Ceneri alle ceneri - Pumpkinhead 3

I am not hampered by the memory of the original Pumpkinhead, so I have only Pumpkinhead II as comparison. It excels tremendously over this one.

The Doctor (Doug Bradley) and his family are selling body parts and have a barn full of uncremated bodies. It reminds me of the 339 bodies found at Tri-State Crematory in New York.

When the town finds out, and sees that the law will probably not do anything, they go looking for the local Marie Laveau, a witch that lives in the wood and can bring back Pumkinhead. There are serious consequences to doing that, but they have a taste for blood. They must be from Texas because they like killing people so much. Actually, it was filmed in Romania.

There just wasn't as good a story as Pumkinhead II, but the killing were a lot gorier. There was less eye-candy, too.

I saw this on the SciFi Network a few weeks ago, and was highly disappointed. As a big fan of the original Punkinhead, I was looking forward to a return to that story, but where Stan Winston's creature effects in the original were awesome (possibly the only creature effect that has ever scared me) the rubber suit and cgi in this one fell way flat. Hard to believe that a puppet can move more convincingly than an actor, but it's true. Whoever was wearing the crappy rubber suit in this one could have moonlighted as a bad Godzilla impersonator. Combined with an absolute waste of Doug Bradley in his role in this film, instead of the fun cameo one might expect from the man who gave life to pinhead, the result was a purely disappointing production. Save your time and just rent the original.

For fans of the original Pumpkinhead, it was hoped that this second sequel, which picked up from the first film would be a return to form after the disastrous second film. While director Jake West keeps the tone and mood similar to the first film, he is hampered by things out of his control. First off, this is a TV movie. As such it is low budget. The thing that makes a creature feature like this sink or swim is its monster effects. Our Pumpkinhead is on screen a lot of the time in this film, so why did more money not get put into the suit? Its a pale imitation of Stan Winston's original. Add in some of the worst CGI in a horror film ever and you get a monster that doesn't scare like it should.Next up is the fact that this was filmed in Romania. I'm sorry, I'm sure Romania is a nice place and I know its cheap to shoot there, but it doesn't really look like America like it is so often called upon to do. Doug Bradley is fine as a doctor without a conscience, but Lance Henriksen is wasted in his return to his character from the first film. Could have been a lot better than it is.

Pumpkin head is back for vengeance in this made for television movie production. Good acting and direction is wasted on sub-par writing and low budget computer graphics. It had the were-with-all and means to be great but really came out to be another average made for t.v. movie. Rent it on DVD, rather than watching it on cable; it's much more appealing unedited and uninterrupted. Speaking of which, Sci-Fi should have filmed a t.v. version with a an additional R rated version for DVD release. There just wasn't enough blood, gore, explicit language, or nudity to make this a realistic attempt at being great Horror. If your not a horror fan,don't watch it. If you like horror, go for it!

*Directing: Good *Acting: Good *Writing: Fair *Computer FX: Poor *Special FX: Good *Sound Editing: Excellent *Cinemotography: Excellent

OK....I'm having a Halloween party, everyone is dressed to the max, having fun and I say,"Guess what? There's a NEW Pumpkinhead movie and it's on tonight! Not only is Lance Henriksen in it, but Doug Bradley from Hellraiser!" (oohs and ahhhs follow) I have NEVER been so embarrassed in my life. I was a complete fan of the original. It was a classic that I've watched time and time again. The first sequel (Bloodwings) didn't have the mood of the original, and turned into another "monster kills the idiotic teens" movie. This one appeared to have an interesting beginning and premise...oops, my bad! When I saw the first CGI Pumpkinhead sequence I was almost too embarrassed to laugh. Almost. All my pals gawked at the cartoon images that made Jimmy Neutron look as real as yer next door neighbor. Needless to say, this spoiled the whole movie for me, and if they have indeed made another sequel...I hope they can look back on this as a serious mistake. Dudes, go talk to the guys that made Jurassic Park. I'm sure they can give you a few low budget pointers.