I love the classic “pumpkinhead” character- any kind of humanoid monster that sports a carved gourd for a head. Be it a walking scarecrow or a headless horseman, pumpkinheads are, to me, the unofficial mascot of Halloween itself, akin to Santa or the Easter Bunny. So I decided to round up some pumpkinheads from different media and rate them all for fun.
The Headless Horseman (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
Might as well start with the OG pumpkinhead, the Headless Horseman! Although the idea of a decapitated equestrian has been around since medieval times, from the ghoulish Dullahan of Scotland to the Green Knight of Arthurian legend, the Jack-o-Lantern-juggling jockey we all know and love comes from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, published in 1819. A classic gothic horror story wherein the superstitious schoolmaster Ichabod Crane has a run-in with the Headless Horseman as he rides through the forest, after which Crane is never seen again, leaving only his hat and a shattered pumpkin behind. It’s implied that the Headless Horseman was actually a romantic rival of Crane’s in disguise to scare him away so he could get the girl he was dating, but like most gothic horror, what is or isn’t supernatural is left up in the air.
So what do I think of the Headless Horseman? Well, it’s hard to say- he’s pretty much the de facto pumpkinhead, dressed in black Victorian garb and sporting a jack-o-lantern as a false head, often pulling it off and throwing it at his targets, and he’s got a sick steed to boot. However, it’s hard calling Ol’ Double-H a proper pumpkinhead, since in most depictions he’s shown without anykind of head, pumpkin or otherwise. Still, I can’t completely dismiss him outright; it’d be like saying the Wright Brothers’ plane isn’t a real plane because it doesn’t have windows.
I love this so much! May I humbly request your opinion of Sam from Trick’r’treat?
Y'know, I was torn on whether to include Sam in the list, since while his head superficially resembles a pumpkin, it’s not technically a pumpkin. But after revisiting the scenes he’s in, I’ve come to realize that was short-sighted of me. Sam honestly has one of the most clever and charming monster designs I’ve seen in a horror film like this, perfectly fitting his role as the “Spirit of Halloween”. His outfit, consisting of a simple set of orange feet pajamas with a pair of yellow patches sewn on, looks like the kind of “generic kid’s costume” you’d see on a Halloween greeting card, though its contrasted with his mask- a bulbous burlap orb with black button eyes and thick stitching resembling an impossibly wide grin, all secured with a rope around his neck like a noose.
But it’s when his mask is torn off that his true pumpkinhead status is revealed, and its probably the most unique of them all. Rather than an actual jack-o-lantern, Sam’s head is a gaunt, orange skull with a wide lipless mouth full of rotten teeth, a skeletal nose hole, and beady black eyes set in triangular eye sockets similar to the traditional jack-o-lantern face, all seamlessly blending together into an eerie yet organic-looking pumpkinhead of flesh and bone. He even has vertical ridges on the back of his head similar to a pumpkin, and bleeds pumpkin guts when shot.
And of course, what really makes Sam memorable is how he adheres to an unwritten code of proper Halloween celebration, and swiftly and sadistically punishes those who break them, appropriately using candy mixed with broken glass and razor blades. Thankfully, he can be placated with a proper offering of a full-sized chocolate bar. He really encapsulates what Halloween is about: colorful, lighthearted whimsy mixed with the menacing and the macabre.
