Pumpkinhead IV : Les Sacrifiés

Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Fued (2007) is a movie I've been looking for forever and finally caved and watched on Amazon Prime for $10.99. The storyline follows the famous feud between the Hatfields and McCoy's when one of the Hatfields falls in love with one of the McCoys. Unfortunately for the love story, Pumpkinhead may decide he's the only one that can settle the feud between the two sides...

This movie is directed by Michael Hurst (House of the Dead II) and stars Lance Henriksen (Aliens), Rob Freeman (Saving Private Ryan), Amy Manson (T2 Trainspotting) and Richard Durden (Batman).

The movie starts with a great kill scene. The storyline for this is pretty bad and the dialogue and script is uneven. However, the Pumpkinhead special effects are solid and the gore and kill scenes were better than I expected. Henriksen was awesome in this and ties this film back to the first film well.

This is easily the best Pumpkinhead sequel and is definitely worth a watch for fans of the series/character. I would score this a 5.5/10 and recommend seeing it once.

True to the original classic, this installment is a classic in its own right, and the second best in the series (next to the original). The McCoys and Hatfield's family feud resulted in the death Ricky McCoy's young sister. When Pumpkinhead is called for revenge, the families must stand together to survive. With a good script and solid acting, this fourth installment almost lives up to the original.

I enjoyed the original Pumpkinhead, but the three sequels are not as good. The best for me was this one, though Ashes to Ashes isn't bad either. Blood Wings was severely lacking for me. What I did like about Blood Feud was that it wasn't too bad visually. The effects are a little better than they were in Ashes to Ashes, the scenery is appropriately eerie as well as looking beautiful and the photography is thankfully not as frenzied. The music is haunting, what ties this movie with the original are used well and while the titular character doesn't show up for at least 40 minutes, while not having the impact he makes in the original, he is at least frightening. Lance Henrikssen is very good, he puts a lot of effort into the role and it shows. However, I was largely uninterested with what was going on until he showed up. The story of the Hatfields and McCoys is clichéd and often unbelievable, and is further hampered by plodding character exposition, and even then the characters felt under-written. The writing is rather trite and sometimes cheesy and most of the acting apart from Henrikssen is poor, sometimes even amateurish. All in all, the best of the three sequels but also could have been much better. 5/10 Bethany Cox

The appeal of the original "Pumpkinhead" (1988) was its creepy atmosphere, serious vibe, malevolent monster and the always reliable Lance Henriksen, but other than these factors it wasn't anything noteworthy. As far as overall entertainment goes, practically every Friday the 13th sequel was/is superior.

"Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud" (2007) is the third sequel and -- although it was shot in Romania rather than California -- it stays true to the original concept by having a similar revenge plot and features the three main characters of the original: Ed Harley (Henriksen), albeit now a ghost; the ugly, old witch; and, of course, Pumpkinhead itself. Although Henriksen is 18 years older he's just fine; the witch looks almost exactly the same; as does Pumpkinhead. Speaking of which, some complain about the appearance of Pumpkinhead, but he (it) looks great to me; I know it's probably done via CGI, unlike the original, but it works and I couldn't discern any strings, so to speak.

The unique thing here is that the story involves a modern-day take on the Hatfield/McCoy feud crossed with Romeo & Juliet, which I found interesting.

The creature is featured prominently throughout, as are Henriksen and the witch, and there's loads of gore, but I didn't find the story or the characters all that compelling. It's not bad, but it's not good either; it's somewhere in between. The story needed more drawing power. Still, it's a decent sequel.

GRADE: C

In spite of the long feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys because of a car accident, Jodie Hatfield (Amy Manson) and her boyfriend Ricky McCoy (Bradley Taylor) love each other and are planning to leave their families and move to another place. During the night, after the Hatfields having trashed a McCoy wedding, Jodie sneaks out from her house to meet Ricky, while his young sister Sara (Maria Roman) looks out for them. However, Jodie is followed and they are found together in the woods by Jodie's brothers Bobby Joe (Ovidiu Niculescu) and Billy Bob (Elias Ferkin) that accidentally kill Sara. Ricky seeks revenge, going to the house of the witch of the woods Haggis (Lynne Verrall) that summons Pumpkinhead to kill all the Hatfields except Jodie. When his vengeance is set in motion, the Hatfields are attacked by the demon in a bloodshed night.

"Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud" uses the forbidden romance between a young couple of two families in permanent feud and a tragic love story like in Romeo and Juliet to bring back the powerful demon Pumpkinhead in another bloodshed. This television movie is not as bad as indicated in many reviews; actually I liked the enjoyable story and I found it underrated with the 4.5 IMDb Rating. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Pumpkinhead 4: Maldição Sangrenta" ("Pumpkinhead 4: Bloody Curse")