Pumpkinhead (1988)

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2020) Considering my less-than-favourable opinions about 1980s slasher films, it’s not really an accident if I have mixed feelings about Pumpkinhead. A dark variant on the dead child vengeance trope of Pet Sematary, it features Lance Henriksen as a grieving father summoning a supernatural demon to hunt down those who have severely wounded his son. Much killing then ensues in slasher-like fashion, but Pumpkinhead avoids the bottom of the barrel in a few ways. Under the direction of makeup and special-effects legend Stan Winston, it’s a film that looks great and has some decent special effects for its time. It’s also significantly more nuanced about the unintended impact of vengeance than many movies of its decade, and literalizes that metaphor in an unmistakable way. On the other hand, it does fall into the “all you need is kills” narrative philosophy of slashers—the film’s plot takes a very long break during the second act, as the vengeful monster kills through a group of teenagers in evermore spectacular fashion. While plot does come back for a late-movie finish (making a point that vengeance is corrosive to the vengeful), there’s a solid stretch of the film that’s dedicated to special effects, makeup, blood and grand guignol violence. Still, you have to grade it on a curve: Compared to most other slashers of the decade, Pumpkinhead has a strong welcome supernatural element. Compared to many other cheap B-grade horror movies, it has much better special effects. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to put Pumpkinhead solidly into the middle tier of 1980s horror (a rather good decade, mind you)—not unforgettable, but not completely repulsive either. It somehow spawned an entire franchise.