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Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (20th July 2024). |
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The Film
 In 1955, the local badasses of Ferren Woods brutally murdered deformed backwoods orphan Tommy (The Day After Tomorrow's J.P. Manoux) who was believed to be the hell spawn of a demon and a woman. In present day 1993, Sean Braddock (Hellraiser's Andrew Robinson) returns home from New York with his wife (Teen Witch's Caren Caye) to take over the job of sheriff, hoping the small town life will keep his resentful teenage daughter Jenny (Ticks' Ami Dolenz) out of trouble. Unfortunately, she's already hanging out with the town's new generation of badasses: Danny Dixon (Return of the Living Dead 3's J. Trevor Edmond) son of Judge Dixon (Dillinger's Steven Kanaly) Marcie (Punky Brewster herself Soleil Moon Frye) and her boyfriend Peter (The Skulls' Hill Harper), and stoner Paul (Charles in Charge's Alexander Polinsky) who accidentally run down Ferren Hollow's resident desiccated witch Miss Osie (Silent Night, Deadly Night's Lilyan Chauvin) while speeding down a country road at night without headlights. Occult enthusiast Marcie leads them to the witch's cabin when Jenny insists they see if she is okay, and they discover a page from the "Book of Shadows" to resurrect the dead as well as a vial of the "Blood of the Damned". Miss Osie warns them against messing with the spell but Danny, hungry for real danger, knocks her out in a struggle over the vial of blood. The kids dig up a grave that has been carefully tended by the witch and unearth a husk of a malformed corpse. Marcie recites the incantation and Danny pours the blood on the corpse to no apparent effect, but Jenny discovers Miss Osie's cabin on fire. The next day, Braddock and coroner Delilah (Black Caesar's Gloria Hendry) investigate the burned-out cabin and discover strange claw marks on one of the exterior boards. The kids learn that Miss Osie is in the local clinic in critical condition, but Danny swears them to a pact of silence. He also leans on his father for an alibi when Braddock questions him about his whereabouts after goat farmer Ernst (A Nightmare on Elm Street's Joe Unger) tells him about seeing the kids near the cabin. When Ernst's gorily dismembered body is discovered in his barn the next day, obfuscating Judge Dixon wants to pin it on wild cats and round up a posse to hunt them down. More grisly deaths follow and Delilah believes them to be the work of a random psycho while Braddock believes that there is a connection between the victims. Both are aware of the legend of Pumpkinhead but are reluctant to embrace the possibility of the supernatural, although guitar-strumming Mayor Bubba (Bio-Dome's Roger Clinton) thinks a murderous beast might be good for tourism. Thanks to the flashback, we know the connection between the victims and who is next on the list (although he is not named in the flashback, it's fairly obvious to anyone who has seen well, any horror film); but the dying Miss Osie has also cursed the kids who have conveniently gathered for a party while Pumpkinhead goes after his next victim nearby. Although Stan Winston's Pumpkinhead was basically a slasher film/backwoods vengeance film, it wove a wonderful dark fairytale world out of the distinctive production design of Cynthia Charette (Wes Craven's New Nightmare), the gorgeous photography of Bojan Bazelli (The Ring), a strong central performance by Lance Henriksen (Near Dark), and an original and expressive creature design by former Winston crew member Tom Woodruff (Alien: Resurrection). Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings has a busier plot, but it's bland in every respect: from the Sable Ranch locations and production design of Ivo Cristante (Hellraiser: Bloodline), the local color supporting characters, witch Miss Osie, and the one-dimensional teenager characters (the young characters in the original were not deeply-etched but conveyed genuine remorse). The viewers are far ahead of Robinson's sheriff and Hendry's coroner in the investigation the entire time to the extent that Miss Osie even has to sit up after she has flatlined to explain everything to them. The "blood wings" clue is the only element that eludes the audience, and the revelation is not particularly startling. K.N.B. Efx Group's version of Pumpkinhead is less expressive than the original which possessed a particularly unnerving grin but Robinson is a fine lead even if he cannot even recite the Pumpkinhead nursery rhyme with a straight face while Kanaly is not particularly menacing as the judge with a secret. The younger actors fare better with their sketchily-developed roles with only Polinsky fading thoroughly into the background in most scenes. Although Hendry is a little wooden, she makes a refreshing change from both the stereotypical morbid coroner characters and the black New Orleans-raised female characters who must believe in the occult (especially since her mother was a "sorciθre"). Kaye has less to do as Jenny's mother but the script at least affords her some input in the investigation. Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) and R.A. Mihailoff (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III) are among the terrorized villagers. Linnea Quigley (Night of the Demons) makes a nude special appearance, while Dolenz's Witchboard 2 co-star John Gatins appears in the prologue as the younger version of Judge Dixon (the end credits list his given name as Caspar even though Braddock refers to him as Merle earlier in the film). Mission: Impossible's Peter Lupus and his son also appear as cock-fighters. Clinton also provides an end title theme song, which is far better than his actual onscreen performance. Director Jeff Burr had made his debut with the cult anthology From a Whisper to a Scream (released on VHS in the United States as "The Offspring") followed up by The Stepfather 2 and the notoriously-troubled Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III but was here in between Puppet Master 4 and Puppet Master 5 for Full Moon, but his next direct-to-video project Night of the Scarecrow revisited some of the elements of Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings with superior results. 
Video
Produced by Motion Picture Corporation of America a minor studio company that started in the late eighties with films like Memorial Valley Massacre and The Killing Box and had a minor cable hit with Sketch Artist (leading to a watered-down sequel) and had a brief run of theatrical hits in the nineties with the obnoxious comedies Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and Bio-Dome Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings was handled on vieo by Live Entertainment and on DVD by Lionsgate which included a fullscreen transfer with commentary by Burr. When the Motion Picture of America rights passed on to MGM, the title was licensed to Shout! Factory in 2014 for a Scream Factory line Blu-ray struck from a new high definition master and included a brand new Burr commentary. 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from the same master and looks pretty much the same with a clean-looking presentation of somewhat diffused cinematography that is nowhere near as aggressively stylized as the first film seemingly optimized for the limitations of NTSC video of the period occasionally condescending to a canted angle or two and the use of some nocturnal blue gels and some solarized Pumpkinhead-vision shots (the photography is credited to Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday's Bill Dill but mor seasoned genre cinematographer Tom Callaway also contributed some work). 
Audio
The sole audio option is an LPCM 2.0 rendering of the original matrixed Ultra Stereo track which makes itself known from the start with the twangy synth scoring of Burr-regular Jim Manzie (Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) which does more than the visual for evoking the backwoods setting and a slicing effect across the front channels with the title card but is generally more sedate during the rest of the film apart from the Pumpkinhead sequences where the wind machine picks up and characters get flung around by the creature. Optional English HoH subtitles are also provided. 
Extras
Extras start off with a new audio commentary by film journalists Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain who discuss the recurring themes and tropes of Burr's work and how they turn up even in work-for-hire jobs like Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings which they feel is a dry run for the superior Night of the Scarecrow. They also express preference for the "monster on the loose" sequel over the original which is just a slasher beneath its artistic pretensions also noting Winston's strengths in directing creature and effects sequences over actors and go into detail about how the film came about from a discussion between Motion Picture of America's Brad Krevoy and a Live Entertainment executive about the home video sales of Pumpkinhead and Krevoy promising that if they got the rights he could have a sequel running in front of the cameras in three months, having revealed that he already had a script that could be retooled as a sequel (the commentators quip that the film is basically "I Know What Pumpkinhead Did Last Summer"). They also reveal that the credited screenwriters Ivan Chachornia and Constantine Chachornia were actually pseudonyms for TV writers/producers Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle (Alien Nation), and that the first film's writers Mark Patrick Carducci (Neon Maniacs) and Gary Gerani (Vampirella) got "creative consultant" credits for doing a polish on the script. They also provide some background on the cast as well as Motion Picture of America's run from direct-to-video to theatrical it is a surprise hearing them refer to films like Soldier Boyz as mainstream back to direct-to-video and more recent Lifetime fare. Ported over from the Shout! release is the 2014 audio commentary by director Jeff Burr even though it covers much of the same ground as his earlier track, sometimes with near-identical wording, one wonders if the Lionsgate commentary has never been ported over due to licensing or because MGM might have found potentially-litigious statements the likes of which they vetoed from other extras on both their own and licensed releases in which he reveals that the project was developed by Tony Randel (Hellbound: Hellraiser II), and that the mechanics of production were already in motion when he came onto the project (as was the case with Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III). Randel reportedly left after the project had been pushed back a number of times and decided to do Ticks for Republic Pictures. Burr had come off the back-to-back Puppet Master productions for Charles Band, and was to direct Oblivion when Band asked him instead to direct Dark Angel: The Ascent which was repeatedly delayed (the former would be directed by Sam Irvin and the latter by Linda Hassani). Most of the cast was already in place, but he had originally cast Robinson as the judge and Timothy Bottoms (The Last Picture Show) as the sheriff. Bottoms pulled out over a disagreement about his fee, and Burr thought that switching Robinson to the hero would be a nice change from his Dirty Harry typecasting. What he likes about the film is that it is at its core a "guy in a suit" monster movie that, according to him, if made in the fifties would be directed by Edward L. Cahn (Invasion of the Saucer Men) with creature make-up by Paul Blaisdell (The She-Creature).  While it is just as well that 88 Films did not port over Shout!'s hour-long interview with Burr since it covers pretty much the same information as the commentary track, it is unfortunate that neither release ported over the Artisan featurette directed by Dave Parker (The Hills Run Red) which featured actress Hendry, actors Mihailoff and Will Huston (Burr's Straight into Darkness), producers Krevoy and Steve Stabler (Albino Alligator), and script supervisor Harri James (Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence). In place of Shout!'s interview featurette with the effects crew, we get a pair of new pieces starting with "Monster Mash" (21:57), an interview with creature actor Mark McCracken who discusses his training and early acting, his decision to go to Los Angeles only to then head back South to Florida to play the Mant creature in Matinee which lead to Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings. He provides some anecdotes about working on the set with the other actors and later meeting Dolenz' father Micky Dolenz and introducing himself as the one who menaced his daughter in the film. He also reveals that in certain shots not showing his feet, he wore tennis shoes and a publicity shot which turned up on the laserdisc and VHS editions show that. "The Creature Wore Tennis Shoes - Creating Pumpkinhead II" (12:00) features KNB's Howard Berger (Talos the Mummy) and Greg Nicotero (Evil Dead II) reveal that their colleagues on Pumpkinhead furnished them with a VHS making-of that allowed them to study the original creature suit in every aspect, assess its weaknesses, and try to improve on it for the sequel, as well as expressing fond memories of Burr who kindled enthusiasm as a director and took their advice on how to photograph the creature, making it easier on the crew since not every scene needed to show the whole creature suit. Ported from the Shout! release is a tape of behind the scenes footage (17:16) while 88 Films has added a theatrical trailer (1:41) and still gallery (0:46). 
Packaging
The first pressing includes a gloss O-ring slipcover.
Overall
Somewhat blander but more direct in its "monster on the loose" shenanigans, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings is a decent time-waster and a stepping stone of the late and underrated genre talent Jeff Burr.
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