Splashy old-school gore gags engineered by the reliable Gary J Tunnicliffe provide the only highlights of this laboured, talky fourth PUMPKINHEAD flick, shot back to back with the glum ASHES TO ASHES and again lazily retreading old ground without the atmosphere of the original or the cheap n cheerful thrills of the second movie.

   You may hold out some hope when Pumpkinhead pulls a guy’s head off in the very first scene - but this hope will prove short-lived. Five years after a massacre involving a future sheriff, a wedding descends into chaos thanks to the enduring, bitter feud between two Southern families in a once-prosperous town. In a clichéd Romeo And Juliet fashion, a young girl has fallen for a boy from the rival family and, when the guy’s little sis dies after a violent confrontation, the usual PUMPKINHEAD plot is set in motion. This means another visit to that familiar old hag in the woods and, as with ASHES TO ASHES, Lance Henriksen reprises his role as the ghost of Ed Harley. Pointlessly showing up when nothing else is happening, Henriksen spends his screen time chastising the living characters like some undead variation on Rod Serling.

   BLOOD FEUD is slowed down considerably by the drippy central romance and many repetitive scenes in which sundry disposable characters take on Pumpkinhead one after the other. These fuck-nuts foolishly blast the formidable demon with useless shotguns even when it has been established several times that such weapons have no effect on him. Their only purpose in the narrative is to be thrown across rooms and have their heads popped like grapes. The performances in the film range from hammily OTT to soap opera bland, so be prepared to root firmly for Pumpkinhead.

   The one redeeming feature of this franchise-killing Sci-Fi Channel-made movie is that it delivers a satisfying array of splatter. Stand-out moments feature a cheer-worthy head-in-a-bear-trap gag and a sequence in which a guy has to cut off his own leg with a knife (which he does with considerable ease!) in a futile bid to flee from you-know-who. Also in the film’s modest favor is a fun climactic rampage, with heads stomped and spines yanked out with the kind of enthusiasm absent elsewhere in the movie. The lack of shoddy CGI is also pleasing after the embarrassingly weak computer-enhanced bouncing Pumpkinhead glimpsed in the previous outing. This is all faint praise, however, for a movie that, gore aside, drags itself along with all the exuberance of Rosie O’Donnell being escorted away from an All You Can Eat Pancake Buffet.