Summoning PUMPKINHEAD: Anatomy of a Folk Monster
Written by Jason Carpenter
Like a paralytic dream, Pumpkinhead is heralded by creeping fog and winds that swirl out from another dimension, swift and merciless in its Gothic ghostliness. Director and iconic film creature creator Stan Winston weaves a story of primordial anger wrought by the grief-shocked loss of a loved one, conjuring one of horror cinema’s most visually dynamic monsters along the way. Come for the visceral, practical gore of the genre’s slay-the-youth era, stay to watch folkloric revenge give way to cosmic remorse and atonement.
If that sounds like a weirdly empathetic sharp turn for a mid-to-low budget creature feature at the tail-end of the 80s, it was. But when the late Winston—already a legend for his Terminator and Aliens designs and feeling around for his debut as a director—took hold of the project in 1987, it became earmarked as something potentially unique. Its genesis was already quirky, based as it was on a poem by Ed Justin, and was originally developed by ultra-producer Dino DeLaurentiis’s company in hopes of securing a Winston creature design. From these fires—imagery, in fact, that opens and closes the film—a memorable movie monster was forged.
A quick survey of the history of horror’s screen creatures likely won’t reveal a more spectacularly realistic example than H.R. Giger’s Alien xenomorph in Ridley Scott’s 1979 ground-zero sci-fi horror classic. Its humanoid/insect hybrid design felt rooted in organic, biological truths; the alien’s entomology made sense (only, perhaps, if you weren’t an entomologist), legitimizing the narrative and subconsciously convincing the audience that this fictional species could actually exist. Stan Winston intuitively expanded on Giger’s work in the sequel and, within a few years, would be the forever-lauded creator of the non-human characters in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park, both milestones in motion picture visual effects.
Much of the same anatomical reasoning can be applied to Pumpkinhead’s titular demon, a throng of long limbs and bulbous elbows and inverted knees (or heels, ornithologically speaking). In the film, it’s summoned/dug up from a decrepit pumpkin patch in the mystical woods (although its head is not a pumpkin, so stop right there) through the combined efforts of local storeowner/revenge seeker Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen), whose beloved son is accidentally killed by—what else—irresponsible youth, and witch Haggis (an effectively creepy Florence Schauffler). Pumpkinhead—a withered fetus, at first, inflated by the witch’s ancient folk blood ritual—evolves into an eight-foot manifestation of Harley’s anger and desire to kill; as the film bears on, the blurring of Harley and the demon’s spirits becomes a thematic and visual motif.
In his first foray, director Stan Winston proves to be an evocative framer of compositions, moves the camera pointedly, and, most effectively, makes sensitive character choices. In fact, the young principals here (they’re not teenagers, but early twentysomethings passing through the pseudo-Appalachian town) are mostly not assholes or unsympathetic, and the one that is douchey has a redemptive, change-of-heart arc, rare touches for the era’s genre fare. Harley, after the red haze of his son’s death lifts, eventually recognizes their relative innocence, too, and Henriksen channels his character’s mounting regret via his trademark baleful eyes. Those deep, dark-lined sockets are also where Pumpkinhead’s possession will take hold, turning Harley’s pupils inhumanly bloodshot. The design team pulls off one of the movie’s creepiest make-up moments in a third act sequence—almost subtle when it could’ve looked foolish, a sure-fire CGI-render in current cinema terms—when Harley and the monster’s faces fuse into one visage. Makes sense that Winston would go there. Noting the director’s varied interests in art before settling on make-up and creature effects, Ars Technica writer Ben Kuchera wrote after Winston’s passing in 2008, “When you dream of acting but find work in makeup, you either give up or make-do: Stan Winston created characters who could act for and with him.”
Make no mistake, Winston has fun technically, too. A lot of the action takes place on soundstages that the filmmaker bathes in fog and shadowy light, a call back to Universal Studios’ classic monster heyday. He also color-codes the film: when the monster claims its first victim and stalks thereafter, the cinematography is awash in deep, otherworldly blue light, a stark contrast to the burnt, dusty browns and greens when Harley and his boy are living their quiet country life. And if you swear you’ve heard the sound that harkens Pumpkinhead’s arrival before, you’re probably a fan of big bug movies. The giant ants in 1954’s Them! (and 1977’s Empire of the Ants, for that matter, Bert I. Gordon’s last epic insect opus) signaled their proximity—diegetically and non-, both films seem to flip-flop on that—by emitting a high-pitched chirping. The sound was created by recording and reverbing a chorus of various species of tree frogs, and its jittery wave of wails and whoops is replicated here whenever Pumpkinhead strikes.
While the fable-like narrative and stylistic flair are welcome elements, like DeLaurentiis, we’re here for the monster. Its design was, ironically, not one of Winston’s own. The A-Team working for him at the time—Alec Gillis, Shane Mahan, John Rosengrant, and Tom Woodruff Jr. among them—took on full creation duty, drawing from elements of Wendigo mythology, the eastern European Lithuanian Baubus and Baba Yaga, a nightmarish amalgamation of Nosferatu and the demon from the Fantasia Bald Mountain sequence. Atop jagged shoulders and protruding joints, Pumpkinhead’s actual head is somewhere between reptilian and feline, its bi-pedal, chin-forward predatory thrust reminiscent of the raptors yet-to-come in Jurassic Park. Its tail is that of a big cat’s, too, constantly swishing, flickering, and battering shit with a mind of its own. But the monster’s long, spindly arms and nightmarishly oversized talons are what ultimately emblazon its structure onto the cine-cultural psyche. It’s Woodruff Jr. who actually is Pumpkinhead, though, layered just underneath the prosthetics; he goes full feral with his physical performance, imbuing the creature’s movements with animalistic and otherworldly biomechanics— a cock of the head here, an unfurling of bony fingers there. The only complaint is that the monster doesn’t get enough screen time, the director employing furtively-edited glances and unsustained shots that cleverly conceal any mood-busting costume gaffe.
One of the best shots in the film comes as three characters huddle around a table inside a cabin in the woods (still more evidence we’re in folk horror territory), discussing escape. As one of the women moves left in the frame towards the kitchen, she passes by a set of windows in the background. Unseen, but by the audience, Pumpkinhead follows parallel to her just outside the window. It’s a jolt; it’s also one of the first times the audience sees the true scale of the monster next to regular-sized people. In this scene and others, it appears to be aping human movements and actions, a sentient yet unconscious way, maybe, of connecting to the living things it preys on.
But its revenge-tinged motives and singular appetite for destruction keeps it at a terrifyingly cold remove, just outside, forever threatening to tear us apart, a perfect monster for our times.
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Works Cited
Kuchera, Ben. “Stan Winston Taught Us That Characters, Not Tech, Drive Movies.” Ars Technica, 19 June 2008, https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/06/stan-winston/.
Percival, Aaron, and Adam Zeller. “Inhabiting the Alien, ADI's Tom Woodruff Jr. Talks Performing Inside the Alien Suit.” AvPGalaxy.net, 21 Nov. 2021, https://www.avpgalaxy.net/website/interviews/tom-woodruff/4/.
“Baba Yaga: Slavic and Russian Witch.” Edited by MeettheSlavs Staff, Meet the Slavs, 14 May 2022, https://meettheslavs.com/baba-yaga/