Director – Jeff Burr, Screenplay – Constantine Chachornia & Ivan Chachornia, Producers – Brad Krevoy & Steve Stabler, Photography – William Dill, Music – Jim Manzie, Special Effects – Ultimate Effects, Makeup Effects/Creatures – KNB EFX Group, Inc. (Supervisors – Howard Berger, Robert Kurtzman & Greg Nicotero), Production Design – Ivo Cristante. Production Company – Motion Picture Corporation of America.
Cast
Andrew Robinson (Sheriff Sean Braddock), Ami Dolenz (Jenny Braddock), J. Trevor Edmond (Danny Dixon), Caren Kaye (Beth Braddock), Soleil Moon Frye (Marcie), Mark McCracken (Pumpkinhead), Steve Kanaly (Judge Merle Dixon), Gloria Hendry (Delilah Pettibone), Lilyan Chauvin (Miss Ossie), Hill Harper (Peter), Alexander Polinsky (Paul), Roger Clinton (Mayor Bubba), Jean-Paul Manoux (Tommy), Joe Unger (Ernst Heller), Linnea Quigley (Nadine), R.A. Mihailoff (Red Byers)
Plot
Sean Braddock has moved away from New York City to take up the position of sheriff in the small town of Ferren Woods where he grew up. Sean and his wife Jenny are having problems with their teenage daughter Beth. Beth falls in with a group of trouble-making teens led by the judge’s son Danny Dixon. While Jenny is joy-riding with them, they run down the aged Miss Ossie. They take Miss Ossie back to her backwoods cabin where Danny finds occult paraphernalia and a spell. For a dare, Danny decides to dig up the grave outside the cabin and enact the spell on the corpse they find there. Unknown to them, this serves to raise Pumpkinhead. Soon after, Pumpkinhead begins slaughtering various locals. Sheriff Braddock tries to deal with the spate of deaths and the insistence of some locals that it is just a wild animal, at the same time as others mutter about the legend of Pumpkinhead.
Pumpkinhead (1988) was one of the more unique monster movies of the 1980s. A directorial outing from makeup effects man Stan Winston, the Pumpkinhead creation was one of the few monsters of this era not copying the rubber and slime effects of Alien (1979). It gained a good deal of word of mouth after its video release. That said, my feeling was that the monster was a far more unique creation than the film surrounding it. It nevertheless proved popular and Blood Wings was a sequel. A decade later, the franchise was revived for two further sequels with Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes (2006) and Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud (2007).
Director Jeff Burr made a standout directorial debut with the horror anthology From a Whisper to a Scream (1987). Subsequent to that, he went on to a regular output of horror films and other genre material that has included the likes of Stepfather 2 (1989), Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990), Puppetmaster V: The Final Chapter (1994), Night of the Scarecrow (1995), Johnny Mysto, Boy Wizard (1997), Spoiler (1998), The Werewolf Reborn (1998), The Boy with X-Ray Eyes (1999), Phantom Town (1999), Straight Into Darkness (2005), Devil’s Den (2006), Mil Mascaras vs the Aztec Mummy (2007), Resurrection (2010), Gun of the Black Sun (2011) and Alien Tornado (2012).
Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings is the point where Pumpkinhead went from one of the genuinely original monster movies of the 1980s to just another film franchise. The plot comes with some ridiculously improbable motivation that at one point has a teenage trouble-maker running an old woman down in his car and then, rather than helping or fleeing the scene, deciding that he wants to dig up a body in the middle of an occult circle and then spill blood and enact a rite just for kicks.
Amy Dolenz terrorised by Pumpkinhead (Mark McCracken)
The first film had a plot about a farmer raising Pumpkinhead to enact vengeance on those responsible for killing his son. Here Pumpkinhead is now the intellectually handicapped son of a backwoods witch enacting vengeance on his bullies. This means that what we essentially have is Pumpkinhead as Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th films. It is no more than a sequel where the monster from the first film has been recycled in a plot that come up with assorted reasons to have it run around and kill more people. The same as before but with minimal variation.
Jeff Burr is a director who is capable of doing some fine stuff when he has the material – see From a Whisper to a Scream – but where most of his subsequent work has been in generating sequels to other people’s films or tv movie and direct-to-video/dvd fodder. Here he is fairly much stuck with replicating Stan Winston’s lighting schemes from the original. To this extent, he directs some adequate if hardly standout scenes. Although, for some reasons, the Pumpkinhead is shot in ways that makes it look ridiculously larger than it did the first time.
The firm’s major headline name was Andrew Robinson, then having had a career revival on the basis of Hellraiser (1987). The most bizarre piece of stunt casting is Roger Clinton who plays the town’s mayor. Of course, at the time Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings was made, Roger’s half-brother Bill Clinton was the President of the USA.
