there is a beating heart inside that creature, knowing it's a performance and not something mocked up in a computer program is what makes it feel alive, and real, if only while you're watching. And what's more, everyone on the set has a thing to look at, react to, and be afraid of. You can look at a tennis ball and be told it's a demon, or you can get backed into a corner by THIS.

And then feel free to add your own practical bladder effect...

Pumpkinhead towers over our hapless city kids, slow and graceful, unhurried. He knows he can't be hurt by them, so he plays with them, taking his time. And that's something you can only get from an actor inside the costume, working with the puppeteers to bring this creature to life.

Pumpkinhead shines as the work of a professional effects man, but amateur film-maker, but the first effort is carried along very solidly by the great lead actor (One of only two men to ever be killed by the Terminator, the Predator, and the Alien along with the late great Bill 'Game Over, Man' Paxton), a soulful script with a valuable message, and an unforgettable monster.

So check it out if you can, it's an underappreciated gem that works for non-horror buffs too in my opinion.

Or just watch it to admire Lance Henriksen's dreamy bedroom eyes...

NEXT TIME: SOMETIMES DEAD IS BETTER.... MUCH BETTER.

Also, if you want to spend some more time on the Internet, check out my previously mentioned friend Neal's DnD/gaming blog at Improved Initiative ! He's even more entertaining when he's not shitting in a closet!