My first exposure to Pumpkinhead was during one of my visits to the local corner store one afternoon after school. At the time this place stocked all sorts of awesome trading cards and when I stumbled across the "Fright Flicks" line by Topps, I was sold. There was all the gory film stills and bad tag-lines any youngster could appreciate, plus it gave us an early glimpse at our title beast way back when the movie was being called, the much more appropriate but less likely to be remembered, Vengeance: The Demon. If you don't believe how awesome these cards were to my then thirteen-year-old brain check it out here

Not long after I had the chance to see effects man Stan Winston's directorial debut, Pumpkinhead, and was instantly drawn into the look of the title beast as well as the structure behind the story (someone is wronged and asks for the help of the title demon but with dire consequences). Even the sequel that followed six years later wasn't a bad little movie. So, suffice it to say, when they announced two more instalments in the series, I took notice. Then I happened to see this one...

Pumpkinhead: Ashes To Ashes is not what I wanted from the return of one of horror's always cool, somewhat underrated monsters. Plus, hearing hype for director Jake West's previous movie, Evil Aliens, didn't help matters as I probably expected a lot more than this delivered. I would've been happy with a merely "mildly entertaining" sequel, instead I got a movie that's written way too sloppily (by West and co-scripter Barbara Werner) that for the first fifteen minutes I felt like I must be missing something.

Things don't really feel right from the opening dream sequence moment, as Pumpkinhead looks much smaller, and less menacing, than he did in the previous movies. This is a creature that's meant to tower over a normal human being but here it barely looks taller than I am. Then sets in the confusion as within the first ten minutes a hitchhiker witnesses a body being dragged away in the woods and ends-up at a crematorium run by Doc Fraser (Doug "Pinhead" Bradley). Not much after finding out the good doctor is up to no good, our hiker finds his kidney being forcibly removed while I continued to get angry at my television.

Looks like Fraser is harvesting locals so he can sell organs on the black market and, when a cache of bodies in found in a barn nearby, Molly Sue (Tess Panzer) finds out that her little boy was one of the victims. Unable to deal with the guilt, she heads out to the swamp with some of her siblings to visit the town witch and call forth Pumpkinhead to get revenge of those responsible.

Did I happen to mention that cult actor Lance Henriksen returns to the fold as Ed Harley, the character he played in the first movie? Yes, he's here, but he only shows-up in unnecessary visions to one of Fraser's henchmen. The rest of the movie consists of attack scenes that offer absolutely no thrills and end poorly while no one really seems overly scared of our title beast. To make matters worse the script tosses in a pointless European drug peddler character called Lenny (Emil Hostina) and never bothers much with character development.

Effects wise, veteran Gary Tunnicliffe's work isn't the best he's done but it certainly trumps some really awful CGI moments, such as when Pumpkinhead crawls up the side of a church, and despite the presence genre favourites Bradley (who's British accent sometimes slips up while he's trying to do a Southern one) and Henriksen, the cast isn't at all engaging or memorable - much like this entire venture.

Even though I hated Pumpkinhead: Ashes To Ashes with all my being, I still oddly hold hope that the fourth entry (subtitled, Blood Feud) can manage to wash the bitter taste of this one out of my mouth. I can't, in good conscience, even recommend this to fans of the series. (Chris Hartley, 2/7/08)

Directed By: Jake West.
Written By: Barbara Werner, Jake West.

Starring: Doug Bradley, Doug Roberts, Tess Panzer, Lisa McAllistor.