Pumpkinhead: Review

The Film:

The story of Pumpkinhead is a rather basic but effective one, much like the characters in the film. A man named Ed (Lance Henriksen) and his young son Billy (Matthew Hurley) live a simple life in the country where they work in their little market stand near the highway. One day a group of young friends arrive at the store on their way to a cabin they are going to. A terrible and tragic accident happens which leaves Billy dead and the whole the group in shambles about what to do. Eventually the person who accidently killed Billy decides to flee and most of the group go along and try to stop him or get him to reconsider. Despite claims of an accident by a group member that has stayed behind, Ed becomes hellbent on getting revenge and killing all of those involved in the accident. He summons the titular Pumpkinhead with the help from a witch, with hopes that the beast will give Ed his vengeance against those that wronged him. This is where the movie sifts to a morality tale that questions wether vengeance is a good course of action or ultimately damaging to both others and the individual. As for the audio/video quality, they are both very good. The video quality specifically has to be up there among some of the best releases by Scream Factory, particularly because of the lack of compression artifacts found in the image. The audio/video quality should please the majority of fans.

Pumpkinhead is a movie that has never really gotten the spotlight that it deserves. The film features a really good performance from Lance Henriksen, which based on some of the comments made in the extras by Henriksen should be no surprise considering how much he put into the role and how important it was to him. The rest of the cast do the best with what they have, which is not very much. Once the death of Billy happens the movie shifts into horror overdrive and focuses mainly on killing the majority of the group of friends until the monster is eventually defeated. The story of the movie is nothing revolutionary but even considering that, the story has more going for it than most other horror films of this type.

Overall Pumpkinhead is a movie that is capable of standing the tests of time thanks to top notch creature effects, a strong performance from Henriksen, and a simple but effective story. I would say that Pumpkinhead is a severely underrated movie that has thankfully been given the respect it deserves thanks to the amazing Blu-ray release by Scream Factory. 

4/5

The Extras:

The extras on this release first rate and arguably some of the best Scream Factory have released to this point. Not only is there a quantity of features, there is also a lot of quality in the features. The highlights of the features are definitely the "Remembering the Monster Kid: A Tribute to Stan Winston" and "Pumpkinhead Unearthed" features. The tribute to Stan Winston is a standout feature filled with a great many stories from those that have worked with him. The "Pumpkinhead Unearthed" making-of documentary has some good information from many of the actors who were in the film taking about the the process of making Pumpkinhead. Just these two features add up to almost two hours of material. There is also a commentary and another one hour of bonus material.

5/5

Pumpkinhead is available to order now here: Pumpkinhead (Collector's Edition) [Blu-ray]