Entry Thirty-Four: Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings (1994)

Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings (1994)

Dir: Jeff Burr

"They couldn't leave dead enough alone."

I know; I know.  This was supposed to be Fuck Flick February, and I WILL get to it (it might bleed into March), but I got a really great deal on the SOTA Toys Pumpkinhead 18" action figure, it arrived in the mail tonight and, since I'd watched the (superior) original fairly recently, I felt like popping in this unlikely sequel...

After a 50's-set prologue in which some J.D. kids who call themselves the Red Wings murder a backwoods feral child, we're introduced to small-town sheriff Andrew Robinson (Dirty Harry, Hellraiser) who has taken up this posting after a stint with the NYPD.  He's estranged from his daughter, Ami Dolenz (Can't Buy Me Love).  Roger Clinton (Bill's younger brother!) plays Mayor Bubba, who, immediately after introducing himself to Robinson, says something to the effect of "Jeez...Your daughter sure is pretty; hope something doesn't happen to her in this new town!"  This guy's the mayor?  What a prick...Dolenz meets up with and befriends some of the local teenagers, including Soleil Moon Frye (TV's Punky Brewster) as a hot goth chick, while Robinson gets acquainted with town doctor Gloria Hendry (Across 110th Street, Black Caesar, Hell Up In Harlem, Black Belt Jones...What a filmography!).  While on a joyride, Dolenz and her new friends run down an old woman, whom love interest J. Trevor Edmond (Lord of Illusions, Higher Learning) recognizes as a local witch.  After they journey to her home, the surprisingly mobile witch appears and places a curse on all of them.  Soon, the demon Pumpkinhead arises and begins killing off locals, while the now-hospitalized witch laments "He's arisen...it's happening again (ummm...Didn't you place the curse?)."  Linnea Quigley shows up just to bear her tits and be slaughtered (true story; Quigley's nude scene in this film inspired one of 14 year-old Michael James Harmon's earliest masturbatory experiences; does that make me a late bloomer?).  Anyway, it turns out (to no-one's surprise), that this iteration of Pumpkinhead is the spirit of the feral boy murdered in the beginning, and the older folks he's been slaughtering are the "Red Wings" kids from the opening sequence.  At the point of death, the witch reveals to Robinson that the feral child murdered in the opening was the son of Pumpkinhead (Pumpkinhead was previously portrayed as a demon who only arose to seek vengeance on the wronged and not as a creature capable of reproduction but...okay; the toy I have has anatomically-correct junk sculpted on it, so maybe he's capable of entering the bone-zone, though it makes no sense from a plot standpoint).  In the end, Edmond becomes the creature's main target and, after skewering Moon Frye, it decapitates him and sets it's sights on Dolenz.  Robinson tries to reason with the creature, but it gets blown away by a posse.

I love Stan Winston's Pumpkinhead (and I will cover it here, probably a year or two down the line); it's a genuinely scarey, atmospheric southern-gothic horror film with a GREAT monster and a fine lead performance by the great Lance Henriksen.  It's one of the unsung gems of the 1980's horror scene.  That said, from a story perspective, it's a one-and-done affair that doesn't leave room for a sequel, and it was not a hit.  Unsurpringly, then, this film started life as an unrelated horror screenplay called Blood Wings that LIVE Entertainment (who had acquired the Pumpkinhead license) picked and had re-written to cash in on those mad Pumpkinhead dollars (sarcasm-though to be fair, the original picture DID become a minor hit on video).  Director Burr (the undervalued Leatherface) does what he can, but only seems to be engaged during the kill scenes (which are effective).  The KNB effects are serviceable, but pale in comparison to the Winston originals.  The young actors are terrible, but Robinson and Hendry are at least watchable.  Not really worth a look; if you're a fan of the original, this is only going to bum you out.  This was accompanied by a (surprise hit) CD-ROM game (remember those?) and followed by two more, made for the Sci-Fi Channel sequels, which were even shittier.