Halloween Heroes — Realms of Halloween

I learned that David Prowse passed away this weekend and it saddened me greatly. It wasn’t just the fact that I’d had a poster of Darth Vader on my wall growing up or that I’d thought he was great in the old Hammer horror films. It was the kindness he showed to fans contrasted with the way he’d been treated by George Lucas over the years.

Every fan who met David Prowse had a positive story of the day they met Darth Vader. I know lots of big time Star Wars fans and not one of them has a story about a grumpy encounter with Prowse. He bent over backwards to make the fans happy and he was always grateful for his seat at the table.

He usually hid the fact that his work on Star Wars was hugely disappointing to him. He was shocked to hear someone else’s voice when the film was released. Lucas isn’t a very communicative director, so he never told the actor that he was going to dub his vocal performance. It also shocked Prowse to learn that he was to be denied the chance to show his face in Jedi and to play the character one last time in Revenge of the Sith. When Prowse complained about these things in public, Lucasfilm promptly banned him from all official Star Wars conventions. As it turns out, George Lucas blamed Prowse for leaking info about plot points in Empire and Return of the Jedi back in the day and he even refused to speak to Prowse on the set of Jedi.

I’m sad that Lucas wasn’t big enough to offer up an olive branch to Mr. Prowse before he died. He posted praise for the actor on starwars.com after his passing, but in my opinion, it’s too little, too late.

Since I first visited his site in the early 2000s, Pumpkinrot (Rot for short) has been helping me and countless others to celebrate the Halloween season with his spooky, whimsical, organic nightmare displays. Like so many in the haunt community, he’s built bigger and better displays over the years but he’s always stuck to his key aesthetics of organic decay, colorful lighting, and unique designs. And now, he’s gone.

No one’s really talking about what happened to Rot or why he stopped posting. His last post was on June 21, 2019, and many of us followers suspected he was going to reappear just in time for Halloween 2019. When that didn’t happen, the chat on the haunt and Halloween forums intensified. Several people who claim to know Rot and his wife, Bean, said they were just dealing with some family business, but anyone can say anything they want on an anonymous forum. I honestly don’t want any details on Rot’s personal life. I’d just like to see him back in action.

My selfish desires aside, Pumpkinrot clearly filled a need amongst home haunters looking for “the next big thing”. So many home haunters either buy finished props or make junk that only looks passable in the dark. Rot’s work was neither of these. His design aesthetic began with a new take on the Halloween scarecrow. Made from roots and topped with a frightening jack-o-lantern face, it was so unique that he was asked to be a designer for the horror film, Mr. Jones in 2013.

It helped that Rot blogged about Halloween all year long. During times when many spooky bloggers went on hiatus, you could depend on posts from Rot to feed your need for spookiness. That’s one of the reasons why, in his absence, I decided to begin this blog.

For a time, some of Rot’s designs were offered for sale by Primitives by Kathy. That’s the PBK pumpkinhead figure you see in my photo above. Sadly, those items are no longer for sale there and there’s no indication that they will ever return.

At the end of the day, I can only say that I wish Pumpkinrot and Bean well and I hope we hear from them again. In the meantime, if you haven’t visited their site, go now and catch up on everything you’ve been missing. You’ll be glad you did.

http://pumpkinrot.com/