Welcome to Script to Pieces, a recurring feature at Wicked Horror where we look at the best, most interesting and at times most unbelievable horror movies that never happened. Sometimes these will be productions that never came together at all, other times, they will be original incarnations that were completely different from what we wound up with. Each should be fascinating in its own way, because the stories of movies that never see the light of day can sometimes be even more interesting than the stories of those that do.
Pumpkinhead is one of my favorite horror movies. It’s a monster movie through and through, and one of the best of them, but it has such an emotional resonance as well. It’s inherently a story about revenge, but it explores the concept and consequences of revenge better than almost any other horror film I’ve ever seen. Plus, the titular monster is one for the ages. It’s an amazing, amazing design.
Pumpkinhead also has an interesting backstory and mythology to it, but it’s something we barely get to see in the film itself. The old witch Haggis has a line stating that “for each of man’s evils, a special demon exists.” Pumpkinhead is the demon for vengeance, a demon that’s been around for centuries, but what about the others? These were never ideas that were going to be introduced in a future installment of the film franchise. Pumpkinhead II had a much smaller budget and the eventual third and fourth entries were produced for the SyFy Channel.
From the sound of it, the show would have had an interesting format, as it would have combined the ongoing narrative series format with an anthology approach. “Every other week would be a Pumpkinhead demon of revenge story, alternating with a new demon that was part of this pantheon. At the end of season one, I had some guy in a heat suit going down into the bowels of Hell to see all these demons massing for an attack.”
But don’t think that just because the show would have expanded the mythology around Pumpkinhead that the central demon would lose any focus. “In addition to the ‘new demon’ angle, we’d be exploring various Pumpkinhead attacks throughout history, with tales set in time periods ranging from Ancient Rome to the American West. There was even a story about a Holocaust survivor who manages to buy Pumpkinhead embryos through the black market, the starting point of a heinous scheme to punish the grandchildren of concentration camp runners who tortured his own family.”
It sounds like there was plenty of material to mine, which is really amazing to me. Even if it never happened, it’s so cool to see how many imaginative possibilities sprang forth from one monster movie. Elaborating further on the idea of the combination of anthology with ongoing narrative, Gerani noted in an interview with Bloody Disgusting that it “was a semi-anthology, but with continuing demon hunter characters connected to the Vatican.”
He even elaborated on a specific connection to the original film, noting that one of these demon hunters would be the grown-up survivor of Pumpkinhead, Bunt Wallace. It’s worth noting, though, that Bunt did return in Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes, although he was under-used.
Another episode would have explained the origin of the old witch, Haggis, who had been a very beautiful woman when she was young. “She was portrayed as something of a victim,” said Gerani. “A seeker of truth hated by the locals and at odds with regressive religious types. So the drama here was pretty far-ranging.”
Sadly, the project never came to pass. “Although my extensive proposal was well-received by SyFy, nothing came of it… the TV movies they eventually produced were inspired by that idea-heavy, book-like proposal. It was pitched to Brad Krevoy at the Motion Picture Corporation of America, who produced those SyFy movies. So there’s no doubt in my mind that Tales of Pumpkinhead was used as a reference source.”
While Gerani never got to tell further stories of Pumpkinhead on the big or small screen, he did write a Dark Horse comic in the early ‘90s titled Pumpkinhead: The Rites of Exorcism that lasted for two issues before cancellation. While it’s more than likely we’ll never see Tales of Pumpkinhead as a TV series, the timing seems right for it to get its proper due as a comic book. With current comic revivals of properties like Hellraiser, The Lost Boys and even Puppet Master, I think Pumpkinhead and this extended world around him could make a proverbial killing on the comic page.
That’s, of course, all hypothetical. But I think it’s safe to say that this is a TV series fans would have been more than happy with. And, as a fan, I’d be content if even just a kernel of these ideas were to be used in any form later on down the line.
