Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 18, 2014

When is a sequel not a sequel? Evidently quite a bit of the time in the annals of horror cinema, when simply slapping a number after an established “brand” constitutes the continuance of a putative franchise. Case in point: Pumpkinhead II, a direct to video follow-up to Pumpkinhead which has at best only tangential connections to its supposed progenitor. Yes, there’s a vengeance seeking monster that frankly looks more like something out of Alien than a Halloween fever dream. And there’s even the horrifying death of a child that sets everything into motion. But that’s about it for connective tissue, with little else linking the two films. This second Pumpkinhead is a bit more of a traditional horror outing than Stan Winston’s original, with a more graphic body count and a less sympathetic central story. A bit confusing from a purely narrative standpoint, the sequel gets most of its mojo from some of the gruesome violence that is on display, replacing Winston’s dark fairy tale ambience with a more straightforward slash and dash ethos.

The first Pumpkinhead had a stronger emotional tether than this follow up, due largely to the fact that the tragic death at its core was an accident—one caused by boneheaded stupidity and then compounded by even more stupid behavior, but an accident nonetheless. Pumpkinhead II begins with a flashback (in black and white) back to 1958 as a deformed feral child is tracked down and mercilessly bludgeoned to death by a bunch of high school jocks. The young boy seems to have some kind of telepathic connection to the witch who was an integral part of the first Pumpkinhead, who in this film is given more of a fleshed out role and is named Miss Osie (Lilyan Chauvin).

The film then segues forward a few decades to “current” time, where an adult who had lived in Ferren Woods as a child returns to the town to become its new Sheriff. Sheriff Braddock (Andrew Robinson) is a little chagrined to be in such a backwater, but his daughter Jenny (Ami Dolenz) is out to make the best of a bad situation, and soon attracts the eye of local bad boy Danny Dixon (J. Trevor Edmund). Unbeknownst to Danny, his father, Judge Dixon (Steve Kanaly), was one of the high school toughs who had killed the deformed young boy back in the day.

Out for a romp one night, Jenny, Danny and a coterie of their friends have a hit and run mishap with Miss Osie, and they decide (perhaps against their better judgment) to go check on the old woman, who has a rather questionable reputation around the town. That sets the main course of the plot into motion, when first the kids discover a bunch of occult paraphenalia in her home and then later, after she shows up and tells them to leave, yet another mishap leaves her slightly incapacitated, in turn leading to a devastating fire in her cabin.

While that is unfolding, the meddling kids decide to dig up the corpse of the deformed boy and try to resurrect him using Miss Osie’s spell book and a vial of blood. In the meantime Miss Osie has cursed the young ‘uns, and when a resurrection does take place, it of course is Pumpkinhead, out on a new round of revenge. Except it’s here that the film refuses to really stand up to logic (not that logic ever played a very large part in films like this). While it’s later explained that the little boy, one Tommy, was the offspring of Pumpkinhead (the hint is that Miss Osie was his human mother), the resurrected monster is Pumpkinhead, begging the question of what happened to the original Tommy. Perhaps Pumpkinhead is a name (and evidently an alien form) that is passed down from father to son, kind of like a British title.

The rest of the film plays out as a series of vignettes where Pumpkinhead, always an agent of vengeance, goes after those who have done him wrong. Luckily (at least for the teens), he starts with the now grown adults who murdered him as the child Tommy back in the day. That leads to some fun if traditionally hyperbolic kill scenes, where blood spews, limbs are shorn from their torsos, and Pumpkinhead (who’s actually seen more in this film) utters his frightening combo shriek-roar.

Sheriff Braddock of course starts investigating the mysterious deaths, and in a little confessional toward the end of the film, he reveals that he had an interaction with young Tommy back when Braddock was a tyke himself. Braddock finally figures out that Pumpkinhead is Tommy (or something like that), but by that time, Pumpkinhead has set his alien sights on Jenny. What’s a father to do?

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings is a fairly derivative affair, one that doesn’t have the folklore aspects of the original film and which kind of trundles along on an acceptable amount of momentum built up by the increasing body count. Performances are sometimes laughable (any film that bills Roger Clinton and Soleil Moon Frye as main attractions has some built in problems), but director Jeff Burr mounts things with efficient briskness, if not much real inspiration. Burr does manage to invest some of the kill scenes with a certain delicious humor, including one great sequence that plays out to a mournful country tune.

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is a solid if generally rather modest looking high definition presentation, one that pops best in brightly lit outdoor scenes, where colors are appealing looking and detail is above average. A lot of the film unfolds in darkness or at least dimness, however, and in many sequences detail is only average and shadow detail is negligible. The black and white segments offer good blacks, but the rest of the (color) film sometimes veers toward milkiness, with less than solid contrast. There are no problems with filtering or sharpening, and the grain structure is intact and natural looking.

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix which nicely recreates the film's theatrical Ultra Stereo audio. Dialogue, score and sound effects are all very cleanly and clearly presented, with excellent fidelity and no problems whatsoever. Dynamic range is very wide courtesy of both sound effects and the occasional hysterical screams from potential victims.

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Jeff Burr. Burr offers a really interesting commentary here which isn't necessarily all about Pumpkinhead II. He also gets into some of the vagaries of the film industry, where works for hire are never quite what you might expect them to be.


• Interview with Director Jeff Burr (1080p; 1:02:01) is a much more in depth career (and even life) retrospective than these tend to be.


• Recreating the Monster (1080p; 32:39) focuses on the special effects and includes interviews with Greg Nicotero, Gino Crognale and Mark McCracken.


• Behind the Scenes Footage (1080i; 17:24)

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings throws both caution and the original film to the wind to deliver an often illogical story that exists solely to get the titular monster to his next killing spree. The first Pumpkinhead had its fair share of issues, but it's a pumpkin sized head and shoulders above this pretty rote "sequel". Genre completists may well want to check this out in any case, and the good news is technical merits are generally strong, and Scream has provided a good supplementary package.