Review of Night of the Pumpkin (2011) by Jason D — 02 Jun 2010

In another tale from cult independent sleaze director Bill Zebub, Night of the Pumpkin attempts to tackle the unstoppable slasher subgenre of horror, New Jersey style. As Halloween approaches, Zebub (whose presence in this film is very limited unfortunately) and girlfriend Jen (beautiful New Zealand actress Shoshana McCallum) have a small get together with a few of their close friends.

It doesn't take long before a murderous hulking monster with a pumpkin for a head begins killing the friends off in various gory fashion. The film begins on the right foot, balancing Zebub's penchant for comedy, gore, and an abundance of nudity (and boy is there plenty!), however, by the time things get going, this movie falls completely apart and spends too much time branching out long long scenes of talking that seems to go around and around.

Mind you, I enjoy those long stretches of dialog when the wordplay is fun and entrancing (Quentin Tarantino anyone?) however in this no-budget film, it's kind of a pain to watch. Also, the deaths become bit bland, with characters being killed off in a way that made it seem as though the script had completely run out of ideas.

To add salt to the wound, the climactic ending is definitely unique, but not in a good way. Even though it starts off quite well and even shows some great full blown nudity from rising actress Angelina Leigh (who is fucking smoking in this film), I'd say this is one of Zebub's weakest efforts.

Tis a shame because I REALLY wanted to enjoy this.