Best movie ever!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

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!

This episode of the popular horror TV series is probably the weakest I have seen so far – which is a pity since it marked the reunion of director Larry Cohen with his regular star of the 1980s, Michael Moriarty. The latter, in typically eccentric mode, plays a homicidal truck driver whose old-fashioned murderous ways are being outclassed in creative sadism by a new and younger serial killer. The two disturbed loners haunt a stretch of road that is occasionally frequented by tourists and things are kickstarted by a breakdown of just such a bus in the middle of nowhere. The handful of passengers and the bus driver are swiftly dealt with by the two of them working separately but they figure without rebellious Fairuza Balk who has quitted her party early on and reaches the nearest town on foot. The killers converge at a dingy hotel to claim their prey but things soon come to a head and spin out of control, necessitating the intervention of two ambulance drivers who – surprise, surprise – have their own heinous agenda! Despite the gore redolent of modern horror fare and the darkly humorous touches typical of earlier Cohen movies, the mixture falls flat on its face thanks to the sheerly unsympathetic nature of the three main characters which quickly depletes any kind of suspense or interest the narrative may have generated.

Cult director Larry Cohen and mediocre genre scribe David Schow team up for "Pick Me Up," one of the weakest MOH episodes from Season One. The story follows a bunch of travelers whose bus breaks down in an isolated mountainous region. Some opt to go off to the nearest town with a trucker (played by Michael Moriarty, even more obnoxious than usual), some stay at the bus, and one tough-as-nails woman (Fairuza Balk) decides to walk off in the opposite direction on her own. She soon realizes that she's become a killer's prey, but she's unsure of who the killer is. This episode plays with the fear of hitchhiking--of both the hitchhiker and the driver. The story-line starts off decent and it's suspenseful enough, until you actually figure out what's going on. After that, it just descends into absurd nonsense, especially in its last 10 minutes or so. Cohen's trademark sense of black humor doesn't really pop up until the end, and by that point I was ready to throw the towel in. It does have it's high points -- it's fairly violent and the gore effects are well done. And Balk is excellent, as usual, though underused here. So it's gross enough to please horror fans, but it's not particularly original and the twists and turns are stupid, especially considering its otherwise serious tone.

Larry Cohen has long been a favourite filmmaker of mine. I first discovered him at an early age watching the creature flick Q. That film, along with the Maniac Cop series and Uncle Sam solidified him as a great filmmaker in my mind. It wasn't until years later that I finally got to see the It's Alive series and God Told Me To and add them to his hit list. So its rather funny that of all the episodes from season one of Masters Of Horror that this one would take me so long to get around to watching. I missed the original airing of the episode on TV so I had to wait until it came out on DVD. When it did, I bought it immediately. Then, life got in the way and I never got around to it. Finally, after watching the episode, I can say it was worth the wait. Cohen is a master, there is no doubt. There are some classic Cohenisms on line here, even though he didn't write the script. And just seeing Michael Moriarty play the piano again was worth it. I've never read any of David Schow's work so I wasn't familiar with the story on which the episode is based. Really, it is rather simplistic in its narrative and allusions, but it gets the job done. Wheeler is a trucker who kills anyone who he picks up on the road. Walker is a hitchhiker who kills anyone who picks him up. The two meet one night on a lonely mountain road and a young woman is caught in the middle of their macabre game. This may not be my absolute favourite episode of the season, but it certainly ranks up there in my top 3. Well worth a look.