It should be stated that Blood Wings means something very different to me than what it was supposed to mean in this film. If you don’t know what they are…well, you’re a lucky fella.
In the first movie, Pumpkinhead is used as a tool for revenge. In the second film, Pumpkinhead is getting revenge for his own murder. Or the murder of his feral son. Or he fathered himself to get revenge for his son’s murder. I don’t know, the important thing is that Pumpkinhead is his own grandpa, and he’s accidentally summoned as a prank by a bunch of dumb teenage hoodlums and then goes on a killing spree against the bunch of dumb teenage hoodlums who are now offensive stereotypes of rural people for murdering his son/himself. It’s like a weird demon mobius strip of violence and revenge.
Unfortunately, thanks to small town corruption, one of the new dumb teenage hoodlums is also the daughter of the new local sheriff, and he’s got his backwoods childhood but also his slick city ways and city education to solve the mystery and fight the demon. Also, he’s got a sidekick: a black woman who’s the local doctor/coroner and happens to know the local legends but doesn’t necessarily believe them. Also, the black guy doesn’t die first. In fact, the black guy dies near the end, but he has time to enjoy his interracial romance with a white girl, so props for this movie being woke way before that was a term. Good job, Pumpkinhead II!
Did you all know there are four Pumpkinhead films?
So yeah, the sheriff and coroner eventually figure out that it really is Pumpkinhead/Son of Pumpkinhead out there killing folks and go to confront it as it goes after the last set of victims, culminating in a showdown in which the sheriff shouts angrily at a posse of farmers with shotguns as they shoot a bloody Pumpkinhead pinata over an abandoned but surprisingly well-maintained mineshaft/well. Oh, and the film starts in color in the 1950s but immediately goes to black and white, then back to color for the present, then back to black and white for flashbacks, particularly around the mineshaft/well with Pumpkinhead/Son of Pumpkinhead…
Most importantly, this film has shovel-cam. And for that, it deserves your attention.
As confused as I am, I actually kinda liked the film. There are also a bunch of folks in it who are there for horror fans to enjoy: Andrew Robinson, Linnea Quigley, Kane Hodder, R. A. Mihailoff…you’ll even see Punky Brewster get murdered! Woo! I prefer the original Pumpkinhead, but both deserve to be marathoned.
Movie Reviews by a Mook 