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Pumpkinhead (film)
Encyclopedia
Pumpkinhead is a 1988 supernatural horror film
. It was the directorial debut of noted special effects artist Stan Winston
. While Pumpkinhead received mixed reviews, the film has built up a cult following
in the years since its release.
) owns a small store in the country. He briefly leaves his young son alone while he runs an errand. A group of teenage campers stop by Harley's. While riding their dirt bikes, they mortally injure Harley's son. One teen, Steve, stays with the boy until his father's return; the rest flee the scene.
At their cabin, the campers fight about whether or not to call the police. Joel, who is responsible for the boy's injury and is on probation for a similar incident, knocks one of his friends unconscious and locks two others in the closet to stop them from contacting the authorities.
Harley goes to see a supposed witch, who says she cannot bring his son back. After Harley says that as a boy, he saw the witch controlling a mysterious creature, the witch agrees to help Harley seek revenge, but she warns him that vengeance comes with a powerful price. On her orders, Harley goes to an old pumpkin
patch, digs up a disfigured corpse, and brings it back to the witch's home. The witch uses blood from father and son to resurrect the creature's corpse.
Back at the cabin, one of the girls, Maggie, hears a voice whispering her name. Seemingly hypnotized, she follows the voice outside the cabin. Steve brings her out of her trance, but he is then attacked by the creature and killed. Harley experiences the murder through the creature's eyes.
While the campers search for Steve, a clawed hand seizes Maggie, dragging her away. Harley has a vision of the creature killing Maggie and he returns to the witch, begging her to stop the monster. The witch laughs and says nothing can stop the monster. She warns that Harley will die too if he interferes.
Joel confronts the monster with a knife, but the monster swats him aside and drags off another of the teens. The three remaining campers beg the locals for help, but the locals refuse, saying the three campers are "marked." Harley arrives and shoots the creature, but when Joel checks to see if it's dead, the creature impales Joel on his own rifle.
A local boy, Bunt, helps the two living campers, Tracey and Chris, reach an abandoned church. Bunt relates the legend of the monster Pumpkinhead, explaining that the creature avenges one who was wronged. If anyone tries to stop Pumpkinhead, that person becomes marked as another victim. The creature attacks and throws Chris against a tree, then drags his body back to Harley's house, where Tracey, Bunt, and Harley have taken shelter.
Bunt is caught when Pumpkinhead enters the house. While Harley experiences the murder, Tracey is terrified to see that his face has changed to resemble the monster's. She runs outside and finds Chris struggling to crawl away as Pumpkinhead prepares to kill Bunt. Harley stumbles out of the barn but is accidentally stabbed in the arm by a pitchfork. Both Harley and Pumpkinhead cry out in pain, and the creature releases Bunt. Harley notices that Pumpkinhead's face is turning more human, then realizes that he and Pumpkinhead are one. The only way to kill the creature is to die himself.
The creature grabs Tracey by the neck, but before it can kill her, Harley shoots himself in the head. Both he and Pumpkinhead momentarily collapse to the ground. Pumpkinhead grabs Bunt again. Tracey grabs the gun, and Harley begs her to kill him. Harley, now fully changed, tries to attack Tracey. She shoots him several times until both he and Pumpkinhead fall to the ground, dead. Tracey, Bunt, and Chris then watch as Pumpkinhead bursts into flames. Later that night, back in the pumpkin patch, the witch buries Harley's now-disfigured corpse in Pumpkinhead's grave.
However, the producers of the film have not clarified the poem's origin. Neither the poem nor the writer Ed Justin have, so far, been sourced in any pre-existing form.
theatrically in the United States
by United Artists
in October 1988 and again in January 1989. It grossed $4,385,516 total at the domestic box office.
The film was released on VHS
in the U.S. by MGM/UA Home Entertainment. MGM released the film on DVD
twice; once in 2000 as a standard edition and again in 2009 in a 20th Anniversary Edition featuring an audio commentary and over an hour of featurettes.
, went straight to video in 1994 directed by Jeff Burr
.
A third movie, called Pumpkinhead 3: The Original Sin was written by Jeffery Reddick, the writer of Final Destination
, but issues of the rights prevented it from entering production.
Two additional sequels, titled Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes
and Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud, were filmed in 2006 as made for television movies
and aired on SCI FI
. Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes
aired in October 2006, and Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud aired on February 10, 2007.
also published a Pumpkinhead comic book series called "Pumpkinhead: The Rites of Exorcism". The comic was supposed to be a four part mini-series but only two issues were published. The second one ended in a cliffhanger leaving readers with the prospect of a winged Pumpkinhead that would have appeared in the third issue.
In 1994, GEOmetric Design, Inc., a St. Paul, Minnesota company and producer of model figure kits (see "garage kit
") in the U.S., produced and marketed a vinyl Pumpkinhead model kit called "Pumpkinhead: The Metamorphosis". This version of Pumpkinhead has wings and the model kit depicts the demon perched on an aging stone staircase. The model stands about 17 inches tall, was licensed by MGM/UA, Inc. and endorsed by Stan Winston Studios, and Carducci and Gerani, the writers of the original film. Sculpted by internationally famed Japanese artist, Takayuki Takeya (竹谷 隆之), the kit was based on the Pumpkinhead sequel story written by Carducci and Gerani and published in the Dark Horse Comic's series.
While it is true that Dark Horse's comic book series was cancelled before all four installments were published, GEOmetric Design provided authors Carducci and Gerani the opportunity to publish the rest of their sequel story. With each Pumpkinhead model kit sold, the company included a glossy, full-color booklet. The booklet contained the authors' conclusion to the "Pumpkinhead: Rites of Exorcism" story, original illustrations and paintings by a number of well-known hobby artists, and instructions for building and painting the Pumpkinhead model kit. Even at a whopping $120, it was GEOmetric Design, Inc.'s best-selling monster kit of all time.
A few years earlier, GEOmetric Design, Inc. had produced and marketed the first licensed Pumpkinhead model kit. That kit was released in 1991 and featured the demon on a display base depicting a portion of a burned out church. The model kit was sculpted by American artist Randy Bowen
. That collaboration not only helped launch Bowen's successful career in sculpting, but helped launch GEOmetric as a leader in the garage kit industry. The kit was discontinued when GEOmetric Design released its Pumpkinhead: The Metamorphosis kit.
, released in 1999. The lyrics are basically a re-telling of the plot of the film, with the first lines being: "Now this is a story, of a good man named Ed, left his son for a moment, returned found him dead". The song ends with the first four lines of the poem that inspired the film "Keep away from the Pumpkinhead, unless you're tired of living, his enemies are mostly dead, he's mean and unforgiving."
Boondox, a horrorcore country rapper with Psychopathic Records released an EP entitled 'Punkinhead' May 1, 2007. It features a song of the same name.
, the film currently holds a 56% "Rotten rating".
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
. It was the directorial debut of noted special effects artist Stan Winston
Stan Winston
Stanley Winston was an American visual effects supervisor, makeup artist, and film director. He was best known for his work in the Terminator series, the Jurassic Park series, Aliens, the Predator series, Iron Man, Edward Scissorhands, and Avatar...
. While Pumpkinhead received mixed reviews, the film has built up a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
in the years since its release.
Plot
Ed Harley (Lance HenriksenLance Henriksen
Lance James Henriksen is an American actor and artist best known to film and television audiences for his roles in science fiction, action, and horror films such as the Alien film franchise, and on television shows such as Millennium....
) owns a small store in the country. He briefly leaves his young son alone while he runs an errand. A group of teenage campers stop by Harley's. While riding their dirt bikes, they mortally injure Harley's son. One teen, Steve, stays with the boy until his father's return; the rest flee the scene.
At their cabin, the campers fight about whether or not to call the police. Joel, who is responsible for the boy's injury and is on probation for a similar incident, knocks one of his friends unconscious and locks two others in the closet to stop them from contacting the authorities.
Harley goes to see a supposed witch, who says she cannot bring his son back. After Harley says that as a boy, he saw the witch controlling a mysterious creature, the witch agrees to help Harley seek revenge, but she warns him that vengeance comes with a powerful price. On her orders, Harley goes to an old pumpkin
Pumpkin
A pumpkin is a gourd-like squash of the genus Cucurbita and the family Cucurbitaceae . It commonly refers to cultivars of any one of the species Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbita mixta, Cucurbita maxima, and Cucurbita moschata, and is native to North America...
patch, digs up a disfigured corpse, and brings it back to the witch's home. The witch uses blood from father and son to resurrect the creature's corpse.
Back at the cabin, one of the girls, Maggie, hears a voice whispering her name. Seemingly hypnotized, she follows the voice outside the cabin. Steve brings her out of her trance, but he is then attacked by the creature and killed. Harley experiences the murder through the creature's eyes.
While the campers search for Steve, a clawed hand seizes Maggie, dragging her away. Harley has a vision of the creature killing Maggie and he returns to the witch, begging her to stop the monster. The witch laughs and says nothing can stop the monster. She warns that Harley will die too if he interferes.
Joel confronts the monster with a knife, but the monster swats him aside and drags off another of the teens. The three remaining campers beg the locals for help, but the locals refuse, saying the three campers are "marked." Harley arrives and shoots the creature, but when Joel checks to see if it's dead, the creature impales Joel on his own rifle.
A local boy, Bunt, helps the two living campers, Tracey and Chris, reach an abandoned church. Bunt relates the legend of the monster Pumpkinhead, explaining that the creature avenges one who was wronged. If anyone tries to stop Pumpkinhead, that person becomes marked as another victim. The creature attacks and throws Chris against a tree, then drags his body back to Harley's house, where Tracey, Bunt, and Harley have taken shelter.
Bunt is caught when Pumpkinhead enters the house. While Harley experiences the murder, Tracey is terrified to see that his face has changed to resemble the monster's. She runs outside and finds Chris struggling to crawl away as Pumpkinhead prepares to kill Bunt. Harley stumbles out of the barn but is accidentally stabbed in the arm by a pitchfork. Both Harley and Pumpkinhead cry out in pain, and the creature releases Bunt. Harley notices that Pumpkinhead's face is turning more human, then realizes that he and Pumpkinhead are one. The only way to kill the creature is to die himself.
The creature grabs Tracey by the neck, but before it can kill her, Harley shoots himself in the head. Both he and Pumpkinhead momentarily collapse to the ground. Pumpkinhead grabs Bunt again. Tracey grabs the gun, and Harley begs her to kill him. Harley, now fully changed, tries to attack Tracey. She shoots him several times until both he and Pumpkinhead fall to the ground, dead. Tracey, Bunt, and Chris then watch as Pumpkinhead bursts into flames. Later that night, back in the pumpkin patch, the witch buries Harley's now-disfigured corpse in Pumpkinhead's grave.
Original poem
Pumpkinhead was inspired by the following poem by Ed Justin:However, the producers of the film have not clarified the poem's origin. Neither the poem nor the writer Ed Justin have, so far, been sourced in any pre-existing form.
Release
After a series of delays and tentative release dates, the film was given a limited releaseLimited release
Limited release is a term in the American motion picture industry for a motion picture that is playing in a select few theaters across the country ....
theatrically in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
by United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
in October 1988 and again in January 1989. It grossed $4,385,516 total at the domestic box office.
The film was released on VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
in the U.S. by MGM/UA Home Entertainment. MGM released the film on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
twice; once in 2000 as a standard edition and again in 2009 in a 20th Anniversary Edition featuring an audio commentary and over an hour of featurettes.
Sequels
A sequel, entitled Pumpkinhead II: Blood WingsPumpkinhead II: Blood Wings
Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings is the 1994 direct-to-video sequel to the 1988 horror film Pumpkinhead. In this movie, thrill-seeking teens resurrect a demon and come to regret it. The movie is barely related to others in the series...
, went straight to video in 1994 directed by Jeff Burr
Jeff Burr
Jeff Burr is an American film director, Writer and producer best known for his work in horror sequels, such as Stepfather II, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Puppet Master 4 and 5, and Pumpkinhead II....
.
A third movie, called Pumpkinhead 3: The Original Sin was written by Jeffery Reddick, the writer of Final Destination
Final Destination
Final Destination is a 2000 supernatural slasher film written and directed by James Wong. The film was co-written by Glen Morgan and Jeffrey Reddick, both of them having previously worked with Wong in the TV series The X-Files. The film stars Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith and Tony Todd...
, but issues of the rights prevented it from entering production.
Two additional sequels, titled Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes
Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes
Pumpkinhead 3: Ashes To Ashes is a 2006 made for television sequel in the Pumpkinhead franchise of horror films. The film is directed by Jake West , who co-wrote the movie with Barbara Werner...
and Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud, were filmed in 2006 as made for television movies
Television movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
and aired on SCI FI
Sci Fi Channel (United States)
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
. Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes
Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes
Pumpkinhead 3: Ashes To Ashes is a 2006 made for television sequel in the Pumpkinhead franchise of horror films. The film is directed by Jake West , who co-wrote the movie with Barbara Werner...
aired in October 2006, and Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud aired on February 10, 2007.
Comic
Dark Horse ComicsDark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
also published a Pumpkinhead comic book series called "Pumpkinhead: The Rites of Exorcism". The comic was supposed to be a four part mini-series but only two issues were published. The second one ended in a cliffhanger leaving readers with the prospect of a winged Pumpkinhead that would have appeared in the third issue.
In 1994, GEOmetric Design, Inc., a St. Paul, Minnesota company and producer of model figure kits (see "garage kit
Garage kit
A garage kit or resin kit is an assembly scale model kit most commonly cast in polyurethane resin. They are often figures portraying humans or other living creatures. In Japan, kits often depict anime characters, and in the United States depictions of movie monsters are common...
") in the U.S., produced and marketed a vinyl Pumpkinhead model kit called "Pumpkinhead: The Metamorphosis". This version of Pumpkinhead has wings and the model kit depicts the demon perched on an aging stone staircase. The model stands about 17 inches tall, was licensed by MGM/UA, Inc. and endorsed by Stan Winston Studios, and Carducci and Gerani, the writers of the original film. Sculpted by internationally famed Japanese artist, Takayuki Takeya (竹谷 隆之), the kit was based on the Pumpkinhead sequel story written by Carducci and Gerani and published in the Dark Horse Comic's series.
While it is true that Dark Horse's comic book series was cancelled before all four installments were published, GEOmetric Design provided authors Carducci and Gerani the opportunity to publish the rest of their sequel story. With each Pumpkinhead model kit sold, the company included a glossy, full-color booklet. The booklet contained the authors' conclusion to the "Pumpkinhead: Rites of Exorcism" story, original illustrations and paintings by a number of well-known hobby artists, and instructions for building and painting the Pumpkinhead model kit. Even at a whopping $120, it was GEOmetric Design, Inc.'s best-selling monster kit of all time.
A few years earlier, GEOmetric Design, Inc. had produced and marketed the first licensed Pumpkinhead model kit. That kit was released in 1991 and featured the demon on a display base depicting a portion of a burned out church. The model kit was sculpted by American artist Randy Bowen
Randy Bowen
Randy Bowen is an American pop culture sculptor and the founder of Bowen Designs.Originator and pioneer in the field of limited edition sculptures based on pop-culture icons. Primarily noted for the innovation of the mini-busts and statues of characters from films as well as characters from comic...
. That collaboration not only helped launch Bowen's successful career in sculpting, but helped launch GEOmetric as a leader in the garage kit industry. The kit was discontinued when GEOmetric Design released its Pumpkinhead: The Metamorphosis kit.
Music
The horror punk band The Misfits released a song entitled "Pumpkin Head," which was featured on their album Famous MonstersFamous Monsters
-Chart positions:- Credits :* Michale Graves - vocals* Jerry Only - bass* Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein - guitar* Dr. Chud - drums...
, released in 1999. The lyrics are basically a re-telling of the plot of the film, with the first lines being: "Now this is a story, of a good man named Ed, left his son for a moment, returned found him dead". The song ends with the first four lines of the poem that inspired the film "Keep away from the Pumpkinhead, unless you're tired of living, his enemies are mostly dead, he's mean and unforgiving."
Boondox, a horrorcore country rapper with Psychopathic Records released an EP entitled 'Punkinhead' May 1, 2007. It features a song of the same name.
Reception
Critical reaction to the film has been mostly mixed to positive. On website review aggregator Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, the film currently holds a 56% "Rotten rating".