"Pumpkinhead" (1988) d/ Stan Winston

I remember coming out of Gateway Twin Cinemas back in 1988 after seeing Stan Winston's directorial debut wishing I'd been more stoked than I actually was, and feeling half gypped by the whole affair. Of course, I was an even more elitist genre snob thirty years ago than I am today, if you can believe that, and few films escaped my critical eye without a half hour of  cigarette-fueled constructive smartassery afterwards, inevitably limiting my cinematic experience to be usually only shared by fellow film fanatics or chicks who thought I was cute. No complaints here, believe me. Anyway, I was probably too hard on ol' Pumpkin-piece back then, so I took it as my Libran duty to re-evaluate the film for your reading enjoyment here at the Wop. Goes somethin' like 'is...


"Ah'll be requarin' me some Mountain Dew and some chewin' type tobaccy. Fetch it, woman! "
It's a good thing that country general store proprietor Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) remembers seeing the legendary Pumpkinhead terrorizing some poor sumbitch as a child, seeing how an entourage of obnoxious city folks with dirt bikes in tow interrupts a lazy day at work he was enjoying with his own young son and family mutt, Gypsy. When a shabby pick up truck full of Wallace's (George Flower) dirty urchins pulls up, Harley is forced to drive back to his place to get supplies for him, leaving his small goggled boy and dog to mind the store, momentarily. What's the worst that can happen, right? He returns to find one weepy city slicker watching over the motionless body of his son, who was treated like a speed bump by a would be Travolta named Joel ( John D'Aquino) on a dirt bike. After some very brief mourning, Harley sets out to find a secluded witch's shack with the help of one of Wallace's cubs named Bunt (Brian Bremer). The rubbery faced hag sends him to an even more secluded and atmospheric graveyard set, where he finds the pumpkin-laden burial mound of you-know-who.


"Owwwwww! Go back to that little Korean lady who did your nails and get a goddamned refund!"
He takes the withered corpse that he's dug up back to the hag, who pours a mix of Harley's blood and his dead son's into it's dead mouth, and Voila! It's the hayseed demon of vengeance, Pumpkinhead. Once  ol' Gourd-dome springs into action, sneering and roughhousing Joel and his pals, who he's graciously brained with a fireplace log and locked in the cabin basement to keep them from reporting the accident he drunkenly caused and abruptly fled the scene of, Harley has a change of heart, and decides to try to stop the demon from exacting any further revenge, having experienced it first hand via psychic link, through Pumpkinhead's own eyes, and not enjoyed it nearly as much as he thought he was gonna (kinda like me and this movie). This proves more difficult than he'd initially imagined, of course, as he's ultimately destined to replace the demon once his hellish bullying is finally completed, as we discover in the final reel, complete with nifty parting shot before the end credits roll.


"Don't take it that way, it'd never work between us."
Sure,  the whole thing is pretty uneven, with it's visible blood tubing, latex-faced witches, and dusty impoverished kinfolk with perfect teeth, but the movie still possesses a certain fairy tale-esque charm about it, and Pumpkinhead himself remains one of the coolest looking movie monsters to ever grace the silver screen, imho, even if it doesn't seem all that demonic or vengeful of him to roughly toss folks around like human salad,  or use them as a welcome mat to clean his foot-bottoms off on, when you really think about it. With a stronger script, some gorier death, and a pinch of nudity/sex, it could have well earned three big ones on the scale, instead of the two it ended up with, not to mention it's three sequels, one direct to video, and two, made for television, of all fucking places. Worth a look.


"Whatcha doin' in here, kid? Besides not taking a regular bath, I mean..."

"Drive-In Massacre"(1977) d/ Stu Segall

Forget any visions of  half-dressed, Flowbee-coiffed Farrah lookalikes getting claret-splashed in the back of  customized vans or terrified drive-in patrons screaming against an outdoor screen playing fifties sci-fi classics as a backdrop that the deceptive one sheet for tonight's review may have invoked in you during your first glance. You won't get any of that here. If you're in the market for nerve-wracking synthesizer scores, line-flubbing detectives, stuttering sideshow geeks turned janitors-in-Pinocchio hats,  anti-social drive-in managers decked out in polyester leisure suits, or murky lighting, muffled sound, and establishing shots that go on and on like Uschi Digart's buh-hubbas and make seventy or so minutes feel a lot more like two and a half hours, then you'll probably dig this one for the sheer ineptitude of the thing.


It's what's playing tonight, and also, what's happening. You see what they did there?
Couples are getting whacked by a sword-wielding fiend after burping dialog unconvincingly at each other in a darkened drive-in theater that's run by a miserable, mouthy bald prick in his polyester pimpiest, if we're to believe the cut n' pasted one-sided newspaper headline pointed at the camera by one of the two mostly sedentary detectives on the case. Who the fuck could it be?There's quite a few one dimensional suspects to choose from: The unseen drive-in/carnival owner with a suitcase full o' swords? Austin, the aforementioned abrasive chrome dome manager who swallowed swords previously?  Germy, the stuttery one-time bite-offer of snake and bird heads und sword swallower in the carnival that formerly employed him? Orville, the local pervo who just wants to beat his meat? One of these squarish cops is gonna have to embarrassingly pose as a woman at the drive-in to draw the killer out, I know that much about cinematic crime investigation techniques.


Do you remember where you were when you first saw the fake headlines?
Just when you're sure you've pieced together the plot, you're treated to twenty minutes of a police standoff with a babbling machete-gripping stranger('Buck' Flower, no less) in a warehouse that ends up having fuck all to do with the ongoing nightly 'massacre' at the drive-in as he ends up having only escaped the nuthouse that same day. So who was the killer? None of the above! The cat is on the loose at your drive-in, as a hasty voice over tells us after a sloppy freeze of the harmless janitor fellow's corpse, looking to add you to his admittedly unimpressive body count thus far! Like anybody'd still be paying attention to this crap in a car with a hot broad at the drive-in...


Funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky bald-ass boss (Newton Naushaus).
Segall's early slasher has the feel of a latter day J.G. 'Pat' Patterson or H.G. Lewis clunker minus all the red stuff, and with classic lines like "I just wanted to beat my meat!" and "She's in pretty bad shape... she's been murdered with a sword.",  it's easy to confuse it as such at first glance. I much prefer his later porn fare, like 'Up n' Coming"(1983)( starring the late Marilyn Chambers, Loni Sanders, and Johnny Wadd himself!). You'll instantly recognize 'Buck' Flower from his numerous cameos in John Carpenter's films throughout the era; George also co-wrote the movie with Segall, before moving on to better things like 'Devil's Ecstasy'(1977) and 'Capture of Bigfoot'(1979).A lot less fun than it coulda/shoulda been, and therefore, one wop on the scale.


Gettin' a little head at the drive-in was never like this!