Hillbillies vs. Horror

Four movies in and ’ol Pumpkinhead’s legend of vengeance is like my underwear: darker and wearing a bit thin. Not that Pumpy isn’t cool, because he totally is. Rather, they’re running out of ways to tell the same story. This time they thought outside the patch, where the ongoing battle saga between the “still backwoods hicks” Hatfields and the McCoys is still raging via their descendants. First thought is, why do we keep letting these hillbillies breed? Second of all, with one billion square miles in which to move, why do they always live next door to each other? Geez.

So a Hatfield chick is in love with a McCoy dude and they meet in private to feel each other up. A sort of Hee Haw re-imagining of Romeo & Juliet, their secret is discovered and in the process end up with a McCoy sister getting killed in the face. Legal disclaimer: It weren’t no Hatfield that done it — they was a’chasin’ her through the woods and she fell down a sharp incline and whacked her head somethin’ powerful agin’ that there yonder tree.

As could be expected, the McCoys think the Hatfields did it. So the “Luv U 4ever” guy goes to Haggis, the town witch, to call upon Pumpkinhead for vengeance. (Her witch shack has been upgraded with extra rats and decorative stink bugs). Also returning as a “spiritual advisor” is Ed Harley (aka, Lance Henriksen), doomed to walk the earth, caught between here and there, a penalty curse for invoking the Pumpster. The drag is he can’t even see his own dead son, the one whom he brought down Hell in retribution for. That’s f’d up.

Disregarding ALL the warnings, the McCoy kid calls on Pumpkinhead to kill the entire Hatfield clan (there’s like, 20 of ’em)‚ except his beloved skirt. So they can be together. Forever. (That boy needs to get a clue into the ways of barnyard booty.)

In an ironic twist of fate, the Hatfields and McCoys have to team up against Pumpsie. It doesn’t work, because like drinking beer, once it begins IT CAN’T BE STOPPED. If you’ve seen the previous three Pumpkinhead movies you’ll know how this one ends.

Better than Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1993) and Pumpkinhead III: Ashes To Ashes (2006), Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud (2007) is more gory, with P-diddyhead stomping on faces (making ’em go goosh!), slashing open bellies to let loose the intestines within, gouging eyeballs, ripping off limbs and making that eerie noise that sounds like a rattlesnake with an electric toothbrush caught in it’s throat.

Somebody needs to quit making these sequels long enough to let Ed at least time to change his shirt. That thing has got to be stinking up the place good after 20 years.