Director Jake West, who burst into the horror film lexicon quite nicely with the far above average vampire film "Razor Blade Smile", hits a minor stumbling block with this second sequel to the original Pumpkinhead. Quite wisely pretending that the previous "Blood Wings" travesty never existed, this film is much more akin to the first. (practically a remake in parts). This automatically makes it much better then the supremely awful previous film. A dubious honor indeed, but hey you take what you can get. Doug Bradley (Pinhead from the Hellraiser franchise) is a doctor harvesting organs in a small town, but when the locals find this out three of them visit the old lady to resurrect Pumpkinhead for another bout of vengeance. Lance Henriksen, in need of a quick buck it seems,is back as a completely unnecessary Ed Harley (here in cameo ghost form). Perhaps the fact that it's a TV movie hamstrung it, but Pumphin Head looked like a bastardized version of the legendary Stan Winston's work on the creature. Some of the CGI elements are plain laughably bad (Pumpkinhead scaling a church immediately comes to mind as it was so awful). Furthermore the Old Lady's make-up was off as well, the plot didn't deviate from the original enough to warrant this being made other than money. But as I said it IS better then part 2. And I'd be an idiot to write off West merely because of one clunker of a made for TV sequel, the kid still has talent and I look forward to his next project. I just believe that Pumpkinhead (just as "Children of the corn", and "Lawnmower Man") should've never been a franchise and the original spoke well enough for itself and should have been left well enough alone.
My Grade: D
My Grade: D