At any given moment, whether I’m performing a task as mundane as mowing the lawn or trimming nose hairs, or actually engaged in the act of parenting – a constant give-take between security and riveting fear – I am given pause to wonder: if the worst happened to my daughter, who henceforth will be referred to as “B,” would I go full Lance Henriksen and summon a nightmarish oblong-skulled demon to take my revenge on everyone and anyone involved in her death?
It is normal for all parents to stop in the middle of an everyday task and feel the ten-ton weight of morbid existential realities colliding with irrational fear verging on mania. To be a father, because fatherhood is the experience I can speak to, is to be wary that at any given moment, I may find myself in conversation with a deep-rooted terror that B, even tucked away in the safest place in the world, in her crib in her room in our house in our cherished neighborhood, is not safe. This terror arises, like mushrooms springing from shit, under even the mildest provocation. The other day I sliced my finger on measuring tape, fucking measuring tape, and bled, and caromed from room to room looking for an adhesive bandage, all while B toddled after me matter of factly saying “booboo,” and all I could think to myself is: “If I, a 200-pound, 36-year-old man, am this vulnerable to such a small thing, then what about B?”
She’s a sweet girl, my heart made tiny flesh and tiny bones. She’s also a tough one. In an apparent homage to Looney Tunes, B, while running around on the bed, decided to run off the bed, then looked down and realized she was running on air. “Boom” she went, on her face, and so commenced crying and a frantic phone call to the doctor. B, of course, recovered in mere minutes, though the experience did knock two Ivy Leagues out of her head. So long, Yale; bye bye, Harvard.
If she had truly been injured, I would never forgive myself for letting it happen. Suffice to say, that terror doesn’t come from nowhere; it just manifests at inopportune times, or when I am confronted with child death in my media. I can’t revisit Game of Thrones, for instance, though this perhaps is unsurprising, and while my respect for YouTube horror channels like Alter and Crypt TV is immense, I’m only ever disgusted at shorts hinging on the endangerment of babies for shock value’s sake. It’s cheap. It’s manipulative. It’s both traumatizing and infuriating, though I confess that the latter is a deflection of the former, something I feel so I don’t have to feel hollowed out by, say, the trailer for Dead Island. Pop cultural ephemerae like these ultimately serve to make me angry for their lack of substance.
But because I’m human and humans are hypocrites, I can watch Stan Winston’s superb Pumpkinhead on a loop without feeling like I need my therapist. So it goes. After years spent loving Pumpkinhead, which occupies a spot of honor on my Blu-ray shelf, after a couple of recent rewatches, and after listening to the gang of dirty hayseed kids recite Ed Justin’s same-named poem, which was written with no relationship to Winston’s work, my fondness for the film has of late coalesced into introspection; foundationally it’s a monster flick, but morally it’s about that primal parental need to protect their kids or, should they fail, imagine retribution. No parent loses a child for any reason and doesn’t develop an abiding craving for justice, even if there’s no one to visit justice on.
Pumpkinhead offers guilty parties aplenty for bereaved dad Ed Harley (Henriksen) to inflict his animus on. Grant that teen thrillseeker Joel (John D’Aquino) is in fact responsible for the death of Ed’s son, Billy (Matthew Hurley), whom he runs over with his dirt bike while ripping around for fun and trying to impress his pals. Grant that Joel is not the threat I see in my personal grim reveries, just a dumbass punk kid riding around on a whining motor-toy. He doesn’t kill Billy out of malice. He’s simply reckless. But grant that Ed is a dad, a parent, and that the single most brutal experience parents can have is the loss of their sons or daughters. Finally, grant also that most parents’ go-to for coping probably isn’t a demonic summoning ritual from the local bog witch, because it’s 2021 and people have more constructive means of processing grief.
All the same, Pumpkinhead captures well the way heartbroken parents lash out in the face of the unimaginable. If you had access to a magic whatsit promising much-desired comeuppance for the hapless schmucks who hold even a shred of culpability for your beloved child’s passing, you might use it. You’d certainly think about using it. For Ed, that magic whatsit is nine feet of clawed hell on two feet, ushered into the world by blood and suffering, with one mission only: slaughter Joel, and his friends, and anyone dumb enough to try to save them, and even Ed, if Ed gets cold feet. The country land where he resides must be chilly because his tootsies turn numb after the first murder. It might be that Ed has a conscience stirring beneath his anger. It probably helps that he has psychic ringside seats to Pumpkinhead’s rampage, too, and has to watch every killing through the monster’s eyes.
This is what makes Pumpkinhead such a masterclass in the “dead kids” horror niche: Winston’s keen understanding that parental grief cuts two ways. Ed is a father; he needs his vengeance. Ed is a father; he cannot stand by and let other kids die. The push-pull at the film’s core enlivens the horror elements, the pleasures we take in watching monsters – especially awesome, well-designed monsters like Pumpkinhead – stalk and slay random characters for our amusement; these are the base reasons we watch horror movies in the first place. If you’re watching Pumpkinhead for contemplations on the human condition and reflections on fatherhood, then you’re watching for the wrong reasons, though those ideas are certainly tied to Winston’s intentions here.
People hurt. When they hurt, they hurt others in return. Pumpkinhead demonstrates how shallow and fleeting the satisfaction of a good old-fashioned gory rampage against those who have wronged you truly is. I do not know and cannot say what I would do if B was taken from me, whether by violence or illness or other kinds of tragedy. Thanks to Pumpkinhead, what I do know is that no lengths I could go to would bring her back, and in fact they would corrode my body and soul. Revenge is a natural urge. It’s also a fruitless pursuit. The best you can do is hold your kids, cherish them, and never miss a moment to show them how much you love them. Like Ed, all parents have their demons. Don’t give yourself a reason to let them out.
