[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1993)

A nicely atmospheric but unrelated sequel to the 80's classic Pumpkinhead in which Andrew (Dirty Harry / Hellraiser) Robinson plays a new sheriff returning to the small hick town he grew up in with his wife and daughter. However daughter (Amy Dolenz) quickly falls in with the wrong crowd and they inadvertently bring the Pumpkinhead creature back to life following an ill advised Occult ritual. Seemingly the creature had been buried waiting to seek vengeance for a crime decades earlier.

There's a lot to enjoy here. Robinson i find is always worth watching and it's fun seeing Steve Kanaly (Ray from Dallas) as the town governor at the center of the mystery of the creatures return, meanwhile Scream Queen Linnea Quigley also has a small role but memorable role in proceedings.

Once again the Pumpkinhead creature looks terrific and the action is plentiful and bloody but the question needs to be asked as to why Pumpkinhead seems to go around with it's own electrical storm in tow? It's bound to be an epileptic's worst nightmare.

Halloween: H20 (1998)

Set 20 years after the events of that fateful night in Haddonfield 1978, after faking her own death and coming up with a new identity, Laurie Strode, now with a teenage son (Josh Hartnett), works at the private boarding school Hillcrest Academy in California. However things are about to get messy as her brother Michael is coming home for the Halloween holiday.

A good cast, some nice in joke Easter eggs and some creative set pieces make Halloween: H20 one of the classier offerings in the series.

A sequel to Halloween II, all further installments are completely ignored, this feels like the real deal, even if it owes a little too much to writer Kevin Williamson's Scream, in fact i'm sure it even nicks musical cues from that film. With Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis in good form it's easy to ignore those details and with a good supporting cast, clever in joke Easter eggs and some creative set pieces come together to make Halloween: H20 one of the classier more accomplished offerings in the series.