Tanz der Kürbisköpfe

Tanz der Kurbiskopfe aka Dance of the Pumpkinhead is a very low budget early film from prolific gore/porn/sleaze director, Andreas Bethmann. I watched the film in German with no subtitles. The plot is pretty simple, a a zombie rises from the grave and uses a jack-o-lantern to murder random people. He's also able to possess people's minds to make them do his bidding.

The film starts out well with a woman nailed to a wall getting stabbed in the crotch with a spike dildo, though it looks more like the killer is jamming it into the wall between her legs. While the film is somewhat tedious and padded it still manages to evoke a creepy atmosphere. This is done with heavy use of fog and a graveyard location which is always scary. The eerie music adds to the creepy atmosphere. The scenes of the flying carved pumpkinhead are also pretty menacing as we see them from his POV. He travels through the graveyard in a nice scene, stalking a pathetic needle junkie staying there for the night or possibly living there. He decapitates (off screen) this pitiful waste of humanity. We are treated to the first decent gore scene of his headless corpse spurting blood onto a tombstone. Other gore scenes include a poor fellow impaled on a piece of wood with the sharp end coming out of his mouth, a woman decapitated with a shovel ala Day of the Dead and a couple other bloody bits. For a Bethmann film there is very little nudity and no sex. I don't care about the acting and I doubt anyone else watching a film like this would either. Not nearly as gory as most low budget stuff from the likes of Ittenbach, Rose, Schnaas. This drags less and is bloodier than Bethmann's next film Die Insel der Damonen (The Island of the Demons). Overall this is a decent watch for fans of ultra-low budget SOV horror stuff with good atmosphere and an OK amount of blood and gore.

The translation of this early Bethmann work is Dance of the Pumpkinhead. Although the copy I saw was all in German I was able to get this story from it. A killer who wears a jack-o-lantern kills people, who come back to life as psychos to continue the murders. If that sounds stupid, you would be right. Although I consider myself a gorehound I found this movie to be a chore to endure. Nothing happens for the first forty minutes and when it does, it's pretty darn hokey. Bethmann must have bought a fog machine prior to making this film and it's pretty obviously. It's as if he wanted us to see "how cool" it was since most night scenes have wisps of fog shooting through them constantly. This is one you can easily pass on but for fans of bad German gore flicks I suppose you'll want to add this to you want list.