The Pumpkin Karver

"Low budget" is not a valid excuse for a lousy film. Some great films have been products of extremely low budgets. This is not one of them.

Quick plot summary: Halloween night, sister's boyfriend pretends he's a masked murderer. Sister doesn't get the joke and screams for help. Young brother arrives with blade in hand and viciously attacks assailant. Shoot forward one year, sister and brother are moving to a new town and attend a locals' Halloween party on a pumpkin farm. As the evening progresses, so does the body count.

The villain's mask in this film is above average in the grotesque category and was pretty effective. Amy Weber and Minka Kelly are gorgeous. A couple of interesting plot twists.

Now for the bad: 4000 plot holes! Albeit, the masked-serial murderer has been (pardon the pun) done to death, but this film had potential to be a decent Halloween flick. Unfortunately, it is all presented in a choppy, careless manner that not even its gratuitous (and extremely brief) bare breast scene could assist in saving.

Amy Weber and Minka Kelly are gorgeous, though.

Nothing too over the top here, "The Pumpkin Karver" simply tries to deliver a lot more then it actually can. Robert Mann directs this strait to video ooompus that attempts to out smart it's target audience, but flattens out like a Halloween pumpkin on November 2nd. The cinematography is above average yet the acting is below crap, less the always sensational Terrence Evans as the creepy old guy. The plot is stupid and has far too many holes to be taken seriously, add the token slasher movie characters and what you are left with is a mushy mess of pumpkin guts with no real soul... Although many of the gore scenes are decent, several others are too amateurish to be taken any other way but laughable. The females are quite beautiful but unfortunately cannot act, or at least cannot deliver this ridiculous dialog with any real effect. I've certainly seen much worse but there are multitudes of better no- budget indie slasher flicks out there. Good for a free rental pick when you've seen all the other bottom shelf slasher films at least twice.

This was not a bad movie. Some of it was predictable but so what. I liked the idea and for Halloween it's a good offer. Teen slashers are always produced with the same thought. Good looking young actors, girls in skimpy outfits, screaming, and blood and guts. This one doesn't let you down. However, there were some victims I could hardly wait for their demise, they were that annoying. Won't go into the story as that has been reviewed enough. I did like the old man who was stalking and making himself menacing. I also liked Michael Zara. Sort of reminded me of the guy who plays superman on TV. He had a hard part to play and did a fairly good job. Plus he's a good looker on top. The sister annoyed me. Also the girl friend who screams very well. And that's about it. I give it a 2 for the old man and Zara.

This movie begins with a teenager by the name of "Jonathan Starks" (Michael Zara) sitting at the dining room table on Halloween night carving a pumpkin. Also at home with him is his older sister "Lynn Starks" (Amy Weber) who is waiting for her boyfriend "Alec" (David J. Wright). Upon getting there he essentially acts like a jerk and is told by Lynn to come back later. Sometime later, a man wearing a pumpkin mask, sneaks into the house and attacks Lynn with a knife. Jonathan hears her screams and kills the intruder with the knife he was using to make a jack-o-lantern. However, it's only after stabbing him multiple times that both Lynn and Jonathan realize that the intruder was Alec playing a prank. The scene then shifts to one year later with Jonathan having undergone counseling and now moving with his sister to another town to start a new life. Upon arriving they are greeted by several people including one older man named "Ben Wicket" (Terrence Evans) who appears to have some emotional issues of his own. Likewise, another young man by the name of "Lance" (David Austin) also quickly develops a disliking to Jonathan due to his former girlfriend, "Tammy" (Minka Kelly) showing a romantic interest in him-and trouble soon starts not long afterward. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film started off pretty well and showed some good potential. Unfortunately, the director (Robert Mann) seemed to lose control after the first 30 minutes or so and the plot went seriously off the rails after that. Along with that, I didn't especially care for the acting on the part of Michael Zara who seemed totally inadequate for the task at hand. On the other hand, I thought both Amy Webber and Minka Kelly performed reasonably well as did Charity Shea (as "Rachel") to a lesser degree. Even so, it wasn't enough to overcome the flaws just mentioned and I have rated this film accordingly. Below average.

I always like an Halloween themed movie. I am always on the lookout for them. Despite being 18 years old, i had never heard of this one until a few years ago wich i stumble across it randomly on some "website" if you know what i mean. I had it in my Halloween season backlog for a few years and finally decided to have a go.

Lets start by the good. The movie happen all on Halloween and does feature several carved pumpkins. Costumes are rather lame but at least peoples are costumed. The actresses are for the most part fairly attractives. Yup... think it sum it up.

Sure this movie is very low budget but there is no excuse for the mess that it is. First of all there is so much time spent with characters dialogues that could had gone to stalking or killing. The movies has a ton of characters and just forget about some of them. As in litterally they don't even die or participate in the "horror parts".

Speaking of characters, this movie has some of the worst ones i seen in a long time. Loud, obnoxious, annoying to an insane degree, especially the 2 in the white robes, you wish they would be written off as early as possible.

Amy Weber plays one of the few decent character. I remember her from WWE Diva Search and i know she done a few movies but i am not familiar with them. Minka Kelly altough never getting an A status achieved some popularity over the years and was the other character i cared for. The rest were absolutely horribles.

They try to establish some kind of romance between the main male character and Minka's (Tammy if i recall correctly) but it feel so off, as in why would she care about this weirdo? You never feel a reason why she would be attracted to him.

The movie goes the mystery masked man route and have us playing the guessing game, but the payoff was not satisfactory at all.

The kills themselves were for the most part started on-screen but finished off-screen, probably for budget restrain. There is a few post-mortem gore but its not enough to justify enduring the rest.

Overall this is a VERY mediocre movie. I juggled between a 3 and a 4, but ultimately this is not "slightly below average". Its worst. Im sure i will rate other movies a 4 that i will have enjoy way better.

Its possible to make a good horror movie on a tight budget (first Terrifier comes to mind). And if i would judge only the kills and horror i wouldn't be so harsh. But there is no excuse for these terrible obnoxious characters and for not showcasing more kills/horror/stalking instead of lame dialogues and juvenile terrible "jokes". And the general plot is nothing special or original.

So yeah 3 out of 10... can't go higher.