By Owen Quinn author
Photos copyright United Artists MGM
Life can be a right bitch at times and evil likes nothing better than to take an innocent soul and crush it through feelings that are natural and normal at the time.
Take Ed Harley for instance. Ed was a store owner, Harley Grocery, who serves the community with supplies and was raising his young son, Billy, alone. His wife had passed a couple of years previously and together with their dog, Gypsy, this was Ed’s world and he was happy with his lot.
All that changed one day when a group of teenagers from the city went dirt-biking when drunk near his store. Ed had left Billy alone while he delivered some feed to Mister Wallace. Gypsy runs towards them followed by young Billy who is hit full on by Joel (John D’Aquino) mortally wounding the kid. His brother Steve stays behind with Billy while the others flee but on returning Ed Harley only sees his dying child. Steve’s explanations fall on deaf ears. The look on Ed’s face as he whirls on him is pure rage and hatred. You can see why in moments like this that Henrikson almost became the Terminator; he has such intensity in his eyes that it burns right off the screen.
Some say that evil is a trickster that plays a long game. It can choose its victims and wait years to take their soul. They allow glimpses of their world that imprint themselves on the human psyche in the form of fairy tales and disturbing dreams that are actually memories the mind cannot process because certain things should not exist. Our minds can only deal with them in the form of nightmares and folklore. Ed Harley was one such child the night he saw Pumpkinhead murder a man.
Young Ed saw his father secure their farm and barricade their door and stand over his family with a shotgun at hand. Clayton Keller hammers at the door begging for Tom Harley to help him. He cries he did not kill a girl but Pumpkinhead has been called and even a devout Christian cannot interfere or they too will be killed. This has stayed in Ed’s mind all these years and when the Wallace kids start teasing one of their own about Pumpkinhead those memories come back. It is almost as if dark forces are manoeuvring Ed towards Hell itself.
Billy dies in his arms and Ed’s world falls apart. He is broken and alone filled with anger that not only did the city folks leave Billy like garbage at the side of the road but they will flee back to the city and avoid paying for their crimes. Before she died It is reasonable to assume that he promised his wife that he would raise their son right and be there for him always. But he left him. He left him alone and he died because of it. Ed blames himself but he wants them to pay.
Despite Mr Wallace telling him to bury his son and move on and never to go to Haggis the witch, Ed wants blood. Bunt Wallace stops Ed’s truck and tells him where to find Haggis. It would be the sensible thing to go home, bury Billy and live the rest of his life but Ed is consumed with grief and hate. We know the current justice system can allow the guilty walk free through claims of all sorts but no-one walks away from Pumpkinhead. He will hunt you down until you are dead and there is nothing can stop him. Despite his faith in God’s will, Ed cannot reconcile how they left an innocent child to rot at the side of he road.
This is how evil gets you as seen when Ed goes to Haggis (Florence Schauffler) to summon the demon. She manipulates him into saying out loud what he wants her to do. He breaks and goes to a graveyard where the shameful have been buried at the back of the woods. She warns him what he wants will bring a heavy price but he doesn’t care.
But Ed doesn’t realise what he must suffer to get the revenge he seeks. Ed is connected to the demon. He feels and sees each and every death Pumpkinhead commits.
Haggis powers the demon with the blood of the requester in this case Ed. Pumpkinhead has his face, the face of someone so devoid of love and faith that it is vengeance on a speeding train. Haggis mentions none of this to Ed at all which is why evil can easily takes someone’s soul. No-one thinks clearly when grieving or acting out of raw anger and hate. Rationality is ash as they focus only on instant revenge. After all if these things exist then surely they must live to partially serve humanity’s needs and they have their place just as God does. Their very existence proves the reality of God therefore God will forgive all wrong doings. Ed fails to see that his wrong doing is allowing himself to take the dark path even God cannot redeem him from; all he sees is the city kids committed manslaughter that some fancy lawyer will free them of in a court of law.
But too late Ed sees that Pumpkinhead is killing innocent people and must act. He sees the error of his ways too late but intends to save the last two kids and Bunt Wallace who has disobeyed his grandfather to stay indoors while Pumpkinhead hunts. If Pumpkinhead can see and feel Ed’s pain and vice versa, Ed tries to kill himself to stop the demon but fails. He begs one of the teenagers to shoot him dead which she does. Dead, Pumpkinhead bursts into flame.
Ed would return in Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes and Blood Feud to warn others about the stupidity of summoning Pumpkinhead and conversing with Haggis on summoning the demon but they were nothing at all compared to the intensity of Henrikson’s debut as the character.
Ed was a good Christian man that fell into a pit of all consuming pain when his young son was cruelly taken from him. Given the killer would have gotten away with his death in our world, wouldn’t you do the same if given the choice?
As it stands tragic circumstances allowed evil to get a grip on an innocent soul and drag it, as Mister Wallace said, all the way to Hell.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 