Despite its holiday-appropriate title, Pumpkinhead isn’t themed around Halloween. A Southern Gothic tale of revenge set over what appears to be warm summer months, Pumpkinhead has become requisite Halloween viewing anyway. It’s not hard to see why; despite any overt ties to the holiday, Halloween’s essence is woven into the very fabric of this ’80s gem.
That began with Pumpkinhead’s conception. The story, which sees a man conjure up a vengeance demon after his son’s tragic death, drew inspiration from Ed Justin’s poem, “Pumpkinhead.” Its catchy rhythm and spooky imagery evoke classic mood-setting holiday poems, perfect for sharing around flickering flames in the dark:
Keep away from Pumpkinhead,
Unless you’re tired of living,
His enemies are mostly dead,
He’s mean and unforgiving,
Laugh at him and you’re undone,
But in some dreadful fashion,
Vengeance, he considers fun,
And plans it with a passion,
Time will not erase or blot,
A plot that he has brewing,
It’s when you think that he’s forgot,
He’ll conjure your undoing,
Bolted doors and windows barred,
Guard dogs prowling in the yard,
Won’t protect you in your bed,
Nothing will, from Pumpkinhead.
–Ed Justin
After opening with a scene in 1957 that teases the demon on the hunt for its prey, the film cuts to the present day and spends time establishing the affecting relationship between hard-working single father Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) and his sweet son Billy (Matthew Hurley). Ed runs and owns a small shop in their rural town and leaves Billy alone with his pup while running an errand. While he’s away, a group of campers that had stopped by the store take their dirt bikes out for a spin nearby. Giving chase to his dog, Billy runs right out in their path, spurning a devastating fatal accident that leaves the city friends shaken to their core and Ed on a wrathful quest for vengeance.
While the campers turn on each other in the aftermath, some desperate to seek the authorities and make amends, and another desperate to cover it all up to hide his insobriety, Ed hires a local to take him to Haggis (Florence Schauffer), an isolated swamp witch. She can’t resurrect Billy, but she can help Ed get retribution.
He just has to retrieve a body from an old cemetery first.
This atmospheric sequence is rife with Halloween imagery and iconography. The vivid oranges insides Haggis’s swamp shack, its critter filled interior befitting of a witch, contrast perfectly with the foggy, cool hues of the graveyard. The graveyard isn’t littered with headstones, but pumpkins and overgrown vines and roots. Ed brings the misshapen body back to Haggis, who uses his and Billy’s blood in a ritual to summon forth the vengeance demon, Pumpkinhead. As the monster sets off to claim the lives of those that wronged Ed, he’s haunted – in the guise of an undead Billy- by the reality of the power he’s just unleashed. “What’d you do, daddy?” Ed breaks down in his truck on the drive back from the swamp.
Aside from the recurring orange and blue aesthetic and the seasonal iconography, Pumpkinhead evokes Halloween through its vigorous enforcement of rules. Sam in Trick’ r Treat may have popularized the holiday’s etiquette to keep restless spirits at bay, but Samhain and Halloween’s ancient customs date back centuries before the cute pop culture icon came along. Feasts for a good harvest, rituals of carving faces in gourds to ward off evil, and old customs of going door to door for treats in exchange for prayers over dead loved ones are among some of the rules that shaped the holiday. Not abiding in those rules can be devilishly catastrophic. That morality plays into horror frequently, and Pumpkinhead is no exception.
Pumpkinhead examines the toll of vengeance. Of the six friends that set out for a weekend getaway at a cabin in the woods, only the driver at the wheel in Billy’s death, Joel (John D’Aquino), feels a worthy target for such monstrous revenge. Even then, his mean spirited, selfish demeanor cracks and exposes the remorse and fear beneath. His friends all show various stages of shock, guilt, and devastation over what happened. None of them truly deserved their fates. That’s something Ed realizes just a hair too late. In the immediate throes of grief, he dabbles in evil arts that he doesn’t understand and bargains his soul away. He lets loose an evil that can’t be contained, and it transforms him, literally, into a monster.
It’s a fable set against a Southern Gothic backdrop, full of witches, ghosts, and pumpkin patches. Pumpkinhead proves you don’t need a picturesque New England style fall setting to create Halloween atmosphere. An eerie earworm poem, unique mythos, a fantastic creature design birthed from a pumpkin, and spooky mood lighting offer up the perfect ingredients to whip up a seasonal spell, even without a single explicit mention of Halloween.
Stan Winston‘s directorial feature debut is the ideal non-Halloween Halloween movie that makes for requisite annual viewing during this, the most spooky time of the year.
