Movie Review: Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud

Pumpkinhead is a great horror villain concept that has never reached its full potential, the sequels have been going willy-nilly, all over the place with the plotline. My hopes were for the 4th film to help straighten things out again, hope is an easy thing to shatter. I present the review for: Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud.

Pumpkinhead 4 was written and directed by Michael Hurst, who also directed House of the Dead 2. The film’s cast is comprised of unrecognizable talent; I meant that literally in a lack of talent sense as well. Well, except for horror legend and “can’t do a role wrong” Lance Henriksen, who does his small ghost part again. Pumpkinhead 4 relies on a plot fueled by the violent feud between the backwoods families of the Hatfields and the McCoys; which apparently still rages on in present times. Toss in a Romeo and Juliet sort of twist with one sex from each of the families choosing to fall in love with each other instead of the apparent inbreeding norm, and you’ve got the reason the demon of vengeance is summoned; lovers torn apart. Well, that and a sister was killed.

The acting in this film is horrible. The background actors are even horrible, half of the time it looks like they are by standers who wondered on to the set to see a movie filmed. I am all for making a bunch of rednecks with speech issues the leads for a story, but they over do it all and it isn’t even a comedy. The characters were spewing out redundant dialog, repeating themselves sometimes one sentence after the other, and I swore if I heard another pointless yelling of the names “Hatfields!” or “McCoys!” I was going to give up and turn the movie off. Lacking other things to do I decided to let the movie play on so I could rack up more things to gripe about. Many of the actors actually sounded dubbed throughout.

The story does not really continue off of part three, nor does it logically fit with any of the films in the series. This could be due in part to part 3 and 4 getting made around the same time by different people and only becoming labeled 3 and 4 by who finished first perhaps; maybe not, I had heard something like that. Those same sci-fi channel looking special effects were employed in this film as they were in part three, however this time they were worse off and I’ve made some SimCity characters that looked more realistic. Pumpkinhead doesn’t have any true Pumpkinhead moments, no chance to let his star shine, there is zero tension built up. This time around Pumpkinhead’s roar sounds a bit like ET squealing and in one loud instance it sounded exactly like someone farting. I kid you not, he opens his mouth and farts at a guy; this was not the filmmakers intentions, but I’m just saying.

Apparently as time progresses the backwoods folk that are always featured in Pumpkinhead films have gone further back in evolution, if you believe in evolution, perhaps it is meant to be an investigative study in inbreeding? Both the Hatfields and the McCoys have their entire families living under one roof; sort of making it like two opposing fraternities battling it out.

I don’t even want to discuss it anymore, Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud is bloody crap; bloody crap that should be flushed away and if you still find yourself trying to watch it go see a doctor, one should not put up with bloody crap. However, as mentioned before, I know hope is an easy thing to shatter, yet a hard thing to kill…I’m looking forward to part 5.