Some people, led by a man called Doc Frasier, at a local funeral home are making some cash by selling organs, but eventually the bodies of their victims are discovered. This angers the people in town and especially one young lady named Molly Sue whos son happened to be one of those victims. She seeks out an old witch who lives in the forest to get revenge on the people who did this. Soon Pumpkinhead is unleashed, yet once again to rid the world of those who commited horrible crimes.
Right.. Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes felt pretty much like watching the first movie all over again except for one major difference, everything in it sucked. I, for many reasons, am a big fan of the original Pumpkinhead movie and while this 3rd one deperately tries to capture the story and feel of that film, it's doesn't even come close and ends up being yet a horrible sequel to a terrific movie, with Blood Wings being the second sequel. I must admit though that I had been waiting around to see this film since I first heard about it, because for one, Jake West was gonna direct it and I really liked his Evil Aliens so I thought that he might be able to add some spice to the old story. It's not really that he made a poor job with Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes, but it's more that I think he should just try and do his own thing instead of trying to re-create an old story from a terrific film, since it's quite the impossible task. Also I believe that most directors would've failed trying to do the same. Pumkinhead is just a great stand alone movie that simply needs no sequels.
Another reason to why I thought this film sounded interesting was for the fact that Lance Henriksen was gonna be in it and reprise his role as Ed Harley. He was in the film for a short while but it sure didn't help, and I can't really see why he even wanted to be in this film to begin with. Gary Tunnicliffe who worked on the monster before did that once again, but this time it comes out looking more like some dude wearing some kind of plastic monster suit and there were also way too many close-ups on the monster that really made one see just how fake it looked.
Talking about looking fake, the one looking even worse than the monster was the old witch. She simply doesn't look like an old witch at all, but instead like some younger actress wearing a helluva lot of make-up. This and a heap of other little things made the movie seem a bit stupid and it was very hard to get into it, and it was even harder sitting through the whole film. In the original when Ed Harley loses his son you feel extremely bad for the man, it's a sad moment in the movie and the fact that he wants revenge seems like a natural thing. But what the first movie had that this 3rd one does not have too much of is feeling. In Pumkinhead you cared about the characters, felt something for them and that obviously made it all better. In this movie you couldn't feel less for the characters, the fact that Molly Sue loses her son and a bunch of other things, it simply has no feel to it and you pretty much just want it to end.
Another bad thing is that this is a Sci Fi Channel movie and those are never that great to begin with. Those few times I'm about to watch a movie on that channel, I always ask myself why I do it, because so far, I don't think I've ever liked one of them. Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes has a cheap feel to it as well, filmed in Romania for budget reasons might not really have been a bad idea (look at Campbell's Man With The Screaming Brain filmed in Bulgaria), but makes the film look very cheap when comparing it to the original. Also, the first one had this great fairy-tale like feel to it with mystic forests and scenery to die for while this one really had nothing of that. I'm aware that I'm really giving this movie a beating, and even though I don't really want to, it can't be helped. Frankly, I can't see how anyone could really enjoy this.
While the actual film look somewhat all right even though it may look a bit cheap, it lacks all the fantastic scenery that the original movie had. The forest and witch that creates such atmosphere is nowhere to be found as they've been replaced by more crappy enviroments and a really stupid looking witch that even a 5 year old wouldn't be afraid of. Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes is just not worth the time, it's as simple as that.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Pumpkinhead 3
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Jake West
WRITING CREDITS: Barbara Werner, John Werner
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Doug Bradley, Lisa McAllister, Douglas Roberts
COUNTRY: UK, USA, Romania
RUNTIME: 86 min
RATING: 2/10
Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes Website/IMDB Click here
Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes Trailer Click here
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