RICHARD MARTIN REVISITS THE ‘MASTERS OF HORROR’: PICK ME UP (DIRECTED BY LARRY COHEN)

9/6/2021

We are living in a golden age of horror on TV. Shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘American Horror Story’ have effectively taken the genre mainstream, offering weekly doses of gore and mayhem to the masses. Go back a decade or two however, and genre fans had far fewer options to choose from. Anthology shows, like ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘Monsters’ or ‘Tales From the Darkside’ were king during the horror heyday of the 1980s, providing cheesy and cheerful tongue in cheek horror in half hour bites. It wasn’t until 2005 that the TV horror anthology show got serious, and delivered arguably the most consistent, memorable and scary anthology show to date.

The brainchild of horror legend Mick Garris, the show’s title is no hyperbole. ‘Masters of Horror’ brought together the best horror talent Hollywood (and beyond) had to offer. Episodes directed by undisputed genre luminaries such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon were like hour long movies brought to your TV screen. High production values, A-List talent and a free reign to do whatever they pleased resulted in some truly unforgettable work from a group of horror legends let off their leash. These are stories that have stayed with me in the fifteen years since many initially aired and, in this series, I’ll be revisiting all twenty-six episodes, one at a time, to shine a light on a fondly remembered and undeniably influential moment in horror TV history.
Join me as I take a look back at;

Pick Me Up
Directed by: Larry Cohen
Starring: Faizura Balk, Michael Moriarty, Warren Kole, Laurine Landon
Original Air Date: 20 January 2006
Synopsis: When her bus breaks down on a remote highway, a young woman finds herself the target of two separate serial killers.

Revisiting the ‘Masters of Horror’ Pick Me Up

Have you ever noticed that when David J Schow is involved in an episode of a TV series, that episode tends to be pretty great? Even disregarding the multiple episodes he wrote for the fantastic vampire smut anthology, ‘The Hunger’, his track record is pretty impressive. His single contribution to Freddy’s Nightmares (‘Safe Sex’) was one of the shows best and more recently, ‘The Finger’ was the undeniable highlight of Shudders first season of ‘Creepshow’. Masters of Horror was blessed with not one, but two episodes penned by him, the first being the Larry Cohen directed ‘Pick Me Up’.

The basic premise is a fun one. Two serial killers unwittingly find themselves stalking the same remote stretch of road. Their styles and ethics are night and day, but both pick out a young woman travelling alone as their next victim. When the two finally meet will they join forces, or is there only room for one killer on the road? The answer may surprise you.

The episode opens when a bus breaks down on a desolate-looking stretch of road, miles away from anything resembling civilisation. Some passengers opt to wait it out, and others set off walking to a trading post a dozen miles further up the road. Safety in numbers goes out the window from the very opening as the characters, including Stacia (Faizura Balk), all go their separate ways. Before long a truck pulls in and the driver (Michael Moriarty) offers to take two of the passengers up to the trading post.

So, now we have some people waiting by the bus, some people hitching a ride with the mysterious trucker, and Stacia out walking alone in the middle of nowhere. Turns out Stacia made the smart decision, as the trucker turns out to be a serial killer, making short work of one of his passengers (hanging them in the back of his ruck from a meat hook, ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ style). The second passenger is unaware of the danger he’s in, but we’ll get back to him in a moment. The passengers who made the seemingly smart decision of staying with the bus don’t fare any better as a traveller (Warren Kole, replete with a worn cowboy hat and a dead snake slung over his shoulder to properly telegraph what a badass he is) makes short work of those who stayed behind after he strangles the driver with the dead snake (thereby earning the coveted ‘most inventive death in Masters of Horror’ award) before taking his gun and shooting anybody left. He leaves one woman to flee, although, with two serial killers seemingly on the loose, you can’t help but feel it is only a temporary reprieve.

Now we’ve met both serial killers and both Moriarty and Kole spend the rest of the episode trying to steal the show from the other. It is a tough call too because while their characters are polar opposites, linked only by the fact they are killers, both are absolutely fantastic anytime they are on screen. Moriarty’s character is far more menacing, clearly intelligent but often standoffish and aggressive. Kole’s character, on the other hand, is charming and personable; chatty and easy-going until the moment he turns. As soon as both are introduced you can’t wait for them to meet up, and the wheels have already been put into motion to bring the two together.

The traveller has let a victim go, but he quickly hunts her down in the forest by the roadside, leaving her tied to a tree before heading back to the bus. There he spots the driver, who has returned (presumably to ‘pick up’ more victims). Finding none alive, he instead opts to kill his remaining passenger, all but decapitating him with a bus door. This murder is witnessed by the traveller, who is intrigued by this latest development. Equally intrigued is the driver, who finds the woman tied to a tree, killing her before moving on to find out who was responsible for the deaths of the other passengers. It’s a hell of a body count, and we’re not even at the halfway mark!

The focus up until now has jumped around a great deal, switching between the two killers, the bus and the driver’s passengers, but now there are only three characters left, things get a lot tenser. Stacia makes it to a motel at the trading post and is soon joined by both the driver and traveller who take up rooms on either side of her. There is a fun scene when all three meet for the first time when Stacia leaves her room to visit the vending machine. She is stopped by the traveller who engages her in conversation. He is his usual charming self, but Stacia senses something is amiss (and she’s not wrong. He just finished torturing the poor girl who gave him a ride to the motel). The pair are interrupted by the driver, who joins the conversation. It’s a cleverly written sequence. Both killers know the other's secret, and Stacia is the only one in the dark and it sets up the showdown between the two, which Stacia will no doubt be a major part of.

I’m reluctant to delve too much into the final act here, in case anyone reading hasn’t actually watched the episode, but the final confrontation between the two is everything you would hope it would be. It’s incredibly tense, with lengthy moments where the two match wits before things get physical. Sadly, given the calibre of actress they have to play Stacia, she is little more than a plot device to bring the two killers together. Faizura Balk is great in the role, but the role exists solely to be the victim for two vying serial murderers, and if I had one criticism, it would be that if you get Faizura Balk to star in your episode, you really should give her a little more to work with.

‘Pick Me Up’ isn’t one of the better-known episodes in the series, but it certainly deserves to be. Everything about it just works. The script is stellar; a fantastic concept with smart execution. The comedy is pitch-black and the performances are great across the board and, most importantly, the two serial killers are stand-outs, both playing such different characters that the inevitable meeting in the finale is incredibly tense because you have no idea how such a meeting may play out. The ending is perfect, managing that rare trick of being both completely unpredictable, and simultaneously being the only way such an unlikely story should end. Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode twelve of the first season, John McNaughton’s ‘Haeckel’s Tale’. See you then!

If you missed any of Richard's previous Revisting The Masters of Horror articles, you can find links to them all here on our handy landing page

THE MASTERS OF HORROR

Richard is an avid reader and fan of all things horror. He supports Indie horror lit via Twitter (@RickReadsHorror) and reviews horror in all its forms for several websites including Horror Oasis and Sci Fi and Scary