Movies Welcome to Fright Night: the annual Sherdog Horror Movie Festival.

Pumpkinhead

A classic from the 80's. The film starts with a young boy named Harley watching Pumpkinhead kill a man. The movie then shifts to the present day. Harley is a grown man(Lance Henriksen)with a small boy of his own he's devoted to. When his son is killed by a drunken city boy who hits him with a dirt bike, Harley asks the witch Haggis(yes, really)to summon Pumpkinhead to avenge his boy. But as Haggis warns him, the price for revenge is steep indeed.

Directed by Stan Winston, who did the creature effects for Alien and The Terminator among many others. Pumpkinhead himself bears no small resemblance to a Xenomorph.

This is a very dark movie, even allowing for it's genre. There are no one-liners; the cast play their roles completely straight. The tone of the film is best summed up when Harley realises his mistake and begs Haggis to stop Pumpkinhead,

Haggis, "This is what you wanted, Harley. For each of man's sins, a special demon exists. And you're looking at Vengeance - cruel, devious, pure as poison vengeance.

What did you think, that it would be neat and clean, easy, painless? You're a fool!"

Harley, "God damn you!"

Haggis(smiles)"He already has, son".

By the end of the film, most of the city kids are dead and Harley has not only lost his life but his soul. He will become the next Pumpkinhead.

8.5/10
 
10/17: Jimmy and Stiggs (2024) - IMDB

"A perfect storm of lousy news sees out-of-work filmmaker Jimmy Lang spiral into a bender, during which he claims to have been abducted by aliens, and fearing their return, he contacts his old friend Stiggs to help him gear up for war."

I watched this because it was shot on super 16mm and I always appreciate the effort of shooting on film. It might not be my exact aesthetic, but it was a fun little psychotic alien movie.

6.2/10
 
Prefect said:
I saw Silver Bullet last night. It is more fun than it has any right to be. It has some good chemistry between the son, Corey Haim, and his sister. Gary Busey just chews up the screen improving. Apparently, they just told him to play it however you want it worked. There are some very good kills in the movie but what makes the movie a lot of fun is that tonally it is a mixed bag. It is like a spoof of Stephen King movie than a Stephen King movie. There is a werewolf haunting the small town and it is interesting with goofball things like the werewolf taking the bartenders bat away from him and beating him to death with it. It is bad but bad in a way that you can't quite tell if the director was intentionally trying to make it a comedy. It plays some things serious and straight and then other times it is like the director is winking at you.

OIP.Mivc9TeINVa4I6Hy0-26dAHaLH
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I unironically love and adore this movie with every fiber of my being. As a kid I constantly watched horror movies, and Im amazed my parents let me. I had a VHS of this that I taped off of Fox 40, filled with commercial breaks and everything. I watched in until the damn tape unraveled. Juicy Fruit commercials and all. Now I have a blu-ray and I can literally tell you every time it cut for a commercial break on TV.
 
KnightTemplar said:
Pumpkinhead

A classic from the 80's. The film starts with a young boy named Harley watching Pumpkinhead kill a man. The movie then shifts to the present day. Harley is a grown man(Lance Henriksen)with a small boy of his own he's devoted to. When his son is killed by a drunken city boy who hits him with a dirt bike, Harley asks the witch Haggis(yes, really)to summon Pumpkinhead to avenge his boy. But as Haggis warns him, the price for revenge is steep indeed.

Directed by Stan Winston, who did the creature effects for Alien and The Terminator among many others. Pumpkinhead himself bears no small resemblance to a Xenomorph.

This is a very dark movie, even allowing for it's genre. There are no one-liners; the cast play their roles completely straight. The tone of the film is best summed up when Harley realises his mistake and begs Haggis to stop Pumpkinhead,

Haggis, "This is what you wanted, Harley. For each of man's sins, a special demon exists. And you're looking at Vengeance - cruel, devious, pure as poison vengeance.

What did you think, that it would be neat and clean, easy, painless? You're a fool!"

Harley, "God damn you!"

Haggis(smiles)"He already has, son".

By the end of the film, most of the city kids are dead and Harley has not only lost his life but his soul. He will become the next Pumpkinhead.

8.5/10
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If I remember correctly there were two dirt bikes racing at the beginning of the movie. Timeless classic.

Always felt there was a strong underlying message in the film. As in a person can ask for revenge but it comes with an attachment.
 
KnightTemplar said:
Pumpkinhead

A classic from the 80's. The film starts with a young boy named Harley watching Pumpkinhead kill a man. The movie then shifts to the present day. Harley is a grown man(Lance Henriksen)with a small boy of his own he's devoted to. When his son is killed by a drunken city boy who hits him with a dirt bike, Harley asks the witch Haggis(yes, really)to summon Pumpkinhead to avenge his boy. But as Haggis warns him, the price for revenge is steep indeed.

Directed by Stan Winston, who did the creature effects for Alien and The Terminator among many others. Pumpkinhead himself bears no small resemblance to a Xenomorph.

This is a very dark movie, even allowing for it's genre. There are no one-liners; the cast play their roles completely straight. The tone of the film is best summed up when Harley realises his mistake and begs Haggis to stop Pumpkinhead,

Haggis, "This is what you wanted, Harley. For each of man's sins, a special demon exists. And you're looking at Vengeance - cruel, devious, pure as poison vengeance.

What did you think, that it would be neat and clean, easy, painless? You're a fool!"

Harley, "God damn you!"

Haggis(smiles)"He already has, son".

By the end of the film, most of the city kids are dead and Harley has not only lost his life but his soul. He will become the next Pumpkinhead.

8.5/10
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Every time I watch this Im shocked how well it actually holds up. Like, I keep thinking this time its gonna be completely cheesy and dumb, and theres definitely a certain amount of 80's in it, but it just works. Even the monster is still cool. The shot of him turning around and pushing the chairs aside and smiling at the kid who was hiding remains one of my favorite horror shots of all time.

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I saw Black Phone 2 last night. It had a decent showing of the number of people there. It was pretty decent. There was flipping back and forth between dream world and real world that was reminiscent of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I don't know what to say about that. I suppose a lot of movies have done that both before and after Elm. The movie felt a little bit more mature than kids trying to help another kid in the basement solve puzzles. I wish the film had more time with The Grabber and his back history. I almost thought that they were hinting that The Grabber was a victim of another person, a guy similar to The Grabber, and he was just reliving out trauma but they didn't go that route. I wish horror movies made twist with their villains like how the New Nightmare on Elm Street movie hinted that Freddy might have been innocent and a victim of mob justice but then they went with a less complex and compelling story. Overall, I thought it was a decent horror movie. I liked it probably on the same level as Weapons. 7.5/10. I think the problem with the Black Phone movies is that what makes them compelling isn't the kids but The Grabber. It seems like they want to build a backstory around the Phinney, the family, and other kids but that is the least interesting feature of the series. They might have been better to roll things back and just used another set of kids and shown The Grabbers beginnings or portray him as being eternal and possessing another body or something like that. I think the least compelling thing about the first movie was the whole puzzle solving aspect of the kid in the basement. It was all about the creepy guy at the top of the stairs.
 
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Prefect said:
I saw Phone Book 2 last night. It had a decent showing of the number of people there. It was pretty decent. There was flipping back and forth between dream world and real world that was reminiscent of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I don't know what to say about that. I suppose a lot of movies have done that both before and after Elm. The movie felt a little bit more mature than kids trying to help another kid in the basement solve puzzles. I wish the film had more time with The Grabber and his back history. I almost thought that they were hinting that The Grabber was a victim of another person, a guy similar to The Grabber, and he was just reliving out trauma but they didn't go that route. I wish horror movies made twist with their villains like how the New Nightmare on Elm Street movie hinted that Freddy might have been innocent and a victim of mob justice but then they went with a less complex and compelling story. Overall, I thought it was a decent horror movie. I liked it probably on the same level as Weapons. 7.5/10.
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I was going to see this yesterday but it was packed and my interest in the movie itself is pretty low.
 
GoodBadHBK said:
I was going to see this yesterday but it was packed and my interest in the movie itself is pretty low.
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It is decent. I think I figured out the problem I had with the movie focusing on the kids so much. There is very little humor amongst the kids to build an audience attachment and comradery. It feels like they are just like banging one note on the piano over and over. I feel like if you are supposed to care about the kids, they have to feel like kids you grew up with rather than it being dark for nearly the entire 2 hours of the movie. That said, it is a decent movie that could have been better with a few changes. I still think it is a solid 7.5/10.
 
Prefect said:
I saw Silver Bullet last night. It is more fun than it has any right to be. It has some good chemistry between the son, Corey Haim, and his sister. Gary Busey just chews up the screen improving. Apparently, they just told him to play it however you want it worked. There are some very good kills in the movie but what makes the movie a lot of fun is that tonally it is a mixed bag. It is like a spoof of Stephen King movie than a Stephen King movie. There is a werewolf haunting the small town and it is interesting with goofball things like the werewolf taking the bartenders bat away from him and beating him to death with it. It is bad but bad in a way that you can't quite tell if the director was intentionally trying to make it a comedy. It plays some things serious and straight and then other times it is like the director is winking at you.

OIP.Mivc9TeINVa4I6Hy0-26dAHaLH
Click to expand...

This was another one I would consider a fun classic. I would have to be in the right mood to watch it, though.
 
the ambush said:
This was another one I would consider a fun classic. I would have to be in the right mood to watch it, though.
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I liked it more than I thought I would. I went to it with the plan if the first 20 minutes sucked, I would just walk. I ended up staying for the whole thing and was cackling more than some real comedies I have seen this year.
 
10/1 - Phantasm
10/2 - The VVitch + 28 Years Later
10/3 - I, Madman
10/4 - The Incubus + World Word Z
10/5 - Bring Her Back
10/6 - Train to Busan + Color Out of Space
10/7 - 976-EVIL + Pumpkinhead
10/8 - The Brood
10/9 - Vamp + Gothic + Silver Bullet + The Lost Boys
10/10 - The Thing (2011) + John Carpenter's The Thing
10/11 - The Night Eats the World
10/12 - IT (2017) + Gremlins
10/13 - Halloween III: Season of the Witch + Friday the 13th Part III
10/14 - The Substance
10/15 - Talk to Me
10/16 - The Dead Don't Die
10/17 - Hereditary

Yeah, brahs. This was a fucking awesome movie!
 
Bob Gray said:
Every time I watch this Im shocked how well it actually holds up. Like, I keep thinking this time its gonna be completely cheesy and dumb, and theres definitely a certain amount of 80's in it, but it just works. Even the monster is still cool. The shot of him turning around and pushing the chairs aside and smiling at the kid who was hiding remains one of my favorite horror shots of all time.

faa8545c231ff4685d093b728208cedea8549e21r1-500-230_hq.gif
Click to expand...

Pumpkinhead's face slowly morphing into Harley's, thus showing how revenge has corrupted a good man, is a particularly nice touch.

And the Blair Witch is a spiritual successor to Haggis.
 
the ambush said:
If I remember correctly there were two dirt bikes racing at the beginning of the movie. Timeless classic.

Always felt there was a strong underlying message in the film. As in a person can ask for revenge but it comes with an attachment.
Click to expand...

You're right. The bikes belong to the drunken asshole and his brother. The brother misses the kid and the asshole hits him. Then immediately books because he's already been convicted of a DUI, and knows this time he'll go to jail. Which turns out to be the least of his worries...

And yes, that's the whole theme of the movie: revenge, even when justified, comes with a high price.
 
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