Halloween 2022: October 22nd

Pumpkinhead (1988)

When I first decided to review the “Pumpkinhead” sequels this October, I didn't originally plan on watching the original again. Is this a film beloved and important enough to truly justify multiple essays written in its honor? I wrote an okay review back in 2016, after all. Yet that was, astonishingly, six years ago now. That's enough time that my skills as a reviewer have surely evolved since then. Moreover, if I'm going to run through the inferior sequels, I really ought to look back at the one that started it all as well. So, here we go, My Pumpkinhead Review: Take Two. I'll try not to repeat myself too much. 

When Ed Harley was a boy, he witnessed a man being torn apart by a demon known as Pumpkinhead, an entity summoned in the name of vengeance. Now, he runs a shop in the rural south, with his beloved young son Billy. A group of urbanite college kids come through town to ride their dirt bikes. A spontaneous demonstration of biking skills results in Billy being struck. He dies in his father's arms shortly afterwards. Overcome with grief, Ed seeks out a witch in the backwoods. She instructs him how to raise Pumpkinhead from the pumpkin patch. The demon carries out Harley's vengeance, killing the teenagers one-by-one, but the ritual carries a heftier price than Ed realized.

Early on in “Pumpkinhead,” a group of kids tease another by chanting a poem that recounts the titular monster's personality. This is the scene that establishes a folkloric element to the film. Pumpkinhead, as the opening flashback confirms, is a creature that has existed for a long time. The ancient witch, so old she hardly seems human, who summons him further hints at a wider mythology the creature is a part of. When combined with the deep south setting, a culture all of its own, this builds upon what's ultimately a simple story about the futility of revenge. Ed Harley wants vengeance for the death of his child. He soon learns, like everyone does when seeking revenge, that it destroys you as much as it destroys those you hate. These two threads blend nicely when we see Pumpkinhead and Ed begin to share physical characteristics. 

As much as “Pumpkinhead” tries to suggest a bigger story and a deeper lore, this is ultimately a simple kind of exploitation movie. It tries to have things both ways as far as the tropes the savage south premise go. The southerners are depicted as simpler folks, happier with a life that's less advanced then city living. Yet they are also always filthy, always poor, and embroiled in weird, backwoods beliefs. The youths from the city – who are comparatively clean and cultured – mock the hayseed rednecks. After all, the urbanites are the aggressors, setting the plot in motion by bringing their ignorance to the rural setting. (I think it's suppose to be the Carolinas or Georgia, though it's so obviously southern California.) “Pumpkinhead” isn't a story of city folks tormented by depraved hillbillies, nor a tale of simple life in the country being intruded upon by urban ideas. It's a wishy-washy half-way point between both. 

The movie does try to add further depth, by making its teenage victims more than just stereotypes. They all get a distinguishing characteristic of their own. Tracy, more-or-less the film's heroine, has an interest in photography. Kim is religious. Joel is the exaggerated asshole of the bunch, responsible for the boy's death and unrepentive, yet there's something pathetic in his desperate attempts to avoid the consequences of his actions. As much as the film tries to developed its doomed youths, they all blend together eventually. Ed Harley is the true protagonist. Lance Henriksen's folksy gravitas manages to elevate the sappy scenes of Ed interacting with his cherubic, too-pure-to-live son. (Moments further emphasized by Richard Stone's harmonica-driven score.) Yet the unsteady split between this being Harley's story, and the doomed teens, makes “Pumpkinhead” somewhat unsteady. 

All the issues that exist with “Pumpkinhead's” script almost don't matter. This is, simply put, a monster movie. And the monster is brilliantly executed. Pumpkinhead is a towering, demonic, reptilian beast with a sadistic sense of humor, mocking his victims as he claims them and clearly taking pleasure in ending their lives. Stan Winston, in the director's chair for the first time, knew how to frame a special effect in a way that made it look good. The Pumpkinhead suit clearly has limited mobility but it doesn't drain the monster of its intimidation factor. Bojan Bazelli's gorgeous cinematography does the rest of the work of making the beast look brilliant. The deep blues of the night, combined with shining moonlight and covering shadows, create some unforgettable visuals. The monster approaching the skeleton of an abandoned church, or streaking by the cabin's window, stick in the mind. 

My first review of “Pumpkinhead” reads like a rave. I still really like the movie but its flaws are a lot more apparent on this rewatch. Its script is unbalanced, its themes simplistic, and its perspective sometimes muddled. The desire to get in and out in a lean 86 minutes, though admirable, leaves things feeling a little underdeveloped. Yet the scenes in the film that work the best – Pumpkinhead in the church, Ed grieving for his son, everything involving the witch, the haunting final moment – do remain impressive. I sometimes wonder if maybe a remake of “Pumpkinhead” wouldn't be a bad idea but I know the brilliant special effects, that were such a big part of its appeal, would be lost in the modern age. Flawed but entertaining, this remains an strong creature feature cult classic. [7/10]

The Housemaid (1960)

Hanyo

When “Oldboy” came out in 2003, it opened film nerds' minds all over the English-speaking world to the canvas of Korean cinema. There's been no looking back since then and at least one exciting, gritty Korean project gets critical praise over here every year. Yet South Korea has been making fascinating movies for years. An influential and beloved classic of modern Korean cinema is “The Housemaid.” The film was hard to see here in the states until Criterion released it as part of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project. Since then, its reputation has grown. Wanting to include a Korean movie in my Blog-a-Thon this year, this domestic thriller that gets increasingly twisted as it goes along seemed like a good choice. 

Mr. Kim works as a piano teacher in the woman's dormitory of a factory. His wife is pregnant and already pushed to the point of exhaustion, taking care of a large home and two other children. After she collapses, Mr. Kim is convinced to hire a housemaid. A piano student of his, Miss Cho, convinces him to hire her friend, Myung-sook. She quickly develops a crush on Mr. Kim. While his wife is away, and with work-related stress on his shoulders, he gives into her sexual advances. This begins a downward spiral of domestic degeneration, that will include imprisonment, murder, and madness. 

The suggestion in “The Housemaid' is that the delicate equilibrium of the upper class home is thrown off when Myung-sook enters the picture. That husband and wife are in harmony, that son and daughter get along, that everything is fine until the unnatural presence of the scheming housemaid throws it all off. Yet the truth is, this home is unsound from the very beginning. Mr. Kim is emotionally distant from his family, obsessed with his work. Mrs. Kim is already working herself too hard, well on her way to an exhausted breakdown. The kids bicker, the father handing out overly cruel punishments to the boy when he teases his (disabled) sister. Rats lurk in the cabinets from the get-go. Myung-sook merely sets off the undercurrent of tension that is already present in the home. 

“The Housemaid” is clearly a story of class division. Mr. Kim wears a nice suit to work, in the cozy position of teaching piano and choir to a group of blue-collar factory workers. Apparently, in post-war Korea, it was not uncommon for some women to live at the factories they'd worked at. Mr. Kim, meanwhile, just bought a large new home. By the film's end, Myung-sook is clearly mentally unhinged. She's obsessed with her boss, kills a child, and plots endlessly to seek revenge. Yet she was also a simple worker – so simple she hid in the dorm closest to smoke – that was pushed into this world. This makes Myung-sook a deranged antihero of sorts. She is her to disrupt this upper-class, to drive the lives of the bourgeoisie into chaos. That's exactly what she does. 

Class is clearly a huge concern throughout “The Housemaid.” The Kim family keeps most of the secrets that arise because they are afraid of what others might think about them. That interaction of shame and guilt drives everyone further and further down into chaos. The movie grows increasingly psychological perverse as it goes on. The spectre of a bottle of rat poison floats over the entire movie, being brought up repeatedly. There's pregnancies, a forced abortion, and more emotional blackmail than you can shake a crazed finger at. A kid tumbles down the stairs and dies. “The Housemaid's” melodrama grows more frenzied as it goes on, quickly escalating pass the point of psycho-horror. It's a real trip, utterly absorbing, watching these characters descend deeper and deeper into a hell of their own making. 

There's a gender reading of the film too, “The Housemaid” clearly playing on the inequalities between men and women in 1960s South Korea. I don't know enough about Korean culture to reflect on this. The film ends with an extended epilogue, where a character breaks the fourth wall and explains the intended moral of the story: Men, don't sleep with your housekeepers. Yet that ending is so flippant, after two hours of intense psycho-drama, that it almost feels like a sarcastic rebuffing for the sake of cultural censors. A well-received remake came out in 2010, which apparently upped the eroticism. Joon-ho Bong cites it as an influence on “Parasite,” which is easy to see. Yet the original “Housemaid” stands out as an intense, intoxicating descent into upper-class madness. [8/10]

The Twilight Zone (2002): The Collection

The 2002 version of “The Twilight Zone” is poorly regarded, on account of not being very good. “The Collection” is, sadly, a typical example of this iteration of the show. Miranda is a college student, studying to become a child psychologist. She's babysitting for the night a little girl named Danielle. Danielle exhibits a number of odd behaviors, including a strange fixation on her collection of dolls. She has names and detailed backstories for each doll. Miranda is charmed by this at first but the obsession soon becomes unnerving. Once it becomes clear that the dolls can move around on their own, it becomes frightening. 

Yes, “The Collection” is quite dire. The episode came late into the 2002 “Zone's” existence and the show must've been desperate for ratings at the time. That's probably why this is a starring role for Jessica Simpson. Simpson is fine, I guess, in the role of a babysitter slowly loosing control of the situation. She is, at least, more convincing in her role than Ashley Edner is as Danielle. Edner seems too old to play this character and her performance is off-key, whiny, and melodramatic. The music in the episode is obnoxiously on-point, dramatic stings playing every time something “scary” is suppose to happen. 

What makes “The Collection” especially embarrassing is the stupid shit it expects us to be afraid of. Dolls can be creepy, sometimes. However, it's hard to mine fear from the Barbie-style playthings on display here.  The way they reappear in various places isn't very unsettling, mostly coming off as silly. By the time the silhouettes of the dolls are banging on the door, “The Collection” has graduated to the point of unbearably silliness. 2002's “Twilight Zone,” from what I remember, also felt the need to force in shitty twist endings for every episode. This one's can be seen a mile away and really creates an ass-backwards moral of “Don't try to help anyone.” Only the suggestion that Danielle's weird behavior is the result of her micro-managing parents adds any depth here. And only a conversation about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which was airing on UPN the same time as this show, adds much novelty. Mostly, “The Collection” is a very silly, fairly dumb installment from the most misbegotten iteration of “The Twilight Zone.” [4/10]

Insomnia (1963)

Insomnie

Here's a recommendation from my fake internet friend, Jake. “Insomnia” is a 1963 short film from French mime Pierre Etaix. It's plot is a simple: A man can't sleep and tries to relax himself by reading. Unfortunately, the book he's reading is a vampire novel. He gets increasingly creeped out as he reads the story of a bloodsucking vampire attacking a young maiden in a stately manor. The film cuts back and forth between the man reading the book and depictions of what's happening in the story he's so absorbed in. 

“Insomnia' recounts an experience that, I think, are fairly common. The nagging feeling of being unable to get to sleep is one thing. Spooking yourself by getting wrapped up in a scary story is another. The film amusingly depicts how the man's waking life is influenced by the book he's eating up. He's startled by his wife in bed next to him. His pipe – amusingly, shaped like a skull – bobs along the bottom of the book. The eyes on the book's slipcover move and caught him off-guard. As does the near-by lampshade. When it's the middle of the night, and your mind is half-asleep, creepy stories can change the way you perceive things. “Insomnia” captures that in a funny way.

It's also a nice pastiche of classic vampire movies, while also illustrating the power of the horror genre. The image of a vampire creeping out of his coffin and slinking around a old house, in pursuit of slender necks to bite, are nicely photographed. Etaix and his team did a good job of capturing the look and feel of Hammer era vampire flicks, though it's even a bit moodier looking than that. No matter how frightened the book makes the man, he keeps reading because he knows, by the end, the evil will be vanished. And that's finally when he's able to go to sleep. That's a cute depiction of the cathartic power of horror, which is nicely followed with a comedic stinger. Unfortunately, the sound and image quality of the available copy of this on Archive.org isn't very good. I see Etaix recycled this short as a segment in his feature “As Long As You've Got Your Health.” Maybe I should pick up the disc of that? [7/10]