Pick Me Up

Larry Cohen who has enriched the world of Exploitation cinema as the director of films like "Black Caesar" and "Q: The Winged Serpent" and, most memorably as the writer of films like "Maniac Cop" delivers one of the most outrageously entertaining "Masters of Horror" episodes with "Pick Me Up". While this eleventh episode of the first season does not quite reach the originality and ingenuity of the most brilliant entries to the series (such as Takashi Miike's "Imprint"), it does deliver what a "Masters of Horror" episode should: permanent suspense and genuine creepiness, paired with moments of incredibly morbid humor. A young woman named Stacia (played by sexy Fairuza Balk) is part of a bus-load of travelers, which, after breaking down in the middle of nowhere, bizarrely gets stuck between two psychopathic serial killers... I don't want to give too much away, but I can almost guarantee that people who like the show will also like this. The episode is suspenseful and creepy from the first minute, and sometimes spiced up with macabre humor, but never to a degree that would lessen the suspense). Fairuza Balk is sexy as always and fits perfectly in her role. Prolific actor Michael Moriarty and the less prolific Warren Kole are also very good in their roles. Along with the very first episode, "Incident On And Off A Mountain Road", "Pick Me Up" is probably the MoH episode that has the most genuine B-Movie-feeling, which should make it highly enjoyable to my fellow Horror/Exploitation fans. Overall, Larry Cohen is certainly not the most masterly director in the "Masters Of Horror" franchise (masters like Dario Argento, Stuart Gordon, John Carpenter and Takashi Miike as directors of other episodes make this quite impossible), but his episode "Pick Me Up" proves that he is a more than adept maker of genuine solid Horror. "Pick Me Up" is a creepy and deliciously macabre entry to the series which MoH-fans should certainly not miss.

I can only guess, why not so many people seem to like this one. But it hit the right button with me. I loved it (watched it with a friend of mine, who was as excited as I was). I thought it was unique, told something different and made the most out of it's time frame (had to be less than an hour long, for TV reasons), had excellent actors (some well known, others not so much).

Maybe some think, that it just has too much in it and therefor is does not concentrate on a straight path down the road. That's exactly what I loved. You probably will guess, what is going to happen quite a few times, but the way it is played out, really got me going. Nicely written dialog and very self-aware (but not to the point, where it gets annoying ... not to me anyway), this was one great episode, from one great writer/director!

In PICK ME UP, a truck-driving serial killer (Michael Moriarty) meets his match in a deadly drifter (Warren Kole). Fairuza Balk plays the young woman caught between these two madmen and their battle for homicidal supremacy.

One of the better MASTERS OF HORROR offerings, it has a nice mix of terror and humor. It also has a ghoulish twist at the end.

Director Larry Cohen does some of the best work he's done in years. Re-teaming with Moriarty is a big plus. These guys always made great low-budget horror films together...

Who would have thought serial killers would be territorial? The story starts out when a bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere (of course), when a seemingly friendly truck driver offers to take the passengers to the nearby trading post. Only two passengers take him up on the offer, while two more stay with the bus along with the bus driver. One passenger decides to start walking by her self. Meanwhlie a friendly cowboy walks up to the bus and asks for a ride. It turns out the cowboy and the truck driver are both serial killers! Walker who hitch hikes, and Wheeler who drives picking up hitch hikers. After they dispose of their victims the fight over who gets to kill the last survivor of the bus. And like a good western we have a show down to see who gets to finish the victim off.

This is definitely not scary but it is a good fun movie to watch. It's got some funny moments, some suspense, and a message: Don't hitch hike and don't pick up hitch hikers! Oh! The ending really makes believe in karma!

Like John Landis' 'Deer Woman,' Larry Cohen's contribution to the "Masters of Horror" series coasts on the director's pitch-perfect dark humor. There are few scares in 'Pick Me Up,' but a strong satire of serial-killer clichés (in this case, the hitcher and the hitched) and a layered character study that is quite fun to watch unfold. Wheeler (Michael Moriarty) is a semi driver who picks up hitchhikers and slaughters them; Walker (Warren Kole) is a hitcher who murders his rides; and Independent Woman Fairuza Balk is the tough heroine who runs afoul of the duo. While Cohen may seem like a wild-card addition to the series, 'Pick Me Up' injects an intellectual angle into the proceedings that is refreshing (especially in light of the "gore = more" approach most of the episodes have taken). While this episode lacks Cohen's trademark 'guerrila' style, he hits the right notes of irony and absurd comedy in David J. Schow's script, as when the two killers (united in Wheeler's truck) stop as a rattlesnake crosses the road; or when Walker tortures a woman in a motel room, putting a quarter in the 'Magic Fingers' as porn plays on the TV; or a climactic fight between killers over their prey. The performances of Moriarty, Kole, and Balk are uniformly spectacular, possessing a true knowledge of character that adds much to the episode as a whole.

(Side Note: anyone collecting the MOH DVDs has come to expect the usual supplements, but 'Pick Me Up' contains a highly entertaining interview with Cohen, plus a surprising number of past collaborators offering insightful and often hilarious recollections.)

6.5 out of 10