Ed Harley (Lance Henrikson) declares revenge on a group of teenagers who accidentally killed his son. He summons a demon called Pumpkinhead who stops at nothing to fulfil its promise.Stan Winston does an excellent job creating the eerie horror of a classic horror tale of revenge gone horribly wrong. Winston, who is most well known for special effects, does an excellent job for his first feature, it's just a shame he didn't go far after this film.While Pumpkinhead has a familiar premise it's executed with such style to make it unique. The old farm setting makes it feel like a classic horror film and separates it from the other slasher movies of the time.What's most impressive about the film is the creature itself. It moves rather fluently and the animatronics on the creature are quite realistic. I would say it's one of the most underrated creature designs for 1980's creature features. It's not a flawless film, there are moments of cheap scares and a plethora of cliches. However I would argue it's underrated and if you get the chance, give it a watch!

After a group of bikers accidentally kill Billy Harley, his father Ed is devastated and the only thing he wants is revenge.He goes to an old woman who is said to be a witch, and conjures up the titular demonic creature and with revenge on his mind unleashes him upon the bikers.....It's not the breaking the mould for horror films, but Winston has crafted a fairly decent film, with wonderful puppetry of the titular character.When you can get over the fact that Billy looks just like the Milky Bar Kid, what you get is an enjoyable over the top horror film that crosses Death Wish with The Keep.Henriksen is wonderful as the grieving father, and puts in a really good performance in what could have easily have been a coasting role for him.The rest of the cast unfortunately, are nothing more than your atypical horror film teen fodder, and you can more or less guess which ones get killed and in which order.It's a pretty gory film considering when it was made, and how restraint horror films were because of the over the top censoring film boards were at that time (thankyou James Ferman), but they are inventive, and the film doesn't hide the fact that Pumpkinhead looks so good.There is a little twist at the end which is quite impressive, and a scene that refers to the cold opening, but other than that, it's just a perfectly perfunctory horror film with wonderful special effects.

Let's face it, it's incredibly difficult to make a good horror movie. Pumpkinhead is not only a good horror flick, it actually excels! With a good concept, a great script, and with wizard effect specialist Stan Winston in the corner, what can possibly go wrong? From my perspective, very little. This was put together quite intelligently. The violence and gore is just enough to satisfy its target audience, and yet is certainly tame enough to not abuse its authority. When a fathers son is accidentally killed by a group of young bikers, a father is left craving some pretty strong vengeance. One of the bikers claimed it was an accident. Not good enough, boys. It's just not good enough. A trip to a witch leads daddy to an interesting relic called Pumpkinhead, a tall, beastly creature that has a long history of settling some uneven scores with many of its "clients". Okay, so he's got his revenge, the question is...how do you put this monster back in its box? Heh heh heh, my friend...let me explain something to you. See, Pumpkinhead doesn't work like that. Your revenge came with a price, a very HIGH price, and he learns all too late, how Pumpkinhead works. With a unique sacrifice, Pumpkinhead will continue to please for years to come. My only complaint with the movie, is the night time scenes, when the action really gets intense, its kind of hard to see and make out what is going on...you mainly hear just a bunch of screaming, but its much too dark to make out what is going on ( Who knows? Maybe that was what was intended. Stan was very good at what he did for a living!) All in all, this movie was a treat, and I do not follow the sequels, I can't imagine any of them trying to live up or triumph the original, so I just simply won't waste my time. I recommend you don't waste yours.

PUMPKINHEAD is one of those distinctly lacklustre horror films that populated cinemas in the late '80s, marking the end of what I consider to be a boon for the genre in the first half of the decade. Come 1985, horror films just fell apart, with endless cheesy sequels and a reliance on special effects over genuine storytelling. This film is a case of the latter in point – a film hosting a decent monster in search of a decent script. The story involves the kind of rural witchcraft we're familiar with from the likes of CHILDREN OF THE CORN, with a curse revisited on the usual bunch of unlikeable overage teenagers who soon find themselves being offed, one by one, by the menace.Pumpkinhead looks a lot like the alien from ALIEN, but he's still the best thing in the movie – along with Lance Henriksen. The B-movie favourite has a great starring role as a father determined to avenge his son, and it's just a shame that his considerable talents are wasted here (as in so many of his movies). Henriksen and, to a lesser extent, George Buck Flower, are the only interesting actors in the movie. The rest give horrid performances.The first half of the film offers a lengthy set-up which might have paid off had the denouement possessed one ounce of wit, originally or intelligence. It doesn't, ending up as a typical stalk-n-slash outing – without any decent gore to recommend either. The presence of FX supremo Stan Winston as director is a novelty, but he really should have stuck to making monsters rather than trying to direct them; his task is doomed from the outset. It all ends unsurprisingly enough, leaving the viewer wondering why on earth they just wasted an hour and a half of their time on this. Incredibly, three sequels followed.