I watched this film and was puzzled, was this supposed to be some family Halloween movie or was this supposed to be full on horror? With the extremely light body count I would say kid's, but with the slightly gruesome beheading, I would say horror. With Linnea Quigley, definitely horror, but it is so weak. No wonder no one remembers Jack-O as he was a joke in his first outing as he meanders around a lot and misses the opportunity to kill again and again! The film also likes coherency as we are treated to random scenes again and again and lots of shots of John Carradine who had been dead for over five years, apparently even death did not stop him from appearing in bad horror films!
The story, well a guy tells a boy this story about Jack-O and we kind of do a flashback a flash forward and like a flash sideways. It finally shows a kid waking up twice as he and his friends walk and discuss witches and then one of the friends starts pummeling the kid who woke up because that kid stopped the other kid from throwing rocks at a witches car! What horror! Then this woman inexplicably makes friends with the son and begins just hanging out at the house where the parents are going to do a haunted garage and inexplicably charge a dollar and not let their son help. The titular title character finally shows up and finally goes on a very slow killing spree as Linnea babysits the son whose parents are right outside trying to make money off their haunted house until Jack-O comes several minutes later to kill!
This film features John Carridine's picture and a few edited in movie clips, but I do believe he was in the film more than Linnea was. I would have preferred to see more of Linnea because she always adds spice to a film like this. There are a few others that make cameo appearances, but other than Cameron Mitchell and the ones I have already mentioned there is no one that noteworthy.
The movie moves along at a snail's pace and seems at times to be a film about a wacky parents desire to make money off their awful haunted house than it does about a supernatural killer from beyond the grave. The killer does get some kills in, but one of the victims dies by being stupid, Jack-O didn't touch them! The design is not all that bad though; however, they are more interested in showing us the feet of the killer than the pumpkin head. Like I said, it seemed like this film was going to be a children's movie, but they decided to go all in at the last minute and give us a tepid little murderous pumpkin man movie.
The story, well a guy tells a boy this story about Jack-O and we kind of do a flashback a flash forward and like a flash sideways. It finally shows a kid waking up twice as he and his friends walk and discuss witches and then one of the friends starts pummeling the kid who woke up because that kid stopped the other kid from throwing rocks at a witches car! What horror! Then this woman inexplicably makes friends with the son and begins just hanging out at the house where the parents are going to do a haunted garage and inexplicably charge a dollar and not let their son help. The titular title character finally shows up and finally goes on a very slow killing spree as Linnea babysits the son whose parents are right outside trying to make money off their haunted house until Jack-O comes several minutes later to kill!
This film features John Carridine's picture and a few edited in movie clips, but I do believe he was in the film more than Linnea was. I would have preferred to see more of Linnea because she always adds spice to a film like this. There are a few others that make cameo appearances, but other than Cameron Mitchell and the ones I have already mentioned there is no one that noteworthy.
The movie moves along at a snail's pace and seems at times to be a film about a wacky parents desire to make money off their awful haunted house than it does about a supernatural killer from beyond the grave. The killer does get some kills in, but one of the victims dies by being stupid, Jack-O didn't touch them! The design is not all that bad though; however, they are more interested in showing us the feet of the killer than the pumpkin head. Like I said, it seemed like this film was going to be a children's movie, but they decided to go all in at the last minute and give us a tepid little murderous pumpkin man movie.