Pumpkinhead

Pumpkinhead (1988) is a backwoods horror fable with Lance Henriksen that you can watch online on iFILM. It marks the directing debut of Stan Winston, the effects genius behind the creatures in Aliens and The Terminator. A grieving father wakes a demon of vengeance, then learns he cannot send it back.

Ed Harley runs a remote country store and is raising his young boy alone. When a pack of city teenagers tears through the hills on dirt bikes, one of them strikes the child dead. Half-mad with loss, Ed seeks out an old mountain witch, who summons something ancient from a forgotten graveyard: a towering, gaunt thing that hunts the riders one by one. The catch is brutal. Every kill the creature makes, Ed feels in his own bones, until he can no longer tell where the monster ends and he begins.

The title beast is pure practical work, an animatronic and a man in a suit with no digital trickery, and that craft is the whole point. This is horror built by a sculptor rather than a writer, and it shows in every frame the creature shares. Lean at 86 minutes, mean, and surprisingly sad, it has earned a lasting cult following. Stream Pumpkinhead (1988) online on iFILM.