Laugh at him and you're undone / But in some dreadful fashion

Happy October!

To kick off a month of mostly-horror news (unlike all those other months), a timely mix of autumnal vegetation and thematic film: Pumpkinhead 4 comes to DVD tomorrow.

Based on a poem, no foolin', the original Pumpkinhead (1989) was f/x superstar Stan Winston's first and second-to-last directorial effort. Made for a modest $3.5 million, it didn't clear much more than that in theaters, but enjoyed a fairly successful run on video. A direct-to-VHS sequel, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, arrived in 1994, not to be confused with the PC shooter Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge, made available the following year (first videogame adaptation of a straight-to-video sequel? note to self: research).

Silence on the Pumpkinhead film front for over a decade (though in 1999 or so, Todd McFarlane attested to his popularity with inclusion in the Movie Maniacs action figure line, ahead of such luminaries as Ash and Brundlefly), until a new contract appeared. In 2006, Pumpkinhead 3: Ashes to Ashes and Pumpkinhead 4: [ugh] Love Hurts were filmed back-to-back, going on to premiere on the Sci Fi network. Thankfully, #4 was renamed Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud before release.

Pumpkinhead 4 is directed by Mike Hurst, no stranger to the straight-to-Sci Fi sequel gig, having headed up 2005's House of the Dead 2, and the less said about that, the better.