Every October, people stop whatever it is they’re doing, just to make Jack O’Lanterns. Yes, ’tis the season to buy a perfectly decent gourd, stab it with a sharp object, crack it open, scoop out its intestines and make a disembodied head out of it. And while you’re at it, why not fill that head with fire? That’s a perfectly normal thing to do!
The history of Jack O’Lanterns goes back centuries, with early cultures making lanterns out of vegetables for many generations before – as it is popularly known – the Irish turned the carvings into Halloween traditions. Whether they’re used to ward off evil spirits or just to decorate the front yard, in the hundreds of years that followed, Jack O’Lanterns became one of the traditions most closely connected to the Halloween season, right up there with wearing scary costumes and pestering your neighbors for snack-sized bags of Skittles.
As such, Jack O’Lanterns frequently find their way into movies that are set at Halloween, or in films that otherwise capture the spirit of the season. Whether they’re made to be terrifying or adorable or just plain bizarre, you’re bound to have noticed some of these classic carved pumpkins in your favorite Halloween movies and theatrical releases.
Which one’s YOUR favorite?
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)
Disney’s 70-year-old animated tale of terror still has the power to make kids cower. In this adaptation of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Bing Crosby narrates the tale of Ichabod Crane, a cowardly teacher who runs afoul of a decapitated spirit who carries a fiery Jack O’Lantern with him. Perhaps it’s his head, perhaps it’s just the best he can do, but either way when he throws that orange ball of hellfire at the screen, somebody always jumps. An iconic figure, and a brand new way to make pumpkins terrifying.
Trick or Treat (1952)
Speaking of Disney, back when animated shorts were theatrical releases, the studio came out with Trick or Treat, a delightful comic romp about Donald Duck playing tricks on his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie for Halloween. Unfortunately for Donald, Witch Hazel gets involved and uses her sorcery to make Donald’s night a living hell. The pumpkin in this classic short seems magical even before Hazel makes it float and sing and go “Boo!” right at the audience: how does a kid keep even a giant lit Jack O’Lantern balanced on his head like that? It’s a question that’s been puzzling kids for generations.
Halloween (1978)
John Carpenter’s original Halloween knows that Jack O’Lanterns are an absolutely essential component to any movie about the holiday. That’s why the whole opening credits are nothing but a slow zoom in on a Jack O’Lantern in the darkness. With Carpenter’s iconic, haunting score building tension in the background, the Jack O’Lantern grows from a whimsical holiday fixture to the symbol of something truly sinister. And the subtle knife image carved into the nose is just distinctive and eerie enough to stand out, even if you can’t quite figure out what it is.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1983)
The story of the franchise changed completely in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and now instead of a slasher stalking a suburban neighborhood, a brand of popular masks are going to kill children all over the world as part of a mass human sacrifice. Those masks are of a skull, a witch and a Jack O’Lantern, and they’re all creepy in their classic simplicity, but it’s the Jack O’Lantern that gets the center stage as it fills a young boy’s heads with grotesque bugs and poisonous snakes!
Return to Oz (1985)
One of Disney’s several great forays into family-friendly horror, this vicious sequel the classic Wizard of Oz stars Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Gale, who’s forced to undergo shock therapy because she thinks she went to Oz. The trauma sends her flying back to the magical realm but all of her old friends are missing, so she has to make new ones – like the aptly named Jack Pumpkinhead – to save them from a terrifying Nome King, and princess with a hallway full of severed heads. Jack is a loyal companion, the film’s close equivalent to the Scarecrow, and he’s a remarkable practical creation, walking around like a giant marionette with a gigantic, barely balance Jack O’Lantern for a cranium!
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Henry Selick’s stop-motion animated musical mostly takes place in Halloweentown, where all the ghouls and goblins congregate to make October 31 as horrible as they possibly can. So naturally, there are Jack O’Lanterns everywhere, in the sky, in the pumpkin patch and, most adorably of all, right on the nose of the ghost dog, Zero. The faithful friend of Jack Skellington uses his Jack O’Lantern sniffer to find bones (Jack’s) and, when a mysterious fog strikes just before Christmas, to guide the Santa-impersonator through the clouds!
Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
Dylan Baker plays a school principal trying to teach the importance of Halloween traditions to a young vandal who likes breaking Jack O’Lanterns. And since this is Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat, we know that the kid is going to learn the lesson the hard way. After poisoning his student with candy, he brings the head downstairs so he can have a wholesome, family carving session with his young son. Traditions… ya gotta love (and fear) ‘em.
Trick ‘r Treat (2007) (Again)
Dougherty’s Halloween classic is the only film to wind up on the list twice, because choosing just one great Jack O’Lantern scene from Trick ‘r Treat was impossible. The final segment finds Brian Cox waging war against a malevolent trick or treater, who’s outraged by the old man’s defiance of proper Halloween etiquette. As the life or death struggle heats up, the child’s mask disappears and we see not a little kid, but a Jack O’Lantern faced monster… the spirit of Halloween itself!
Tales of Halloween (2015)
Trick ‘r Treat may be slightly more famous, but the horror anthology Tales of Halloween – which also tells multiple scary stories, taking place in the same town, on the same Halloween night – is also quickly becoming a Halloween favorite. In the film’s climactic story, man-eating Jack O’Lanterns have sprouted up all over town, devouring the heads of human beings, while a police officer tries to solve the mystery of how the hell that could possibly happen. It’s such a simple, freaky idea that it’s hard to believe there hadn’t already been a movie about it before!
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
Eli Roth’s adaptation of John Bellair’s classic fantasy novel, about a young orphan who moves in with a warlock, is a respectable kids film with memorable performances by Jack Black and Cate Blanchett, who plays their bewitching neighbor. It’s a respectable adaptation but the highlight is easily the scene where, as all hell is breaking loose, the whole patch of pumpkins comes to life and starts vomiting pumpkin guts all over everybody. How many films boast a scene where Cate Blanchett headbutts a Jack O’Lantern and exclaims “I hate pumpkins!”? Only this one, folks. Only this one.
Halloween (2018)
How do you evoke the classic opening of John Carpenter’s Halloween 40 years later? You set back the clock, apparently. The opening credits for David Gordon Green’s Halloween begin with a rotting mound of pumpkin flesh, and then the footage reverses, and we watch the corpse of an iconic symbol for horror get resurrected in front of our very eyes. It’s an unsettling, but thoroughly fitting reintroduction to the classic franchise.
