Larry Cohen has been a 'Master of Horror' especially during the 70's and 80's (with sublime movies on his repertoire like "It's Alive", "God Told Me To" and "Q The Winged Serpent"), but starting from the 1990's, he merely became the writer of popular mainstream thrillers like "Guilty as Sin" and the more recent "Phone Booth". It has actually been a while since Cohen delivered some genuine horror, so I didn't really know what to expect from his contribution to this series. His episode "Pick Me Up" certainly isn't the best entry in the series, but nevertheless a very entertaining little movie with an original plot and a fair share of gore. The plot revolves on a showdown between two sadistic serial killers and the stake is the last remaining passenger of a bus that broke down in the middle of nowhere. The oldest killer (deliciously played by Michael Moriarty) is a trucker whose victims are usually the hitch-hikers he picks up and the other one is a hitch-hiking drifter who kills the people that offer him a ride. A premise like this could have resulted in a very suspenseful cat-and-mouse game, but Larry Cohen and scriptwriter David Schow (creater of "The Crow") preferred to make it a sick black comedy with some grotesque plot twists and insane characters. Typical serial-killer situations and clichés seem to added on purpose and there are loads of subtle references towards classic horror films for the genre-specialist to discover. The deserted two-lane highway running through the backwoods forms a great setting. Sadly, the denouement goes ONE step beyond the acceptable.
Review of Pick Me Up
