As of 2007 when ‘Right to Die’ was released, director Rob Schmidt only had one horror movie credit to his name, but it is a pretty impressive one. 2003s ‘Wrong Turn’ has since spawned 5 sequels and a recent remake, kickstarting a brief return to popularity for the ‘backwoods horror’ subgenre. While ‘Right to Die’ may be a little less grim and gritty than ‘Wrong Turn’, Rob Schmidt proves to be an excellent choice to add a little of his trademark grisly realism to an otherwise outlandish tale of wronged spouses and vengeful ghosts.

The episode opens as married couple Cliff (Martin Donovan) and Abbey (Julia Benson) are driving down a lonely stretch of road late at night (I’m tempted to go back and see how many episodes of Masters of Horror start exactly like this. It feels like a lot). We get the sense that they aren’t on great terms, with Cliff making an effort to engage with Abbey, and Abbey being fairly icy and aloof in response. We don’t get a chance to find out what the issue is (yet) as Cliff crashes the car when trying to avoid a fallen tree in the road. He escapes with barely a scratch but Abbey is not so lucky, as the petrol leaking from the car catches fire, setting her alight in front of her anguished husband.

Somehow, Abbey survives but suffers such severe burns that when we next see her she is unconscious and covered in bandages, her lips and eyelids burnt away, her nerves dead and her body all but destroyed. The prognosis from the doctors isn’t good. If a full-body skin donor can’t be found, the likelihood of her surviving is slim.

I just want to pause here to take a second to acknowledge the fact that Rob Schmidt has Martin Donovan playing a dentist in this episode. Who has he cast as his lawyer? Horrors most deadly dentist himself, Corbin Bernsen, star of Brian Yuzna’s slasher classics ‘The Dentist (1996) and its 1998 sequel. Twenty-two episodes in and I’m still spotting all kinds of fun nods like this for horror fans throughout this series.

Not only does the episode feature the actor who gave a generation of horror fans a permanent dentist phobia, but Robin Sydney makes an appearance as Trish, Cliff’s mistress. While she’s not given much to do in the episode outside of a perpetual sultry look to entice Cliff, she should also be a familiar face for genre fans, particularly fellow Full Moon fanatics. She had starred in the schlock horror studios ‘The Gingerdead Man’ and ‘Evil Bong’ prior to ‘Right to Die’ and seems to be a permanent fixture for Full Moon nowadays, starring in multiple sequels for both as well as some appearances in the ‘Puppet Master’ series amongst others. It was fun to recognise a bonafide horror movie personality on the re-watch that I was entirely unfamiliar with when I first saw the episode back when it aired.

Back to the episode, and things take a turn for the supernatural when Abbey passes away, albeit temporarily, in her hospital bed, coming back as a vengeful spirit. She haunts Cliff but takes no steps to hurt him. Cliff’s Lawyer doesn’t fare so well, in a very creative death scene involving an MRI magnet and a fire. Luckily for Cliff, Julia is brought back from the brink of death by her medical team but he knows his respite is only temporary and that, if Julia does die, then she will be coming for him next.

One of the things that stood out for me re-watching this episode, is how effects-heavy it is. I recalled it being (pardon the expression Abbey) a ‘slow burn’ outing, but it has a lot of great scares and big set pieces and it was more action-packed and gory than I remembered. The blood and the violence is largely of the medical variety, making it more grounded and uncomfortable to watch than, say, the over the top tone of episodes like ‘Dreams in the Witch House’ or ‘Deer Woman’. The scene that stuck out the most to me wasn’t even one of the episodes kills, or even of a supernatural nature. It is midway through the episode when Cliff is visiting Abbey at the hospital during a full-body debridement procedure. Aside from being rough to watch, it is more memorable for how realistic it is in depicting an actual medical procedure and how unflinching the camera is in showing it to us. It also serves to make you sympathise even more with Abbey for having to go through this, something which comes at an opportune time as revelations about Cliff begin to come to light. I loved how these events were hinted at throughout the episode but it isn’t until you know what they are that these hints become more obvious (an early scene where Cliff asks Abbey’s doctors if she will ever speak again, a seemingly odd question, but an important one for Cliff, is a great example of this)

As it turns out, Cliff is not the poor grieving husband we think he is. We already know he had an affair, but his treachery runs a lot deeper than that, and as the episode begins to wrap up, we revisit some previous events that are shown in a very different light, none of which bode well for Cliff. Knowing that, when Abbey finally passes away, there is nowhere for him to hide, he decides his only choice is reconciliation, so he takes steps to get a gift for his wife, one that he hopes will begin to make amends. Thinking back to the doctor’s prognosis at the beginning of the episode, there is one thing that may help mend those bridges…

What follows is a scene where Cliff takes Trish to his office, deciding that since no donor for his wife’s new skin has been forthcoming, he will procure some for himself. Drugging Trish with the gas he uses to anaesthetize his patients, she remains alive throughout the procedure of having her skin removed. It reminded me a little of the famous scene in Hannibal, where the titular cannibal feeds Ray Liotta parts of his own brain. Both scenes are almost casual in their extremity and while most of the scene plays out in close up, Schmidt makes sure to give us at least one lingering long shot, just so we can see the damage Cliff has done to poor Trish, who remains blissfully unaware of the horrific thing that is happening to her until she is left only with her face, which Cliff has saved for last.

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